Understanding the mediation of dialectal value

Abstract

Dialect, when viewed in contrast with standard language, creates a variety of geographical or social implications. This variety may be hybridized with other social voices to convey the theme of the text. Previous studies have elaborated much on the representation of the socio-cultural connotations in dialectal speech. However, the value of dialect may not be confined only to its socio-cultural connotations. Drawing on insights from sociolinguistics and systemic functional linguistics, this study aims to uncover the representation of the English dialect of Pygmalion in its Chinese translations and the possible reasons why it is represented as such in the Chinese context. By quantifying the shifts in Eliza Doolittle’s dialect voice, the analysis shows that a local variety or varieties of colloquial register were adopted to recreate the dialectal variety in Chinese translations of Pygmalion. The local variety provides a better interpretation of the functions and stylistic significance of the source dialect. The recreation of the source dialect in the translated texts of Pygmalion results from the mediation of the translator’s positioning and what has been established by the receptor system’s literary conventions, social hierarchy, language ideologies, and the roles of literary translation.