Whose sentences are these? Style claims in a translated work
Nadia is comparing two works for Paper 2: a novel translated from Portuguese and a play written originally in English. In her draft she argues that the novelist's 'signature style' is 'lean, declarative sentences that refuse emotion,' and she quotes a five-word paragraph as proof. Her teacher asks which translation she used. It is a 2016 English version; a 1988 version by a different translator is also in the school library, and its rendering of the same passage runs to a 40-word sentence where the 2016 version has nine words. Nadia has never seen the Portuguese. In the same cohort, another student quoting the 1988 version for a different question described the same novelist as 'baroque and accumulative.' Both students believe they are describing the writer. Nadia's draft also credits the novelist with the choice of an English word that, she later learns, appears nowhere in the source text.
1. Sort Nadia's claims into what can and cannot responsibly be claimed about a writer's style when working from a translation. State the principle that separates them.
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Cannot responsibly be claimed: sentence length and rhythm as the writer's signature; diction, where the words exist only in English; and 'refuses emotion' as an authorial stance, since register is exactly what translators negotiate. The five-word paragraph is a fact about the 2016 English text, not about the Portuguese novel.
Can be claimed, with more confidence: narrative viewpoint and its shifts; the order in which information is withheld and released; the patterning of scenes; characterization through action; recurring objects and their structural placement. These are the features most likely to survive translation, and - crucially for Nadia - they can be checked against a second translation.
The principle: the more a claim depends on surface texture, the weaker it is in translation; the more it depends on structure and sequence, the more robust. And attribution must match evidence: claims belong to 'the novel as it reads in the 2016 English version, translated by X' unless they survive comparison across versions or can be verified in the source.
The two students' contradictory descriptions are not a scandal; they are evidence. Two credible translators produced 'lean' and 'baroque' from the same book, which tells you the adjectives are describing translations. That is a finding Nadia can use rather than a problem she must hide.
2. Reframe Nadia's style paragraph so it stays analytically strong. Show how the existence of two translations could become material rather than an obstacle.
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The reframed paragraph would read something like: 'In the 2016 English version the narration arrives in short declarative sentences; the 1988 version renders the same passage as a single 40-word period. Both translators claim fidelity, so the divergence marks the point where the translator's choices are load-bearing. What survives both versions is more likely to belong to the novel's design: the character is never named in the passage, and the scene is ordered so that the reader learns what has happened before learning who it happened to. That withholding is the structural feature worth arguing about. The flatness of the 2016 rendering is itself an interpretation - one that makes the character's grief sound withheld rather than performed - and comparing the two versions shows how much of a novel's emotional temperature is decided in translation.'
Why this works: it converts a vulnerability into a comparative method, keeps the stylistic observation but reattributes it, and lands on a claim about structure that a second translation can corroborate. It also gives Nadia something to say in the discussion if asked which version she prefers and why - a question about reading, which she can answer, rather than about Portuguese, which she cannot.
3. Nadia's partner in the same comparison is a play written in English. Does the translation issue make the comparison unfair? Advise her.
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The comparison is not unfair, but it is asymmetric, and the asymmetry should be acknowledged rather than hidden. For the play, claims about diction, rhythm and register are available directly; for the novel they must be made at one remove. An essay that treats the two as equally accessible will make the translated text look vaguer or the untranslated one look more precise, and the reader will attribute that difference to the writers.
The practical advice is to choose a basis of comparison that sits above the surface of language: how each text controls what the audience knows and when; how each handles a moment of withheld information; how each uses a confined space. Those questions can be asked of a translation and of an original on comparable terms, and they are also the questions that make for a genuine comparison rather than a stylistic audit.
Nadia should add one sentence of method near the start - acknowledging that the novel is read in translation and naming the translator - and then stop apologising. One honest sentence of limitation is a strength; repeated hedging erodes the argument. The play's own mediation (performance, staging, the reader imagining a stage) is equally worth a sentence, so the essay treats both texts as mediated rather than pretending one is transparent.