Speaker: Isabela Braga Lee @isabelalee
Affiliation: Federal University of Minas Gerais
Title: The Role of Metarepresentation in the Interpretation of Translated Young Adult Literature
Abstract (long version below): The interpretation of literary works relies not only on the decoding of sentences, but also on the construction of mental models of the storyworlds and the association of fictional and real-world mental models (Herman, 2002). A reader’s metacommunicative ability, a specialisation of his mindreading ability (Sperber; Wilson, 2002/2012), may explain how readers entertain the intentional states of communicators at the different levels of fictional texts. The present research associated the construction of mental models of characters and narrators and the attribution of the intention of implied authors and translators to processes of metarepresentation, interfacing Cognitive Narratology and Relevance Theory.
Long abstract
The present research had as theoretical objective to investigate how Cognitive Narratology and Relevance Theory may be interfaced in the study of translated literature. The specific objectives were 1) to investigate how both research traditions account for a) the representation of fictional minds, b) the impact of said representation on the narrative communication participants, and c) its impact on the interpretations derived from a narrative, and 2) to propose and demonstrate an interface based on the points of contact and departure of such accounts. The interface was demonstrated and assessed through an analysis of the young adult narrative “Skellig”, by David Almond, and its translation into Brazilian Portuguese by Waldéa Barcellos. Three passages were selected from original and translated narrative, in which the protagonist, Michael, and his neighbour and new friend, Mina, interacted. Those passages were selected because they portray the development of the relationship between characters from the same developmental stage. Regarding the representation of fictional minds, while the cognitive narratological concept of mental models (Herman, 2002) is usually associated to the cognitive-psychological construct of Theory of Mind (Premack; Woodruff, 1978) by authors such as Nikolajeva (2014) and Silva (2013), the modelling of the minds of characters might also be explained by the relevance-theoretical concept of metarepresentation (Sperber; Wilson, 1986/1995). Metarepresentation in an aspect of the communicative submodule of the more general mindreading mental module (Sperber; Wilson, 2002/2012); since readers assume characters are able to form representations about the fictional world, they engage in processes of metarepresentation to model character’s minds. Concerning the narrative participants, the narratological concepts of the entities of narrative communication (Booth, 1961; Chatman, 1978) and its application to translation studies (Schiavi, 1996; O’Sullivan, 2003) may be interfaced with the relevance-theoretical notions of intention and the different levels of fictional communication (Sperber; Wilson, 1987). In such an interface, at the first level readers metarepresent the intentions of characters and narrators which serve as stimulus, at the second level, for the reader to metarepresent the intentions of implied authors and implied translators. Finally, the different interpretations which may be derived from literary works may be explained by differences in readers’ cognitive environments, which leads to different metarepresentation. A reader’s awareness of narration and focalisation strategies, for instance, may lead him to metarepresent his modelling of the minds of characters as restricted by the narrator’s own perspective of the fictional events and characters. Additionally, reflections on the narrative’s significance (Stephens, 2010) hinge on the reader’s metarepresentation of the implied author’s intention of communicating more than what is literally described at the first level. The metarepresentation of the implied translator’s attitude, or positioning (Hermans, 2014), also depends on the reader attributing relevance to the implied translator’s attitude. The analysis of “Skellig”, which has Michael as focaliser, showed that, since the focalisation is external, focusing more on actions and speech rather than thoughts and feelings, readers must metarepresent the character’s intentions in order to interpret the narrative. If readers are aware that their representation of Michael and Mina is mediated by the narrator’s own representation of them, their interpretation of the narrative will gain in complexity, as it will have different levels of embedded metarepresentations. Young readers, who are still developing reading strategies (Stephens, 2010), may not be aware of such embedding, cluelessly aligning with the focaliser’s representations. Readers of Skellig who find relevance in what is communicated implicitly and who try to associate what is described at the first level (the fictional world) with the second level (the implied author and reader’s assumptions about the real world) may engage in processes of metarepresentation of the intentions of the implied author, in an attempt to grasp “what the narrative means”. Such interpretations may vary, since what narratives communicate at the second level is less determinate, opening the possibility to an array of interpretations. Finally, readers who find relevance in the translator’s positioning may, for instance, metarepresent the translation choices of translating sensitive subjects, such as Michael’s handling of alcohol and medicine, as the implied translator’s attitude of agreement with the implied author. Readers may metarepresent, thus, that the translator intended to endorse the author’s views, instead of censoring them, which is not uncommon in the translation of literature for young people. The analysis shows that the interface between Cognitive Narratology and Relevance Theory can account for the impact of a reader’s perspective on the multiple interpretations that translated literature evokes. Further research should benefit from the experimental application of such an interface and from a dialogue with other scholars, particularly those working on the fields of empirical literary studies and cognitive literary studies.