Die vertaling van 'n hibriede teks : 'n ondersoek na die uitbeelding van karakters in 7 Days en Cobra deur Deon Meyer

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Deon Meyer's crime novels have been translated into 27 languages, but he prefers to write his manuscripts in Afrikaans. He writes within the South African cultural context; therefore, his novels depict typical South African characters. In his novels, Meyer uses dialogue as an instrument for portraying the characters for the reader. These character portrayals offer an approach to investigating the translation of the dialogue as well as the effect of translation of the dialogue on the depiction of characters.Apart from the dialogue serving as strong instrument for depicting the images of characters, hybridity is also linked to dialogue and the depiction of characters. A hybrid source text includes different varieties of one language as well as different languages in one text. If such elements of hybridity are reflected in the target text and strike the target-text reader as odd, the target text can be regarded as a hybrid. In my opinion, hybridity is not produced during the translation process; instead, it is already present in the source text and merely transferred – or not – to the target text through translation. For the purposes of this study, the term 'hybridity' includes elements such as Cape Afrikaans, code switching and swear words which appear in dialogue in the source texts. Swear words contribute to hybridity but usually are not marked as signs of hybridity in the source text. Hybridity is, however, created in the target text if swear words that have been transferred unchanged strike the target-text reader as odd. Meyer's characters are not only depicted through dialogue; but when elements of hybridity are transferred to the target text, a hybrid text is produced once again. This study's focus is whether the transference – or not – of hybridity from a source text to a target text affects the depiction of characters in any way.Two of Meyer's novels, 7 Dae and Kobra, and their respective translations, 7 Days and Cobra, are examined to determine whether the translation of the dialogue has affected the transference of hybridity. The characters who are examined are Vaughn Cupido, a Cape Afrikaans speaker hailing from the Cape Flats, and Bennie Griessel, a white, middle-class Afrikaans-speaking person. The study employs qualitative analysis that incorporates various translation strategies and that refers to Venuti's (1995) terms 'domestication' and 'foreignization', which are used mainly to determine how dialogue has been translated. The short quantitative analysis in Chapter 5 focuses specifically on the translation of Cape Afrikaans, indicating the number of foreignized and domesticated translations in graphs.The study aimed to examine the character depiction in the target texts. To determine this, two other questions had to be answered: which translation strategies have been used to depict the characters, and has the depiction of these two characters been influenced by the translation strategies that have been applied? The findings indicate that an overall domesticating strategy was used, especially in the case of Cape Afrikaans. The strategy of domestication meant that few strange words or concepts – if any – have been transferred to the target text. Consequently, hybridity has decreased, or disappeared completely. Swear words have been foreignized in some instances, but not to the extent that they produced a totally foreignizing effect. Code switching has disappeared completely in the target texts. Thus, the chosen translation strategy has indeed influenced the character images. Also, in various instances informal conversational situations have taken on a neutral tone in the target text.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University