On general extenders in literary translation and all that stuff

Abstract

The present article focuses on strategies for translating general extenders (GEs) from English into Romanian. Starting from the generally accepted definition of GEs as structures that extend utterances that are otherwise grammatically complete and that are placed in phrase- or clause-final position, I analyze samples of literary text and their respective (multiple) versions and investigate patterns in which these structures are translated. Since, as pointed out in the literature, GEs can fulfill more than one function in the text, and since in literary texts they tend to be repeatedly and meaningfully employed, the article investigates to what extent a Romanian translator can render this type of pragmatic marker into the target language in a fluid manner. This question is intriguing for at least two reasons: (a) Romanian seems to employ GEs in a more restricted manner than English and (b) repetition seems to be a stumbling block in translation. In order to solve this problem, a translator resorts to lexical variety, compensation, and omission.