Narrative Theory and Retranslation Theory

Abstract

In the paper I bring together two sets of theories from Narrative Theory and from Retranslation Theory. Links and similarities between the theories are examined under the headings of Essence, Social Conditioning, and Interpretation. A post-structuralist narrative theory is presented, and I extrapolate from this to propose a post-structuralist retranslation theory. After the theoretical discussion I report on the study of a corpus comprising Zola's novel Nana and its five major British (re)translations. The aim is to evaluate how well the theories regarding narrative versions and retranslations hold up with respect to a study of data. A conclusion is reached as to which theories best explain the data. The paper concludes too that bringing together sets of theories from different but related disciplines can be productive in conceptualizing translational phenomena, in this case the phenomenon of retranslation.