Deviant language in the literary dialogue: An English–Romanian translational view

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on the scholarly acknowledgement regarding the experimental nature of dialogue in Modern and Postmodern literature, this article attempts at investigating the translatability of dialogic utterances displaying deviant language. The relevance of the study is given by the structural differences between languages, which oftentimes triggers the impossibility of rendering the dialogic information relative to the literary characters’ identity in the target language. The examples are depicted from several fictional texts, where part of the characters’ identity is constructed by the peculiarities of their speech which deviates, in a range of manners, from standard English. Such deviant language indicates the characters’ idiolectal, sociolectal or dialectal identity, as well as the broader social context in which they act. The examination of deviant language leads to findings concerning its structural variety and its essential role in completing some literary characters’ identity and, implicitly, its importance in translation. Solutions are suggested to the interlingual transfer of formally untranslatable deviant language of a grammatical, phonological and lexical nature, taking also account of criteria pertaining to functional aspects. The conclusions discuss structural, phonological and lexical possibilities of the target language, the translator’s creative engagement in the translation of deviant identity-marking language and suggest further research opportunities.