Abstract
An investigation of narrative voice in translation is presented here, in a way which aims to draw together the disciplines of Translation Studies, Narratology and Classical Studies. In recent Classical scholarship, there has been considerable interest in the voices that can be heard in the Latin text of Ovid’s Heroides, but there has been no consideration of the way in which readers of this text in English translation may receive and interpret the narrative voice. Following an examination of different understandings of Voice, a definition of Voice is offered for the purposes of the present study. Then, taking its cue from narratological structures and Herman’s understanding of ‘storyworld’, the present study develops a two-stage method with which to investigate the concept of voice in translation. The first stage is to establish a set of textual markers of anchoring in the source text and a system of classification with which to categorise the translations of these markers in the five different English target texts chosen for the study. The markers of cogntitive, spatial and temporal anchoring that are explored here are: expressions of perception, cognition and emotion; personal pronouns; possessive adjectives; spatial adverbs; place names; demonstratives; verbs of motion; present tense verbs; and temporal adverbs. It is argued that changes to the markers of anchoring in translation may lead the reader of the translation to hear the narrative voice in a different way, different from both the source text and other translations. The system of classification allows for the identification of those instances in the translation where changes to the heroine’s cognitive, temporal and spatial anchoring may cue the reader of the translation to hear a different narrative voice. The second stage is a detailed textual analysis, based on the classifications of the translated markers of anchoring. Suggestions of potential reader interpretations of the narrative voice are made, albeit with an awareness that each reader will interpret the markers of anchoring in different ways. While it is demonstrated here that the markers of cognitive, spatial and temporal anchoring can contribute to the way in which narrative voice is heard, a study of narrative voice in translation brings to light additional factors which are used by the reader in the co-construction of narrative voice.