Literary Dialectal Texts and their Problems of Translation

Abstract

One of the countless problems the translator has to face when doing a translation is the problem of translating dialectal texts. To deal with this topic, I have divided my paper into four sections where I try to deal with several aspects all related to translation of this type of text. The first part deals with the debatable question of differentiating between language and dialect. We shall see what is understood by language and dialect, not only from the General Linguistics point of view but, more specifically, from the Sociolinguistic point of view as well. The second part will deal with literary translation and the problems this kind of translation brings about. In the third part I shall attempt to establish the reasons why dialect is used for literary purposes. Finally, I shall be looking at some examples where dialect has been used in two of the translations into Spanish of Bemard Shaw's Pygmalion. We shall see how successful the translators have been in their attempt to translate the dialect and what techniques they have applied to their respective translations