ABSTRACT
On reading this extract from Marie Cardinal’s Devotion and Disorder, one of the first questions that comes to mind is, how did the author feel when writing this text? Did she identify with the character/narrator, Laure’s mother? Did she write from personal experience? We might also wonder how readers are likely to feel when reading the text. How will they react? Will they perceive the character’s emotions in the way intended by the author, or will their reading experience affect them differently? Narrative research has shown that reader responses vary from person to person as a result of particular histories and differences in life experiences that determine how they evaluate characters’ motives, decisions, and behaviours (Jacovina and Gerrig 2010). We might therefore wonder about the range of reactions to a text with such a strong emotional component. Moreover, since this text is a translation, another question we could ask ourselves is how well does the emotional component translate for another cultural context? Reader responses to emotions vary across the world, and readers of the French or Chinese version will respond to and understand the narrative differently. And what about the translators? How do they relate to the text and to the translation task? As readers of the originals and writers of the translations, their emotional responses are likely to be essential ingredients
in the shaping of different language versions. The main aim of this book is thus to demonstrate the implications of emotionality for translation work and to explore the relevance and influence of emotions in translation by focusing on specific emotion traits.
