Flaubert’s Semicolon in English Translations of "Madame Bovary"

Abstract

The paper considers the peculiarities of translation of such a stylistic feature in G. Flaubert’s novel "Madame Bovary" as a semicolon. The research featured extracts from six English translations and focused on the use of semicolons in complex sentences in position between clauses without conjunction and before et. The continuous sampling method and the comparative method were employed to detect and analyze the punctuation mark and its use. The research objective was to verify whether the author’s punctuation was translated and to what extent. The analysis of the corpus shows that, despite some individual preferences, translators respected isomorphism in punctuation in the great majority of cases, i.e. they used semicolon and equivalent conjunctions. Isomorphism’s percentage appeared higher than in Russian translations, which was possibly due to the fact that English punctuation system has more in common with the French than with the Russian one. The degree of fidelity can possibly be explained by the strategies used by a particular translator rather than by the contemporary punctuation tendencies. The results of this research can be used in preparation of multilingual corpora of parallel texts, as well as in textbooks on comparative grammar and syntax.

Keywords

• punctuation
• clause
• style
• retranslation
• isomorphism in punctuation
• comparative studies
• gustave flaubert
• french literature
• translations of flaubert’s texts