Karin Breit

The Porcelain Dog: Freedom or Fidelity? Translation Challenges in Bente Bratlund's Novel Porselenshunden (The Porcelain Dog) Karin Breit

It is a well-known fact that translators can choose between many existing translation approaches. The title of this book refers to the fact that it is impossible for a translator of literary texts to achieve full fidelity to the original text, and simultaneously maintain complete communicative freedom. How can a translator nevertheless achieve these objectives to a certain degree? A translator of literature should be able to integrate the authorial intentions and the anticipated responses of the readership, whilst transferring the contents of the literary text from the source language into the target language as accurately as possible. The six language functions introduced by Karl Bühler, and developed by Roman Jakobson, can be used as a basis for testing and adjudicating between two translation approaches: the formal equivalence translation (FET), and communicative translation (CT) approaches. The translations of selected excerpts from Bratlund's novel will show if the FET translation option suffices, or it is is necessary to produce additional translation alternatives, using both approaches. Each translation option is discussed in detail.