A Study of Persian Translations of Narrative Style:

A case study of Virginia Woolf's The Waves

tyle is an intrinsic feature of every literary piece of writing achieved through the special use of linguistic structures, whereby the author tries to have the strongest possible impression on his readers. In order to render this conspicuous property of works of art in another language with a different literary, linguistic, and cultural system, the translator must have mastery of both source and target languages, as well as their linguistic and literary poetics.

Though rendering the original style may seem a hard task to accomplish, it is not impossible. For, translation is a relative task; absolute reproduction of the original in the translated text does not exist.

Taking into account the following diagram first proposed by Chatman demonstrates the process of communication between the novelist and the reader (in Bradford, 1997: 52),

The point of view, signaling the way a narrative is told, has always been a significant concern in narratology (Abrams, 1993: 165). In a work of fiction, the author creates a fictional world refracted from a particular angle, and the reader can access this world through a person's views and opinions of the created world.

By the turn of the 20^th century there has been a shift from external viewpoint to an internal one, i.e. a movement toward the narration of events in the novel from within, rather than from the outside (48). The tendency of the modern novel toward representation of consciousness leads modern novelists to applying narrative techniques such as stream of consciousness and interior monologue. For instance, in Virginia Woolf's The Waves, we are given a direct access to the inner and deep feelings and thoughts of the six characters (three girls and three boys) throughout their childhood through adulthood by way of interior monologues.

One of the major and foremost problems faced when one aims to elaborate on novel translation theories is its limited literature. This is most apparent when compared to poetry translation theories. Bassnett (1988: 109) attributes this fact to the wrong idea of regarding novels as having simpler structures than those of poems, and as such involving a much easier translation process.

Newemark (1988: 170) considers short story/novel translation to be "the second most difficult" of all other genres after poetry, since in prose there is no limitation of meter, rhyme, and rhythm. Of course in case of a text such as Virginia Woolf's The Waves where the prose has the properties of poetry, the matter of rhythm proves to be doubly problematic since the translator has to deal with poetic qualities in the framework of the prose, a kind of prose which bears the characteristics of play as well.

Generally speaking, there are two trends in the field of novel translation. To use Venuti's terms, these two trends are known as domestication and foreignization.

By domestication Venuti means translating in a transparent, fluent, "invisible" style in order to minimize the foreignness of the TT. Venuti allies it with Schleiermacher's description of translation that 'leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him' (Munday, 2001: 146).

Foreignization on the other hand, "entails choosing a foreign text and developing a translation method along lines which are excluded by dominant cultural values in the target language" (Venuti in Munday, 2001:146). It is the preferred choice of Schleiermacher, whose description of a translation strategy involves 'the translator leaves the writer alone, as much as possible and moves the reader towards the writer' (Munday, 2001: 43).

Though style plays an important factor in translation, there is a non-satisfactory discussion of its role within translation theory.

As Snell-Hornby puts out, the notion of style in definitions provided by translation scholars such as Nida and Wilss has been considered as important as the content or meaning (1988: 119).

Snell-Hornby, by drawing on the definition of style provided by Leech and Short (1981) as the "system of choices within language use" and also their theoretical model components, tries to achieve a theoretical approach to style in translation. Marco (2004: 73-74), also makes use of Leech and Short's definition of style according to which stylistic choice is limited to the aspects of linguistic choice which concerns "alternative ways of rendering the same subject matter" (See also Hu, 2000: 3).Taking all this into account he views style as such:

Bosseaux (2004) has adopted a model presented by Simpson to study the linguistic construction of narrative point of view using Halliday's categories. As Bosseaux (2004: 51) mentions, Simpson (1993), following Uspensky and Fowler, considers four significant categories of point of view in narrative fiction: spatial; temporal; psychological, and ideological point of view, the first two of which will be studied in this article.

The system of deixis is instrumental in constructing the spatio-temporal point of view of a novel as it is characterized by the "orientational features of language which function to locate utterances in relation to the speaker's viewpoints" (Simpson 1997: 124). Deixis refers to the orientation of the text in relation to time, place and personal participants. Deictic information is supplied principally by personal pronouns, tense and time adverbs, adverbs of place and other locative expressions. The deictic parts of a sentence make the message directly relevant to the personal and spatio-temporal situation of the utterance. In a narrative text, the spatial point of view is the viewing position, which is assumed by the narrator of the story and it allows access to the fictional reality, which is unfolded in the course of the story. The deictic elements of space and time serve to anchor the characters in their fictional world, which, in turn, provides a window for readers.

As mentioned before, Woolf's The Waves is a novel written in the first person with six characters addressing each other using I and you. It is composed of what can be called interior monologues in which the characters speak, and of interludes where a narrator speaks. In the interior monologue sections, the characters speak to themselves and to each other as if by telepathy. In some passages, the pronoun I is used emphatically in order to stress the speaking self. It is often said that Persian literary conventions dislike repetitions, although it is hard to substantiate this claim. Consequently, it is expected that there will be fewer repetitions of deictic elements in the Persian translations of The Waves.

In the present part, personal, spatial and temporal deixis are investigated in The Waves using Word's Find option and their equivalents in the Persian translations manually.

Woolf's text is composed of 78,104 words, Daryoush's translation of 62,868 words and Najafipour's of 59964 words. This is the reason why the following study will consider percentages and not absolute figures. Because the number of words of the translations is very different, it can be assumed that Daryoush, who uses 62,868 words, uses more repetitions than Najafipour, who uses 59,964 words. The following analysis thus considers the repetitions of deictic elements since the statistics suggests that both translations vary lexically from the original. Moreover, the hypothesis that Persian literary conventions prefer to avoid repetitions will be further tested as specific examples of deictic repetitions will be dealt with. In the first part, the translation of the personal pronoun I will be investigated, and particularly the repetitions of, I am, and I am not will be considered. The second part concentrates on the translations and repetitions of the deictic temporal adverb now combined with person deixis in the expressions now I will and now I am. The third part focuses on the translations and repetitions of the deictic spatial adverb here, the combinations I am here, here and now and here and there.

Using Microsoft Word, it can be seen that there are 2452 instances of I in The Waves, i.e. I represents 3.14% of the text.

There are 855 instances of "I" in Daryoush's translation, 444 of which are in subject position, thus equivalent to the English "I" (0.70%) and in Najafipour's translation; there are 403 instances of "I" 285 of which are in subject position (0.47%).These figures show that "I" is less used in the translations.

In this study, not all the instances of I in the original will be considered. Indeed, The Waves being a book written in the first person, the number of I used is bound to be high. Thus the repetition of I in a close proximity as in "I love, I hate" or "I dance, I move", will be the focus of the study. Because when a character repeats the personal pronoun I and its derivations when they are not grammatically obligatory, these emphatic repetitions contribute to the dramatic effect of certain passages, i.e. there is an emphasis on the character's feelings.

Hence the repeated items will be investigated as pairs, e.g. "I love, I hate" and if there is a third or further repetition, more than two repetitions will be considered. Studies on deixis do not mention the importance of tenses. For instance, 'I will take this' and 'I take this' are treated in the same way; thus no difference will be made between tenses in extracting the data.

As the following table shows, I is clustered most often with am as there are 326 instances of I am in The Waves.
In this part, to be consistent, only the repetitions of the construction "I am + adjective/ noun" in which am has the meaning of "to be" will be looked at.

The repeated I stresses the characters' feelings and when the translators do not keep any of the repeated instances of "I", this leads to a less emphatic expressions.

The pattern found in the first part is repeated here as Daryoush employs more repetitions than Najafipour, as he uses I am 0.651 times as frequently as Woolf (28/43) whereas Najafipour uses I am 0.418 as frequently as Woolf (18/43). Neither translator keeps all the repetitions related to deictic emphasis that in turn leads to a less accentuated deictic anchorage and focalization with Najafipour's text being less marked than Daryoush's.

There are thirty-nine instances of I am not. Although the close repetitions of I am not are likely to have been subsumed under I am, it is important to investigate this more specific construction to see if the analysis confirms the patterns found in the two previous sections.

Here is a summary of the figures found for the translations of I, I am and I am not:

The figures so far show that neither translator keeps all the repetitions of I, I am and I am not, but Daryoush uses more repetitions than Najafipour. If the results found in this part are duplicated in the subsequent ones, i.e. the non-repetition of elements that contribute to the representation of the fictional universe of the texts, it could be suggested that these microtextual shifts will have an impact on the 'feel' of the translations because the emotions of the focalizing characters will be less effective and intense.

So far, Daryoush's translation seems to be closer to the original in terms of deictic anchorage. Najafipour combines two or three repetitions into one on twenty occasions, thereby putting less emphasis on the speaking character.

Thus, the translations and repetitions of I, I am and I am not have been examined and in the part dedicated to place and time deixis I am here, I am now and now I am will also be investigated. The next section focuses on the translation of the deictic adverb now.

There are 464 instances of now in The Waves, i.e. now represents 0.59% of the whole text. In English, alternations using now . . . now as in 'now walking, now running' would be translated into Persian by (walking a moment and running the other moment). Synonyms of now in English include at the moment, at present, just now, right now, at the present time, at the present moment, at this time, at this moment in time, and currently. Using OCR and Microsoft Office Word's option Find, helped to see that none of these expressions appear in the original. It thus makes sense to look at the adverb now and its repetitions in the original as other words are available in English, but Woolf chose to use now 464 times. If we look at the translations of now in Daryoush's and Najafipour's text we find that there are 237 instances of now in Daryoush's text, i.e. it represents 0.40% of the text. The figures thus show that the translation of the deictic adverb now is less frequently present in both Persian texts and even less frequently present in Najafipour's text than in that of Daryoush. Thus the repetitions of now in the original and the translations will be investigated to see if the patterns highlighted by the figures lead to less emphatic texts as far as focalization is concerned.

The figures shown in the above table demonstrate that Daryoush's translation is closer to the original as he translates the repetitions of now and the expressions now I will, I am now, and now I am more systematically than Najafipour does. Although there is a loss in the pattern of the repetition when the translators use words that compensate for the selected words, these compensations work towards the "here and now" pattern in Daryoush's translation. Indeed Daryoush puts more emphasis on the fact that actions are taking place during the unfolding of characters or speakers' utterances. Interestingly, Najafipour is found to compensate less than Daryoush. Hence the results obtained in this section corroborate those found for person deixis since Daryoush is closer to both patterns. In what follows, locative deixis is considered to see if these patterns are reproduced and work towards a change in the way the fictional universe is represented.

There are 230 instances of here in The Waves, here represents 0.29% of the whole text. It was found that there are 105 instances of here in Daryoush's translation (0.16% of the text) and ninety-two instances of here in Najafipour's translation (0.15% of the text):

The figures show that the deictic adverb is more absent in the translations and that Najafipour uses here only 11 times compared with Daryoush. Before looking at the examples of the translations of here, it should be emphasized that in Persian, here, when placed at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis, as in "here are the boxes, here are the cabs" is translated as "these are the boxes, these are the cabs".

The Repetitions of "here," "I am . . . here," "here" and "now" "here" and "there"

The results found in this section are reproduced in the following table:

In the paragraphs under investigation, the repetition of here emphasizes the character's position within the situation they are referring to, and Daryoush reproduces it more often than Najafipour. The reader can easily picture the characters pointing to objects and persons while they are anchored in the speaking situation.

These deictic microcontextual shifts bring about a different "feel" in the translations, with Najafipour's translation being the less emphatic.

In terms of the repetitions of "I am ... here", both translators' texts emphasize the here and now pattern of the novel and the characters' position relatively, but again Najafipour's not translating the construction on one occasion makes it less close to the original.

Rhythm and repetitions are important in The Waves, and the expression 'here and now' works in this sense. When there is no mention of 'here and now' in the translations, it results in the characters' position being less emphasized within the situation to which they refer. There is also less emphasis on the fact that these events are take place when their utterances are in progress.

Considering the translations of here and there, we can say that Najafipour's translations of this combination are less deictically emphasized than Daryoush's. As far as repetitions are concerned, Daryoush is closer to the original even though he varies his translation of ''here and there'' on two occasions.

Here follows a summary of the figures found for the analysis of the repetitions of I, I am, I am not, you, now, now I will, here, here and now and here and there:

Thus 284 expressions in the original were examined and it was found that Daryoush reproduces 143, i.e. he uses these deictic elements 0.52 times as frequently as Woolf and Najafipour, who reproduces 55, uses these expressions 0.2 times as frequently as Woolf. Deictic elements refer to a situation and allow the speakers to enunciate their position while they speak. This analysis of the translations of personal deixis (I), and spatial (here) and temporal deixis (now), highlights that in terms of point of view and focalization, there is a loss of deictic anchorage in both translations. Furthermore, Najafipour's text is less deictically anchored than that of Daryoush. Indeed, Daryoush keeps more deictic words that serve to signal the speakers' position within the situation they are talking about. These words also emphasize that the actions are taking place during the unfolding of the speakers' utterances. Daryoush reproduces more deictic items than Najafipour and resorts to compensation on twenty-seven occasions. Najafipour compensates far less than Daryoush as he does so on nine occasions. Finally, it was also noticed that Najafipour has a tendency to not to translate the item at all or to use elliptic constructions which have been observed on eighty-seven instances.

The avoidance of repetitions and non-translations of deictic terms affects the fictional universe presented in both translations but given that Daryoush renders the deictic elements more systematically, his translation can be said to be closer to the 'feel' of the original text. Since deixis or spatio-temporal point of view is only one layer of a multilayered communicative process, now another category, modality, will be considered in order to obtain a multidimensional account of point of view in The Waves and its Persian translations. According to the results found with respect to the area of deixis, Daryoush is expected to reproduce more systematically the repetitions of elements relating to modality and to render more specifically the different modalities of the original text. Moreover, Najafipour seems to have a tendency to erase repetitions more frequently and to use elliptic structures. The figure below summarizes the results achieved in this part:

Figure 4.1: The percentage of deictic elements in The Waves and its two Persian translations

The analysis of personal deictic "I" shows that the existence of inflectional attached personal pronoun in Persian alone serves to convey the meaning of I/I thus automatically reduces the use of I. Moreover, since Persian literary conventions avoid repetitions, it also leads to fewer uses of I. These two facts together resulted in the fewer use of I in the translations and when it was used emphatically in the original none of the translators maintained the original emphasis; Daryoush being slightly closer to the original (using I ten times out of sixty-three) than Najafipour who uses I four times (out of sixty-three).

Regarding the translation of I am, a considerable reduction was observed in the translations. This point can be attributed to the multifunctionality of I am in English. I am in English is used in progressive as well as passive constructions used with I in addition to 'I am + adjective/noun' constructions. Taking into account the above mentioned fact, one can see the number of the English I am becomes less marked in Persian. Of course, in order to be consistent in the analysis of I am only the ones used in 'I am + adjective/noun' constructions were considered. Thus it can be concluded that personal pronouns in Persian are less marked than they are in English. Therefore, when the emphatic use of personal pronouns is a part of the author's style in English, the Persian translator must be aware of its emphatic use and try to reproduce it emphatically as well.

With respect to the translation of now, it can be concluded that since the alternation forms (e.g. now dividing now coming together) in Persian are not translated with [now], consequently the translation of the alternation forms into Persian involves fewer nows.

The same point is true with here when it is placed at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis. Such cases are usually translated with this too in Persian and not with [here], thus once again when this deictic adverb of place is repeated in the original text, emphasizing the position of the characters within the situation they are referring to, it will be rendered in Persian less markedly, though not less deictically emphasized since their equivalent in Persian involves the deictic meaning of here placed at the beginning for emphasis.

Thus, having looked at 275 deictic expressions in the original it was found that Daryoush reproduces 143 deictic expressions (out of 275 deictic expressions examined), i.e. he uses deictic elements 0.52 times as frequently as Woolf and Najafipour, who translates fifty-five, uses these expressions 0.2 times as frequently as Woolf. Deictic elements refer to a situation and allow the speakers to enunciate their position while they speak. This analysis of the translations and repetitions of personal deixis (I), spatial (here) and temporal deixis (now), thus highlights that in terms of point of view and focalization; there is a loss of deictic anchorage in both translations. Moreover, Najafipour's text is less deictically emphasized than that of Daryoush as Daryoush keeps more deictic words. These words aim at signaling that the speakers are positioned within the situation they are talking about and emphasizing that the actions are taking place during the unfolding of the speakers' utterances. However, since there is no narrator in the interior monologues of The Waves, the deictic elements indicate the characters' involvement in the story. In both translations, the characters appear less involved than in the original with Daryoush's translation being closer to the original effect.

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