The Effect of Translating Punctuation Marks on Style

Abstract

Nowadays issues such as identifying the translator’s narration of the original text and the method ‎of conveying it to the reader is of interest to the theorists of translation. In the interaction of the ‎source and target texts, this is the essence of the meaning that is conveyed from one text into the ‎other. To figure out the meaning of a verbal message, features like tone, pause, and stress are ‎effective; while in a text, in the absence of the author, words alone do not have the ability to ‎create these effects. Hence, the authors employ punctuation marks to compensate for this and to ‎convey their intention to the reader unambiguously; these symbols are also used to express ‎emotional moods in the text and create aesthetic-emotional impact. Therefore, the use of ‎punctuation marks can be regarded as part of the author's style and the translator is bound to carry ‎it over. But it is not that easy and it is an inherent problem in translation. In this research we are ‎going to study the importance of these symbols in the text and the method of conveying them in ‎translation. To this end, we provide a theoretical foundation and examine the translatology of La ‎Douleur by Marguerite Duras.‎