Chasing the Ghosts of Ibsen: A computational stylistic analysis of drama in translation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how well the distinctive character styles in Henrik Ibsen's plays are preserved in translations into German and English, using computational stylistic analysis to compare original and translated texts.

Contribution

It applies computational stylistic analysis to examine the preservation of character idiolects in Ibsen's plays across translations into German and English, focusing on characterization.

Findings

Character idiolects are partially preserved in translations.

Translations vary in how much they retain original stylistic features.

The study highlights differences in translation fidelity regarding characterization.

Abstract

Research into the stylistic properties of translations is an issue which has received some attention in computational stylistics. Previous work by Rybicki (2006) on the distinguishing of character idiolects in the work of Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz and two corresponding English translations using Burrow's Delta method concluded that idiolectal differences could be observed in the source texts and this variation was preserved to a large degree in both translations. This study also found that the two translations were also highly distinguishable from one another. Burrows (2002) examined English translations of Juvenal also using the Delta method, results of this work suggest that some translators are more adept at concealing their own style when translating the works of another author whereas other authors tend to imprint their own style to a greater extent on the work they translate. Our work examines the writing of a single author, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and these writings translated into both German and English from Norwegian, in an attempt to investigate the preservation of characterization, defined here as the distinctiveness of textual contributions of characters.