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Translation of Deixis in the Fictional Text

Han Miae 1

1동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper presents that the translated deixis influences target readers to construct the frame of a story world (a text world) in a fictional text, which is concerned with the probability of a fiction. For this, first, text world (Werth 1995, 1999) and deictic shift (Galbraith 1995, Segal 1995) theories are explored focusing on the story-constructing process and identification of readers with the character. Second, “Nungil” (The Snowy Road) which is the short story of Lee Chungjun and the two types of target texts, are compared and analyzed concentrating on the relational or perceptional deixis. The deixis, ‘I’ and ‘the old man’ (in fact, the narrator’s mother), in the source text is translated into ‘I’ and ‘the old woman’ in the TT1, and ‘I’ and ‘my mother’ in the TT2. The two characters living in the text world of the TT1 have a distant relationship, which can maximize the love of a mother that ‘I’ will realize at the end of fiction. By contrast, though the two characters living in the text world of the TT2 have a close relationship, ‘I’ say “I owed nothing to my mother” and “a debt-free relationship” himself many times. Because of this inconsistency, the text world of the TT2 is not likely to be a probable world. Deixis such as the present verbs, ‘this’ and ‘today’ can represent the narrator’s consciousness and perception. Therefore, when deixis like this is reflected into the target text, it helps target readers to construct probable text worlds, immerse into the fictional world and identity with characters.

Citation status

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