ABSTRACT
The applicability of Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth, SFL) to Translation Studies (henceforth, TS) has been acknowledged by many TS scholars, dating back to the 1990s, with Hatim and Mason (1990, p. 36) praising SFL as a ‘new approach’ that “provided translation studies with an alternative view which approached language as text”. In fact, the central position of text in SFL has led to the recognition of user-related varieties, i.e. dialects linked to geographical, temporal, social and (non-)standard or idiolectical factors (Hatim and Mason, 1990, p. 39). When used in literary works, these varieties, also called ‘pseudo-dialects’, can be characterizing as they are expressive of the location of characters in fictional space (both social and physical) and time (Rosa, 2012, p. 83). Such is the case for Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, where characters belonging to different social classes, age groups and ethnic groups speak different varieties. The present study is based on the SFL approach perceiving translation as “the recreation of meaning in context through choice” (Matthiessen, 2014, p. 272) and the translator as “taking decisions all the time” (Halliday, 1992). Using the translation equivalence vs shift cline (Matthiessen, 2014, p. 279), this chapter investigates how four translations (one English-Arabic and three English-French) of Twain’s novel in different historical and socio-cultural contexts rendered in the Target Text (henceforth, TT) the linguistic varieties found in the Source Text (henceforth, ST).
The investigation is based on a representative sample of 40 utterances illustrating dialect markers in the ST and follows a three-step procedure as suggested by Munday (2002); first, describing dialect markers and their function in the ST; second, comparing the ST and TTs with the aim of placing different translations on the equivalence vs shift cline; and, third, discussing translation strategies adopted by different translators in their socio-cultural environments.
At the first step of the analysis, the assignment of dialect markers to their sources revealed variation between characters' diction and the narrator’s standard diction, on the one hand, and between different characters, on the other hand, showing thus that linguistic variation was used as a characterization technique. The second step of the analysis revealed that translators adopted different strategies to render dialect markers, occupying different positions on a shift-maintenance cline. The choice of different strategies is explained by reference to factors pertaining to the socio-cultural context in which the translation operated. The discussion showed that language policy, the purpose of the translation and the translator’s ideology can affect the translator’s opting for a given strategy. The chapter concludes that equivalence in translation results from the translator’s awareness of the context of culture in which the ST was created and the one in which the TT is produced. This conclusion highlights the importance to TS of the contextual approach advocated by SFL theory.
