Between translation and transformation: recreating Steinbeck’s language in Of Mice and Men

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Steinbeck’s novels set in the Great Depression and dealing with the agricultural labour scene, In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), dialect and slang alternate with passages composed in Standard English. While this combination of languages represents a unique challenge to a skilful translator, it seems to have had the least satisfactory reconstruction in most Slovene editions of Steinbeck’s works. The dilemma of how to preserve the coarseness of diction of Steinbeck’s impulsive and almost illiterate protagonists without affecting the poetics and emotional richness of the narrative is particularly relevant in translating the novel Of Mice and Men (1937). The book consists mainly of dialogue that reveals the writer’s intimate knowledge of the language spoken by the protagonists, uneducated migrant ranch workers. Taking up Gideon Toury’s proposal to analyse a translation in terms of its adequacy in relation to the source text and its acceptability to the target audience, this article aims to establish whether the Slovene translators of these novels achieved a balance between domestication and foreignisation translation strategies. In particular, it aims to illustrate how they understood and transposed various stylistic markers (colloquial diction, repetitions) from the source to the target texts. The first part will provide a brief overview of Slovene translations; the second part will focus on the recent translation of Of Mice and Men.