German modal particles – from lice in the fur of our language to manifestations of translators' styles

Abstract

The present paper comprises a study of how the German word class of modal particles can be indicative of translator style. German modal particles as a word class are described in detail and I take stock of the research on this linguistic feature that moved into the centre of researchers' interest in the late 1960s and continues to be a topic of controversial debate. I show how corpus methodologies are useful in the identification and analysis of modal particles and provide a case study based on an electronic corpus that consists of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Beautiful and Damned and its two translations into German by Hans-Christian Oeser and Renate Orth-Guttmann, both published in 1998. A quantitative analysis reveals usage patterns of modal particles applied by each translator, as well as preferences of each translator for individual modal particles. A qualitative analysis with a focus on the modal particle wohl shows how it can be used to shift the point of view, explicitate the relationship between characters etc. and how these strategies affect the macrolevel of the translated novel.