Characterization through speech in fiction and literary translation

Abstract

Speech portrait of a literary personage is important for characterizing the personality, for distinguishing them from other characters, for helping the reader to compare personages as well as for showing their inner life and their psychotype. Comparison of the two central characters of Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” (Myshkin and Rogozhin) in the original text and in one of its many translations shows how the translator’s failure to reproduce Rogozhin’s speech portrait and its dynamics in the novel neutralizes the contrast between the two characters thus ruining the major opposition underlying the book.