Negotiating a Punctuated Landscape: A Study of Asyndetic Translation Based on Relevance Theory

Abstract

Little thought has been given to asyndeton in modern texts, including the translated text. In fact, if manuals on French-to-English translation even mention this troublesome case of punctuation, they almost certainly warn the student translator against replicating it in English, even in literary translation. Writing norms would forbid it, they warn. It would be taken as merely a sloppy case of comma use. Although asyndeton is typically considered a faux pas in English, replicating it may not always be a mistake. Inspired by Québécoise author Catherine Harton’s Traité des peaux (an especially asyndetic collection of short stories published in 2015), this thesis aims to study how asyndeton may be successfully translated from French into English in literary texts. To do so, it adopts Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory, noting how this theory not only accounts for poetic effects but also provides a principle that can guide translators as they seek to replicate these effects. This thesis then uses relevance theory to analyze cases of asyndeton drawn from three stories in Harton’s collection. The study concludes that there are at least six cases where asyndeton may be effectively translated as asyndeton in literary texts.