Sabir Rasul; Ali Mohammed
Abstract
The concept of the translator’s voice has not been developed in translation until the late twentieth century. This study is an attempt to explore the voice of the translator in ...
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The concept of the translator’s voice has not been developed in translation until the late twentieth century. This study is an attempt to explore the voice of the translator in the Kurdish translation of Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye. For this purpose, the source text (ST) and the target (TT) were compared thoroughly to identify instances that manifest the translator’s interference at both textual and paratextual levels. The study employs Millan-Varela’s (2004) three-phase model of the translator’s voice. In the data analysis, the study adopts a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative. In its qualitative method, the concepts and theories about the translator’s voice are discussed. On the other hand, the quantitative method is used to analyze the translation procedures/techniques used that indicate the voice of the translator at both textual and paratextual levels. Based on the findings of the study, it was revealed that the translator has a predominant presence throughout the novel. At the textual level, it is unearthed that the voice of the translator is manifested through three specific procedures, namely: addition, expansion and paraphrase. The perceived purposes behind the additions are dramatization, expressiveness, explication and the translator’s idiosyncrasy. At the paratextual level, the translator’s introduction and the footnotes are two main domains where the voice of the translator is manifested. In the translator’s introduction, essential facts concerning the life of the author and her novels are included. In the footnotes, however, the voice of the translator is manifested in two categories: they either give information about the linguistic items in the TT or they present cultural details related to the characters and terms solely related to the ST. In almost all cases, the translator’s voice is impartial both at textual and paratextual levels
