Waltraud Kolb

Stories in two voices: The emergence of the translator’s voice in six German versions of a short story by Ernest Hemingway

Translations of narrative texts may be described as “texts in two voices” in the sense that they contain both the author’s and the translator’s voices.  In my paper, I will argue that the translator’s discursive presence is closely linked to the individual translator’s perception of his or her own role in the process and the status of the translation vs. that of the original. I will look at six German translations of an early short story by Ernest Hemingway. Five translations were made by professional literary translators as part of an empirical study of decision-making in literary translation, the sixth is the published German version of 1932. The comparison of the six different – and in some instances quite distinct – voices and subjectivities of the translators will yield interesting insights into shifting perceptions of the original-translation dichotomy.

Keywords: decision-making, voice, subjectivity

Biography

Waltraud Kolb is a Senior Lecturer at the Center for Translation Studies at the University of Vienna. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature and an MA in Translation. She has served as Vice-Director of the Study Program at the University of Vienna’s Center for Translation Studies and is a board member of the Austrian Association of Literary Translators. Professor Kolb’s recent publications include studies on translation and humour: “Translation as a Source of Humour: Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Everything is Illuminated / Alles ist erleuchtet’” (2014) and decision-making in literary translation: “‘Who are They?’: Decision-making in Literary Translation” (2010).