Narratology and translation

Abstract

In their explorations of narrative, many narratologists distinguish between the narrated (the situations and events presented), the narrating (the way these situations and events are presented), and the concrete manifestation of narrated and narrating in a particular medium (linguistic, say, pictorial, balletic) or a particular form thereof (English or French, film or painting, classical or modern). By and large, narratologists focus on the narrated and the narrating rather than on the medium of manifestation. Still, they are not unaware of, nor insensitive to, the effects that specific means of expression can have on narratives and, more particularly, on their transpositions (from prose to canvas, from stage to screen) or on their translations (from English to French, for instance, and vice versa). Taking as examples a variety of fictional texts by Stendhal, George Eliot, Anne Garréta, Ernest Hemingway, and others, the article discusses some of the effects that translation’s inevitable nonequivalences, variances, or paraphrases have on narrating and narrated features. More specifically, it uses translation to revisit these features, to reconsider their basicness, centrality or indispensability, and to reassess the narratological models they bring about.