Case study: the representation of violence in Ways of Dying (1995) and its French version Le Pleureur (1999)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the representation of violence in Zakes Mda‘s Ways of Dying and its representation in the French translation, Le pleureur (1999). It is theoretically grounded in the narrative theory of Gérard Genette (1980), and the analysis is carried out through a contrastive analysis of the source text (ST) and the target text (TT), using Norman Fairclough‘s Critical Discourse Analysis (1989), Paul Simpson‘s (1993) approach to text analysis, Jeremy Munday‘s Systemic Model for Descriptive Translation Studies (2002), and the systemic functional grammar (SFG) as developed by Halliday (1994). The study aims to answer the following questions: How is violence represented in post-modern South African literature with reference to Zakes Mda‘s Ways of Dying (1995)? How is violence represented in the source text (ST) and target text (TT) on the thematic and linguistic levels? In order to answer this question a comparative study of the representation of violence in certain extracts from Ways of Dying (1995) and its French translation, Le pleureur (1999) is carried out so as to gain insight into the cross-cultural representation of the theme, given that ‗each culture acts as a frame within which external signs or ―reality‖ are interpreted‘ (Katan, 2004: 3). An analysis of the shifts that have occurred in the translated extracts allows for the identification of the norms and constraints operative in the translation act. The study formulates hypotheses regarding the reasons for the shifts identified.