A Macro/Micro Functional Approach to Stylistic Equivalence in Translation of Fiction

Abstract

The translator of literature, in general, and fictional works, in particular, has to do a stylistic analysis at both macro/micro levels in order to achieve some higher levels of ‘stylistic adequacy’. The macro stylistic analysis involves discovering the ‘how’ (or ‘quality’) of a work while in micro stylistic analysis the translator/analyst is required to explore into ‘why’ the text possesses that quality. The macro analysis is typically accomplished through investigation into the ‘surface’ layer of the work and leads to a general view of the overall stylistic strategy (or strategies) resulting in the so-called ‘ideational’ metafunction of language; but the micro analysis drives the translator/analyst to reflect upon the ‘inner’ components of the work as well as having an eye on the surface parts. Being involved in such a two stage analysis, the translator, on one the hand, treats the text as a ‘product’ and tries to capture the stylistic features leading to the aesthetic function of language, generally through some mechanistic procedures of ‘text analysis’, and on the other hand, s/he faces the fictional work as a ‘process’ and tries to pay attention to the ‘production’, ‘reception’, and ‘understanding’ steps of textual interaction as well as to study the ‘impacts’ of the text on readers mostly through the common methods of ‘discourse analysis’, ‘text interpretation’, and ‘intertextual analysis’. Thus, s/he identifies the actual concrete realizations of the writer’s macro stylistic strategy (strategies) resulting in the so-called ‘textual metafunction’ of language. What is finally resulted from such a macro/micro analysis determines the ‘operational strategies’ employed by the translator in his/her way to select ‘functional choices’ which are of similar stylistic values in the target text.