ANIMAL SOUNDS AS REPORTING VERBS IN TRANSLATIONS FROM ENGLISH INTO BCMS

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of animal-sound reporting verbs (e.g. grunt, bark, croak) in English literary texts and the significance they are assigned in Serbian translations. Based on a corpus of Dickens’s novels Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations, an analysis of animal-sound reporting verbs will be carried out in the SL and the TL texts for the purpose of learning whether the animal trait is (accurately) preserved in translations. Firstly, the translations of these verbs will be subject to componential analysis to determine if they retained the animal feature. The next step is checking if the translation solutions that do retain the animal feature accurately reflect the sound. Finally, translations that fail to convey the animal feature and the intended sound will be analyzed in order to determine the translation procedure employed. The preliminary hypothesis is that animal-sound verbs will largely be translated as their equivalent verbs (e.g. growls=reži). This research is important because animal-sound reporting verbs often serve as stylistic devices and offer glimpses into fictional characters’ nature. Additionally, since few studies exist on the translation of reporting verbs from English into BCMS, this paper could draw more focus on them and shed more light on this specific matter.