Phonological meanings in literary prose texts and their translations

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of phonological meanings expressed in literary texts and how phonological meanings have generally been treated by linguists, translation theorists, and translators. The special focus will be on prose texts, although reference to poetic texts and other kinds of texts will also be made. The interest in the topic developed from research into Australian fiction and its translations into Finnish (Ventola 1990; forthcoming). Altogether 115 Australian novels have been translated. These include some valued Australian classics, e.g. by Patrick White, Xavier Herbert, etc., but most of the translations belong to non-valued genres, e.g. romances, adventure stories, detective stories, and so on.