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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