Translating Colloquial Registers in Catalan. A Case Study: The Translation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Abstract

This thesis aims to find a model for translating colloquial registers into Catalan. Colloquial registers play an important part in literature today inasmuch as literature projects real life situations in which informal registers unfold. Many Catalan readers do not have a high regard for Catalan translations because established models for colloquial language do not reflect the way Catalan is spoken today, since there is a divorce between the linguistic norm and oral Catalan as a result of Castilian interference in informal registers. As a consequence, translations tend to be standardised and far from the spontaneous oral Catalan. In order to devise a flexible model for colloquial Catalan in translation, a text which contains a great deal of informal registers has been selected: Hunter S. Thompson’s novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The analysis of the sociolinguistic situation of the Catalan language and the position of translated literature in the Catalan system allows us to explain why the system is reluctant to change. Norms in the target culture and the principle of equivalence are explored as they prevent translators from shifting towards a model which accommodates Castilian words and expressions. With the aim of explaining why Catalan presents a particular problem in the translation of colloquial language, an analysis of both written and oral texts in English where colloquial registers have been translated into Catalan is carried out.

In order to avoid a rigid model which follows the Catalan dictionary and grammar only, features of media oral registers have been applied to the translation of selected fragments of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This allows us to obtain a text which does not include Castilian terms and, at the same time, reproduces a neutral but more realistic colloquial Catalan.