Elusive narrator, pervasive inner voice: challenges in the translation of thought representations. A case study of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series (1955-1991) : version originale en anglais En Fr

Résumé En

In many of her psycho-thrillers, Patricia Highsmith uses a particular type of narration, where the narrator remains largely hidden, allowing the character’s inner voice to infiltrate and contaminate every facet of the narration. This paper deals with the challenges such a narrative structure poses for French translators in the context of thought representations in the Ripley novels (1955-1991). A comparative analysis shows that the original blend between figural and narratorial voice may be destabilized, leading to the suppression of the vocal games at play in Highsmith’s novels. The study however also shows that despite the recurrent domestication, new linguistic codes can be created to preserve the source text’s ambiguity and hybridity, compensating for the manipulations meant to increase the target text’s readability. The examination of such reinventions allows for new readings of the original text, thus contributing to a new range of interpretations.