Modelling Translation as a Theatre of the Mind: reporting clauses and inward affect

Abstract

This paper argues that a literary translator performs the original work by expressing inwardly her emotions and feelings under character-masks. Her lexical choices are indicative of her inner performance whose intimate subjectivities are visible when in contrast with the language of another translator. To support my point that literary translation is emotionally performative and happens in the state of psychological transition between the fictional Other and multiple selves as well as between mimesis and autothesis, I will explore the possibility of modelling it as a theatre of the mind by means of contrasting semantically the reporting verbs found in the first chapter of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and its six translations into Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian and French.

Keywords

• translation theatrics
• emotional (self)performance
• inward affect