This version adapts the oral narrative to the conventions of written prose in general and the genre of anthropological research papers in particular, and generally aims to improve clarity by removing ellipsis and minor errors, reducing instances of repetition and shortening long sentences. As Reeves-Ellington explains, '[i]nasmuch as such excerpts are regularly embedded as microtexts within research papers, the translated excerpt meets audience expectations and achieves generic intertextuality within the rhetorical range of the target language' (1999: 116). However, this version clearly suppresses the individual voice of the speaker, dilutes the energy and dynamism of the ontological narrative, and all but eliminates the emotional impact of the original. This becomes clearer if we compare it with an alternative version provided by Reeves-Ellington, one that treats the same features of orality as poetic elements:

My mother.

I told you, didn't I

that one of the harshest moments of my life

which I think most harshly affected my fate

was my mother's early death.

My mother died when I was still a girl in high school.

My mother died when she was 45 years old

from heart disease.

But I think

my mother died because of the harsh village life.

Unimaginably harsh conditions.

And school work

And village work

And those fields

Mountainous

Infertile

She had to help with that

That and her mother-in-law.

Quite simply

the harsh village life affected her very badly

and she passed away very early

my mother.

                  (Reeves-Ellington 1999: 118)

This version adopts a transcription system that allows the translator to reproduce speech delivery patterns to effect what Ellington-Reeves calls 'displaced generic intertextuality: the poetic transcription is familiar to target-text readers but occurs in an unexpected context, that is, a research paper on a topic of history' (1999: 118–19). Ellington-Reeves retains repetitions such as my mother and harsh/harshest/harshly not only because they are a feature of the speech of this particular informant but also because the repeated phrases are 'among the formulas used in South Slav traditional epic songs and ballads … [as] evident in any contemporary collection of Bulgarian women's folk songs' (1999: 117).

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