How to Avoid the Past? A Case Study of the Russian Translation of the Novel Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

Abstract

The paper is a case study analysis of a translation of the mystery novel Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris into Russian. Due to the unconventional nature of the plot, the translator had to avoid specifying the narrator’s gender, which was a non-trivial job given that the Russian verbs in the past tense obligatorily mark the gender of their subject. To prevent the information disclosure, the translator had to avoid using the past-tense verb forms wherever they combined with the narrator’s first-person pronoun. The paper attempts to reveal and classify the techniques employed to cope with the task. Most cases involve the use of various grammatical and semantic transformations.

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List of sources

Harris Dzh. Dzhentl’meny i igroki [Gentlemen and Players]. Moscow: Eksmo, 2013. 544 p. (In Russian).

Harris J. Gentlemen and Players. London: Doubleday, 2005. 512 p.