Метаморфозе аутора и дјела
Metamorphoses of the Author and His Work

New Translatological Insights and a Sample Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s Language Varieties in the Serbian Translations of A Streetcar Named Desire

Summary/Abstract: Based on the out-dated concept of equivalence, shifts in meaning in translation were long considered to be errors or deviations from the norm. Starting from Leuven-Zwart’s statement that shifts in fact are only natural representing the norm itself, the paper explores the nature of shifts occurring in the Serbian translations of language varieties in Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire. The multidisciplinary approach taken implies stylistic translational analysis based on Gutt’s pragmatic concept of style in translation as communicative clues which lead to an interpretation, combining it with Hatim and Mason’s model of language variation suitable for dramatic discourse. The analysis is aimed to show that an author and his/her work unavoidably undergo transformation in a different language and culture, thus opening space for new research and interpretations and proving that translational analysis of literature has an important place in this context. In an attempt to summarize the results of the analysis, it can be stated that shifts have proven to be inevitable in the translation of Williams’s language varieties for a number of reasons, ranging from the translator’s individual reading, through cultural and social differences, to the prevailing norms. These reasons led the translators to avoid the use of the phonological representation of speech and grammatically incorrect forms,two very frequent features of the speech of Williams’s characters which, coupled with lexical nuances, greatly contribute to characterization and speech variation, and instead employ other means of speech differentiation, primarily relying on the lexis.However, while more or less managing to convey the desired effect of contrast, the inevitable shifts on the microstructural formal level have also caused shifts on the macrostructural level, particularly in terms of connotations in the areas of characterization and relations between characters. Furthermore, due to these unavoidable shifts, the language of Williams’s characters in Serbian translations does not show as great variety and diversity as is the case with the original text characterized by subtle gradations. The upshot of all this is that the author and his work naturally emerge in a different guise, with the norms of the target language and culture playing an important role in this process.

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