(Mis)Understanding Charades: A Translation Perspective

The chapter explores literary representations of situations demanding sense-making and their translational implications in several language combinations (involving English, Polish, Russian, Italian and French). The first case, taken from Achille Campanile, is a short story presenting communication itself as a charade and making sense as a (fallible) deciphering procedure. Secondly, renditions of Charlotte Brontë’s depiction of a game of charades reveal the translators’ struggle with the meaning to be conveyed; the local translation choices may even influence the image of the protagonist, in her position of an observer-interpreter. Finally, John Fowles’s apparently intended conundrum for the reader (and an exploration of a character’s self-understanding) is shown to have been interpreted for the target recipients by the intercultural mediators. The material discussed gives insight into (mis)understanding as the fabric of fiction and as part of translation process.