Translators' Voice in Two Translations of The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Subject Areas :

Fatemeh Badiozaman ¹ , Alireza Vahedi kakhki ² , Ebrahim Samani ^{3 *} , Abdolhossein Heidari ⁴

1 - Translation Studies Dept., Faculty of Language and Literature, Ferdowsi University, Mashhad, Iran
2 - Translation Studies Dept., Faculty of Language and Literature, Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran
3 - Department of English language Teaching, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran
4 - Department of English language Teaching, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2024-10-26 Accepted : 2025-02-10 Published : 2025-09-14

Keywords: Voice, Visibility, Style, Paratext, Literature, Translation,

Abstract :

Every novel contains multiple characters, each of whom has their own personality; nonetheless, behind all characters, there are authors who are expressing themselves through their stories, generating the authors' discursive presence (aka their voice). When a text goes through the translation process, the translator's voice is automatically attached to it. Translators may choose to be invisible, or they may choose to highlight their own presence. In order to examine what becomes of the authors' and translators' voices in the process of translation, this article picked Virginia Woolf's famous novel The Waves as a case study, and two of its Persian translations. The results revealed that Woolf's presence, traces of her personality traits, and thought processes were strongly evident in her writing style, the characters’ speech patterns, along their interests and obsessions. Furthermore, the two translators exercised visibility to different degrees compared to each other; they subtly showed their presence through elements like style, prologue, and footnotes. However, ultimately, neither translator was (in Venuti's terms) too visible since they had tried to remain loyal to Woolf's expressive literary style instead.

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