Comprehension and Translation Problems of Stream-of-consciousness Texts A case study: William Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury

Zare Behtash, Esmail; Ghalkhani, Hossein

doi:10.22059/jflr.2021.317369.799

Comprehension and Translation Problems of Stream-of-consciousness Texts A case study: William Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury

Document Type : research article

Authors

Esmail Zare Behtash ¹

Hossein Ghalkhani ²

¹ English Language Department, Faculty of Management and Humanities, Chabahar Maritime University

² English Teacher, Ministry of Education, District 15 ; Galamchi High School

10.22059/jflr.2021.317369.799

Abstract

The stream of consciousness is a new and complicated writing method which makes comprehension difficult for the readers of both the source and the target text. The present study aimed to reveal problems related to comprehending and translating stream-of-consciousness texts by examining William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and its Persian translation entitled "خشم و هیاهو", by Saleh Hosseini. This entailed detecting difficulties in comprehending the source text, evaluating how the translator has overcome them, and finding the problems which target readers might face. The major issues are time discrepancy in the first chapter and comprehension issues in the second chapter of The Sound and the Fury. The narration flow in a classic story is linear: A happens then B, namely there is not much to challenge the readers’ mind. However, in Benjy’s chapter, the reader encounters lots of new things. Benjy narrates the first chapter by associations, which means while walking around, he sees objects and each object revives a lot of memories for him. The clever idea is that because he is an imbecile, he does not know that his memories are not part of here and now; and this makes the reader confused. The beauty of the story is that the reader feels incapacitated by what happens in the story. The unique sense of being an imbecile not by saying it but by feeling it happens in the steam of consciousness created through the great genius of a writer like Faulkner.

Keywords

comprehension

monologue

steam of consciousness

the Sound and the Fury

translation

Bradford, Richard. (2005). Stylistics. London: Routeledge

Brown, Gillian & Yule, George. (1989). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cook, Guy. (1990). Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Faulkner, William. (Author) & D. Minter (Editor,1993). The Sound and the Fury. (A Norton Critical Edition). New York: W. W. W. Norton & Company.

Haspelmath, Martin. (2002). Understanding Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Humphrey, Robert. (1954). Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel. California: University of California Press.