The realisation of Finite ‘shall’ in the short story ‘The yellow wallpaper’ and its counterparts in two of its translations into Portuguese

A realização do Finito “shall” no conto “The yellow wallpaper” e seus correspondentes em duas de suas traduções para o português

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to investigate the realisation of Finite ‘shall’ in the short story ‘The yellow wallpaper’ and its counterparts in two of its translations into Portuguese. There was the identification of the occurrences of Finite ‘shall’ in the source text; after that, there was the alignment of these occurrences with its counterparts in the target texts; and, then, there was a comparison between the occurrences in the corpus with a view to semantic and structural considerations. Results show that the occurrences are quite similar with regard to the semantic aspects and relatively distinct concerning the structural ones.

Keywords:
translational stylistics; systemic functional linguistics; finite ‘shall’; short stories

RESUMO

Este artigo tem por objetivo investigar a realização do Finito “shall” no conto “The yellow wallpaper” e nos trechos correspondentes em que este Finito é traduzido em duas de suas traduções para o português. Houve a identificação do Finito “shall” no texto fonte; em seguida, houve o alinhamento das ocorrências deste Finito com aquelas nos textos alvo; e, então, houve uma comparação destas ocorrências tencionando a elaboração de considerações semânticas e estruturais. Resultados mostram que as ocorrências são bastante semelhantes do ponto de vista semântico e relativamente distintas do ponto de vista estrutural.

Palavras-chave:
estilística tradutória; linguística sistêmico-funcional; finito “shall”; contos

Introduction

The verbal art found in many texts, as much literary as non-literary ones, has been of great interest to scholars concerned with the investigation of the creative use of language. Nonetheless, not only is the creative use of language a matter of style, but also the patterning of linguistic choices are stylistically relevant. Hence, the linguistic analysis of texts written artistically is one of the major concerns of Stylistics.

Stylistics is an interdisciplinary field of study for it dialogues with both Linguistics and Literature. Texts of Literature and/or literary texts in this field seem to be most commonly investigated from the perspective of Linguistic Studies. These texts are genuine instances of language, and the description of how the language in them is used from a linguistic view may contribute to a discursive and social account of the cultural contexts to which they are instantiated.

Besides providing access to different cultures, translations of literary texts can also be the objects of study of Stylistics, when analysed comparatively with their originals. As such, specifically speaking, the linguistic investigation of literary texts in translation is the main interest of Translational Stylistics (Malmkjaer 2004:13). In a nutshell, this field of study aims to verify ‘how the style of the source text can be represented in its translated versions, and the extent to which the translator’s voice is or should be present in this translated text’ (Gavins 2005:404).

The theoretical roots of Translational Stylistics may be ascribed to Comparative Descriptive Linguistics. Before comparing linguistic phenomena, the linguist has to describe them, and to make the comparison fruitful, the linguist has to consider the linguistic ‘patterns, not whole languages’ (Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens 1968:134). Through the investigation of such patterns, the translational stylistician can analyse or determine what the style of the literary translator and his translational production are. Certainly, in order to determine these with more accuracy and precision, it would be necessary to investigate many translations by a single translator, and to take as many linguistic patterns as possible into account. In fact, generally speaking, one is more often exposed to stylistic features, not to style per se. For a more accurate investigation of style, the method of Corpus Linguistics seems to be of great help for the translational stylistician, since this method approaches language from a probabilistic perspective (Berber Sardinha 2004:30), which is a prerequisite for the research of linguistic patterns.

Systemic Functional Linguistics is a useful theory of language for investigating texts of literature and/or literary texts in translation, because it offers linguistic categories (e.g., Theme and Rheme; Modal adjunct; Participant, Process and Circumstance) that are relevant for the analysis of verbal art (Halliday 1994:xxix). Such linguistic categories are versatile not only because they do help the linguist unveil the meanings of texts, but also because they range from lower to higher strata. As such, they provide a solid support for the analysis of language in the contexts of situation and culture. Furthermore, because Systemic Functional Linguistics is concerned with how frequent linguistic realisations are in different circumstances, it defends a probabilistic view of language (Berber Sardinha 2004:30-31). It also focuses on linguistic performance rather than on linguistic competence, on linguistic description rather than on linguistic universals, and on a more empiricist view rather than on a rationalist one (Berber Sardinha 2004:33). This probabilistic view of language enables one to see style as a matter of patterning. However, as mentioned earlier, to investigate style as a matter of patterning turns out to be a tough task, because several variables have to be considered in order to assert the style of an author or of a translator accurately. This paper discusses stylistic features, while taking style into consideration, because style can be regarded as a huge set of these features.

Authors and translators, when writing and translating their texts, deal with language(s). They have to organise their messages, make the information in their texts exchangeable, and convincingly represent the internal and external experiences. These instantiations can be described and analysed through the systemic theoretical perspective, according to which what language users frequently do is convey textual, interpersonal and ideational meanings through their utterances. However, the interpersonal meanings in texts in translation have not been as frequently investigated as have been the textual and experiential ones (cf.: Munday 2016:142-158). This paper analyses the occurrences of the Finite ‘shall’ in the short story ‘The yellow wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and in two of its translations into Portuguese by Bruna Albornoz D’Ávila and José Manuel Lopes. It aims primarily to observe empirically how this modal Verb, considered herein as a probable stylistic linguistic device, is realised in the aforementioned corpus. In order to investigate this Finite, two research questions guide this paper, namely: (1) How is the Finite ‘shall’ realised from a semantic perspective in the source text and in the target texts? and (2) How is it realised from a structural perspective in the corpus? These research questions will be answered through a stylistic linguistic analysis supported by the theories and the methodological procedures adopted in this paper.

As for the theoretical review, this paper explores concepts of Stylistics, Translational Stylistics, and Systemic Functional Linguistics. When it comes to the latter, this paper focuses on the interpersonal metafunction, more specifically, on the system of modality. As for the methodological procedures, the corpus is presented, and the steps to obtain the occurrences of the Finite ‘shall’ in the source text and its counterparts in the target texts are also shown. Then, a brief semantic and structural analysis of this Finite and its counterparts in the translations is presented. In the last section of this paper, the final remarks are made in accordance with the previous sections.

The theoretical review is exposed as follows.

1. Stylistics, Translational Stylistics, and Systemic Functional Linguistics focusing on modality

1.1. Stylistics

Style can be defined as the use of language in a distinctive way (Verdonk 2002:3). As such, Stylistics is concerned with the investigation of degrees of creativity that language users can foreground (Simpson 2004:50-51, 98). Furthermore, Verdonk (2002:3) considers that Stylistics is interested in analysing the characteristic traits of language and in describing their objectives and impacts.

Traditionally speaking, Stylistics has engaged with the study of literary texts (Monteiro 2005:48-49). The term ‘Literary Linguistics’ is even used by some British linguists to determine the linguistic analysis of literature (Trask 2004:93). The verbal art (Hasan 1989:57) found in these texts may be the strongest reason for establishing them as the major object of study of Stylistics. However, according to Travaglia (2011:xi), nowadays Stylistics embraces both literary and non-literary texts, and for that reason, verbal art can be understood as a feature of both types of texts.

There are several branches within Stylistics (Simpson 2004:2). According to Monteiro (2005:15), Stylistics has two main branches: linguistically oriented, and literarily oriented. The first is occupied with the description of literary texts, whereas the second one focuses on the expression of such texts, and, as a consequence, it has an intuitive approach (Monteiro 2005:15). When Halliday (1964/2006:5) determines Stylistics as being Linguistic, the description of literary texts turns out to be a linguist’s task. According to Halliday (1964/2006:6), Linguistic Stylistics proposes the comparative study of several literary texts by one author or different authors. The author states that both literary and non-literary texts are instances of the multiple uses of language. This paper adopts the concept of Stylistics as proposed by Halliday (1964/2006).

Leech and Short (2007:100-106) give an account of a stylistic analysis of a seven-word clause taken out from Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘A Cup of Tea’. The authors analyse such clause by taking the semantic, syntactic, and graphological levels into account. Moreover, the authors analyse it stylistically by considering the effects from a phonological perspective. By empirically providing alternatives to that seven-word clause, Leech and Short (2007:106) show how important it is to have linguistic substance to sustain the linguist’s intuition. No matter how much one can investigate empirically a study object, probably one still relies on intuition. As noted previously, it becomes vital to confirm such intuition with empirical evidence.

Next some considerations on Translational Stylistics will be made.

1.2. Translational Stylistics

Malmkjaer (2004:13) considers that Translational Stylistics is the linguistic analysis of literary texts in translation. Hasan (1989:101) makes a distinction between literary texts and texts of literature. According to this author, broadly speaking, the first are less artistically written than the second ones (Hasan 1989:101). Such finding can also be closely related to literary criticism, and researchers can heed this distinction when choosing texts of literature to investigate, if considered Hasan’s finding.

Malmkjaer (2003:39) points out that writers’ linguistic choices are restricted by conventions dictated by text types and by what they wish to textualise. When it comes to texts in translation, the source texts have to be taken into account (Malmkjaer 2003:39). Thus, according to this author, both Stylistics and Translational Stylistics aim to investigate how authors and translators, respectively, have made specific choices at the linguistic level, but in the case of the latter, source texts have also to be considered.

Malmkjaer (2004:14-17) identifies four parameters that underlie the stylistic analysis of literary texts in translation, namely: (1) the mediator’s interpretation of the source text affects the text to be mediated; (2) there is always a goal when target texts are mediated; (3) the goals of the source text and the target text can be distinct; and (4) the audience of the source text almost always differs from the audience of the target text. The author searches for textual evidence that can corroborate such parameters, either through a reading oriented to the writer, or through an interpretation oriented to the reader.

Baker (2000:248-255) proposes a study of two British literary translators’ style, Peter Bush’s and Peter Clark’s, by observing, for example, the frequency and patterning of the verb ‘say’ in their translations. According to Baker (2000:245), style ‘is a matter of patterning: it involves describing preferred or recurring patterns of linguistic behaviour, rather than individual or one-off instances of intervention’. The author focuses on this concept of style when it comes to literary translators. As for the corpus of texts in Baker’s study, the texts translated by Peter Bush have been originally written in Brazilian Portuguese, South American Spanish, and European Spanish (Baker 2000:249). As to the translated texts by Peter Clark, the source language is Arabic (Baker 2000:249). As regards the verb ‘say’, some findings relate to the fact that Peter Clark tends to ascribe adverbs of manner to what some characters say in his translations, whereas Peter Bush tends to attribute opinions and thoughts to what some characters say in his translated texts (Baker 2000:255).

Saldanha (2005:1-4) aims to investigate the stylistic features of two literary translators, namely, Margaret Jull Costa and Peter Bush, who translate fiction from Portuguese and Spanish into English. The author makes use of a corpus-based and data-driven methodology. Through this methodology, on the one hand, Saldanha (2005:87-119) notices that Margaret Jull Costa utilises emphatic italics in her translations to a high degree. On the other hand, Saldanha (2005:122-148) notices that Peter Bush frequently employs Portuguese and Spanish borrowings in his translated texts. It is worthwhile mentioning that Saldanha (2005:180-194) takes the translators’ backgrounds and ideologies into consideration by drawing upon what they write about translation and what they say in the interviews done by the researcher. Finally, the author explains that the translators’ strategies help them see which role they are playing with regard to their audiences.

Barcellos (2011:15-20) enquires into the style of two Brazilian literary translators, namely, Sergio Flaksman and José Roberto O’Shea, through the examination of their translations of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness by making use of Corpus-Based Translation Studies with the support of some categories of Discourse Presentation. The author notices that the category ‘speech’ is recurrently used in the corpus. More specifically, ‘free direct speech’ has a widespread use (Barcellos 2011:128). The author also notices that the translators tend to make information explicit from the source text into their target texts, which can be indicative of their translation styles. Barcellos (2011:138) observes that the author’s linguistic decisions have influenced the translators’ choices, since most of the categories of speech, thought and writing were similarly translated.

Systemic Functional Linguistics will be discussed with a focus on modality in the following subsection.

1.3. Systemic Functional Linguistics focusing on modality

According to Trask (2004:184), Systemic Functional Linguistics can be considered the most developed functional theory of language. Kress (1976:vii) states that Halliday, the founder of Systemic Functional Linguistics, defends the study of language as being socially oriented with the aim of specifying ‘the functions which language has in society’ (Kress 1976:vii), and, consequently, of finding out how these functions are related to the structure of language. To formulate his theory, Halliday has been inspired by three theoreticians: Malinowski, Firth, and Whorf (Kress 1976:viii). For instance, like Malinowski, Halliday defines meaning as being function in context; based on Firth, Halliday develops the categories ‘context of situation’ and ‘system’; like Whorf, Halliday accepts clearly the intrinsic connection between language and culture (Kress 1976:viii, x, xiv).

Halliday and Matthiessen (2014, p. 83) present the concept of metafunction, which is key in Systemic Functional Linguistics. Metafunction is related to the three lines of meaning in the clause, which can be textual, interpersonal, or experiential (Halliday; Matthiessen 2014:83). In the textual metafunction, the clause is considered a message; its system has Theme as the main element; and its structure consists of Theme and Rheme (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:83). In the interpersonal metafunction, the clause is regarded as being an exchange; Mood is the prototypical category of its system; and its structure lies in Mood and Residue (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:83). In the experiential metafunction, the clause is considered a representation; Transitivity is the central concept of its system; and its structure entails the Processes, Participants, and Circumstances (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:83). It is worth highlighting that most clauses are realised by these metafunctions concomitantly, and generally they are explained separately for the sake of clarity (Halliday 1994:35).

The Finite ‘shall’, which is here investigated in texts of literature in translation, is the object of study of this paper. Being a modal Verb, this Finite is linked to the system of modality. Let us see then what interpersonal metafunction involves, since modality helps us understand how interaction can be promoted.

As already said, Mood is the prototypical category of interpersonal metafunction. It comprises the Grammatical Subject and the Finite (Thompson 2004:49). The remainder part of the clause is the Residue (Thompson 2004:60), which consists of the Predicator, Complements and/or Adjuncts. Broadly speaking, a Finite can be regarded as the linguistic element responsible for indicating the verb tense or modality of a clause (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:140). In the English language, it is easily identified through the traditionally called ‘auxiliary verbs’. For instance, in the present simple, do/does are prototypical Finites. Still, for the sake of exemplification, in statements realised in the present simple, when they have a positive polarity, Finites are ‘fused’ with Predicators (Thompson 2004:49). The Portuguese language has a different linguistic resource to realise verb tenses, if one considers the Finites. They can be identified through verbal desinence, and, as a consequence, Finites are very frequently ‘fused’ with predicators as well, and to a higher degree than they are in the English language (Alves, Lacerda & Rodrigues 2006:13).

According to Eggins (2004:146), one can make use of Mood to give and/or to demand information and goods and services. According to this author, for giving information, one can make a statement, and for demanding information, one can ask a question. Eggins (2004: 146) states that, for giving good and services, one can make an offer, and for demanding goods and services, one can give commands. Thus, semantically speaking, the exchange of information in a clause corresponds to a proposition, whereas the exchange of goods and services in a clause is analogous to a proposal (Eggins 2004:149-151; Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 138-139).

One can react to a piece of information, to a question, to an offer, or to a command positively or negatively, by uttering ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Nonetheless, there are situations in which one can be unsure, and this can lead to an utterance that, being neither positive nor negative, it falls somewhere between the two ends of the continuum. Bearing in mind these considerations, one can define modality (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:176) as a system whereby linguistic choices rest on intermediate degrees within a continuum, at whose ends one finds ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Modality can manifest itself through two subsystems, namely, modalisation and modulation (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:182). Modalisation entails degrees of probability and of usuality, whereas modulation implicates degrees of obligation and of inclination (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:182). According to these authors, modal Verbs and some modal Adjuncts, for instance, realise instances of modality.

For Martin and Rose, modality constitutes a ‘way of introducing additional voices into a text’ (Martin & Rose 2003:48), and as such, it admits alternative voices around distinct types of utterances (e.g., a suggestion or a claim). One takes such voices into account and refutes them, but through the use of modality, one is able to negotiate different points of view, from mediating them to possibly reconciling oneself with them (Martin & Rose 2003:50). The authors provide an example of ‘legislative shall’, which signals incontrovertible obligation. In this respect, Halliday and Matthiessen (2004, p. 179) observe that ‘while “shall” is quite uncommon in English as a modal of obligation, in regulatory texts, it is highly favoured’. Furthermore, Stubbs (1996, Chapter 8 as cited in Martin & White 2005:95) defends that the concept of modality should include all phrasings whereby language users regulate their connection or disconnection from propositions.

In the realm of the Portuguese language, Neves (2006:151-152) considers that the concept of modality is not an inarguable one. She raises two fundamental issues. The first one refers to whether there is modality in utterances that do not signal a detectable and explicit modalisation; the second one is concerned with the difficult establishment of boundaries between Logic and Linguistics, when it comes to modality. Neves (2006:161) points out that alethic, epistemic and deontic modalities turn out to be the basic ones - the first one being studied more often in the realm of Logic, and the second and the third ones being investigated in Linguistics. For Neves (2006:151-152), different textual types favour distinct modalities - for example, epistemic modality seems to be more recurrent in narrative and argumentative texts in the English language (Stephany 1995 as cited in Neves 2006:186).

Jesus (2014:19) states that modality is a semantic category. As such, modality is related to subjectivity, that is, to the speaker’s attitudes and opinions (Palmer 1986 as cited in Jesus 2014:19). Travaglia (1991:82) identifies eight ways through which modality can be realised in Brazilian Portuguese, namely by (1) performative verbs; (2) modal auxiliaries; (3) predicates of the kind ‘é + adjetivo’ (‘it is + adjective’); (4) adverbs; (5) moods (in the traditional sense) and verb tenses; (6) verbs of propositional attitude; (7) intonation; and (8) the suffix ‘-VEL’ (‘-BLE’) found in adjectives. Travaglia (1991:82) adds that this list is comprehensive, but not exhaustive.

This paper focuses on one specific trait of modality: the Finite ‘shall’ as a probable stylistic linguistic device. Let us then observe what nonsystemic linguists have to say about this Finite.

Garzone (2013:68-72) investigates the Finite ‘shall’ in legislative texts by adopting a corpus-based approach. The author gives an account of philosophers of law who inform that this Finite can be either deontic or performative when it comes to this text type. Furthermore, Garzone (2013:68-72) identifies that there has been a considerable decline in the use of this Finite in legislative texts. From another perspective, Wischer (2009:125-128) defends that ‘shall’ has been losing its modal meaning to become more frequently ascribed as a future marker that indicates predictions. Moreover, Arigne (2007:2-4) studies the Finite ‘shall’ together with the Finite ‘should’, since the former is a verbal lexeme of both Finites. According to Arigne (2007:2-4), one of the meanings of the Finite ‘shall’ is as a present tense that entails obligation. Finally, Swan (2002:216) highlights the realisation of the Finite ‘shall’, when it occurs in law texts.

While it would be worth observing the realisation of the Finite ‘shall’ in different text types, this paper investigates such realisation in a small parallel literary corpus that can provide the occurrences of this modal Verb in the source text and its counterparts in the target texts.

Let us then see which methodological procedures were taken to collect the occurrences of Finite ‘shall’ in the corpus.

2. Methodological procedures for collecting and analysing the occurrences of Finite ‘shall’ in the corpus

‘The yellow wallpaper’ tells the story of a woman whose mental health deteriorates as she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper in her bedroom. This short story clearly shows the critical condition of someone suffering from a mental illness. Even though the woman’s husband is seemingly caring and aware of the situation, he cannot understand that depriving his wife from doing her favourite activities, such as writing, and from living with their baby, would drive her more deeply into psychosis. Naturally, there are other readings of ‘The yellow wallpaper’. Treichler (1987:62-78), for example, states that this short story ‘stands for a new vision of women - one which is constructed differently from the representation of women in patriarchal language’. Thus, if one agrees with Treichler, it is safe to say that ‘The yellow wallpaper’ raises important issues with regard to both madness and feminism. Charlotte Perkins Gilman first published this short story in 1892 (Lane 1999:xviii), and it remains an acclaimed and popular short story, as its recurring translation into other languages shows.

This paper investigates the Finite ‘shall’ in two translations into Portuguese of ‘The yellow wallpaper’: one into Brazilian Portuguese by Bruna Albornoz D’Ávila, and the other into European Portuguese by José Manuel Lopes.

After the Finite ‘shall’ was selected as the object of study, it was identified in the source text and in the two target ones. These texts were then saved in an electronic format, which enabled me to find the occurrences of this modal Verb quite quickly in the source text by typing the Find feature (command + f) of Microsoft Word for Mac. I then typed ‘shall’ in the Find field, and pressed ‘Enter’. Next, I aligned the sentences from the three texts in which the Finite ‘shall’ and its corresponding translations were realised, and such sentences were organised in a single document in Microsoft Word for Mac.

The brief linguistic stylistic investigation has as its unit of analysis the verbal groups where Finite ‘shall’ was realised. Then, with the help of the co-text, the clauses in which the Finite ‘shall’ was found were classified as instances of either modalisation or modulation in the three texts. After that, such instances were analysed from the syntactic view (Simpson 2004:5) of the interpersonal metafunction by comparing the sentences of the target texts to their counterparts in the source text, and the target texts per se. In addition, when it comes to the analytical direction, one can see that the methodological procedures adopted herein can be regarded as both bottom-up in some moment for the analysis unit is the verbal group, which pertains to a low linguistic rank, and top-down, since after identifying the modalisation and modulation meanings, the analysis returns to the structural matters of interpersonal metafunction. Finally, it is worth mentioning that this methodological approach does not prevent the analysis from advancing to interpersonal meanings - that is, the empirical observation of the structure of Mood and Residue in terms of the interpersonal metafunction may raise other semantic implications.

Furthermore, there was also a careful reflection on the similarities and differences in the realisation of this modal Verb in the corpus. The outcome of such reflection based on the theoretical review and on the methodological procedures can be verified in the next section of this paper.

3. What can the Finite ‘shall’ and its translations reveal in the short story ‘The yellow wallpaper’ and in two of its target texts into Portuguese?

There are six occurrences of the Finite ‘shall’ in the source text, which have been translated similarly and distinctly, as can be seen next. The small excerpts including these occurrences are italicised. It is worth mentioning that this Finite and its counterparts in the translations may be regarded as instances of foregrounding (Hasan 1989:33), for they are deautomatised throughout the corpus - that is, this Finite and its corresponding translations do not seem to be a linguistic pattern in such corpus. According to Baker (2000:245), perhaps such occurrences may not be indicative of the style of the author or of the translators, since the occurrences present low frequencies and, as such, do not seem to be a matter of patterning. However, if one considers that, as put forth by Malmkjaer (2004:13), Translational Stylistics takes the linguistic analysis of literary texts in translation into account, one can observe stylistic features in the investigation of the Finite ‘shall’ in the source text and its counterparts in the target texts. Bearing this in mind, let us verify the occurrences of this Finite together with the Predicator in the verbal groups and its translations as follows.

Example 1:

Source text:

But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself - before him, at least, and that makes me very tired. (Gilman 1999)

Target text 1:

Mas John diz que, se me sinto assim, nego o auto-controle adequado, e esforço-me para me controlar - na frente dele, ao menos, e isso me cansa muito. (Gilman 2014)

Target text 2:

Mas o John diz que se eu me sinto assim, irei negligenciar o meu devido auto-controlo, de modo que me esforço imenso por me controlar - pelo menos diante dele, e isso faz com que me sinta imensamente cansada. (Gilman 2006)

In Example 1, the nominal and verbal groups ‘I shall neglect’ have been retextualised as ‘nego’ in target text 1, and as ‘irei negligenciar’ in target text 2, respectively. Whenever there is the ‘mingling’ of the Finite with the Predicator, these elements are ‘fused’ (Thompson 2004:49), which makes the identification of the Finite difficult. In this example, ‘shall’ is the Finite and ‘neglect’ is the Predicator, whereas in Portuguese this distinction is not clear. Such elements are ‘fused’ in the Portuguese language (Alves, Lacerda & Rodrigues 2006:13). In the English language, these elements are not always ‘fused’ due to the realisation of ‘auxiliary verbs’ functioning as Finites (Thompson 2004:49). Furthermore, in Example 1, D’Ávila has opted for translating ‘I shall neglect’ as ‘nego’ and such translational choice ‘takes out’ the modalisation realised in the source text, since it is in the present tense. Lopes, on the other hand, has translated ‘I shall neglect’ as ‘irei negligenciar’. This translation presents modality of the modalisation type that realises probability. Moreover, Lopes has decided to retextualise ‘I shall neglect’ as a composed verbal form in the future that can be paraphrased as ‘negligenciarei’, which can be considered an agnate form of ‘irei negligenciar’. In sum, in respect to the nominal and verbal groups translated, both translators have successfully retextualised their experiential meaning, and changed the interpersonal perspective.

Example 2:

Source text:

John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. (Gilman 1999)

Target text 1:

John diz que, se não melhorar logo, ele me mandará para Weir Mitchell no outono. (Gilman 2014)

Target text 2:

O John disse que, se eu não melhorar, me enviará para o Dr. Weir Mitchell no Outono. (Gilman 2006)

In Example 2, the verbal groups ‘shall send’ from the source text, ‘mandará’ from target text 1, and ‘enviará’ from target text 2 are realised in conditional clauses - more specifically, first conditional clauses (Swan 2002:128, 245). The translations of the verbal group ‘shall send’ are similar from the interpersonal perspective but different from the lexical view. The similarity may be due to the fact that the verbal groups ‘mandará’ and ‘enviará’ are realised in first conditional clauses, which may limit the array of interpersonal translational choices. Both verbal groups from the target texts and the one from the source text realise modalisation of the probability type that is conditioned to the if/se clauses. Moreover, in the translations of the verbal group ‘shall send’ into Portuguese, Finites are ‘fused’ with Predicators (Alves, Lacerda & Rodrigues 2006:13).

Example 3:

Source text:

“Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug, “ she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let’s improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!” (Gilman 1999)

Target text 1:

- Mas é um anjo! - ele exclamou, abraçando-me apertado, - ela pode ficar o quão doente quiser! Mas agora, aproveitemos a madrugada e vamos dormir, e conversamos mais pela manhã! (Gilman 2014)

Target text 2:

“Que tontinha!” observou ele, abraçando-me muito. “Podes estar doente tanto quanto quiseres! Mas agora, para podermos aproveitar as horas de sol, vamos dormir e falar nisso de manhã!” (Gilman 2006)

The nominal and verbal groups ‘she shall be’ from Example 3 have been translated into the nominal and verbal groups ‘ela pode ficar’ in target text 1 and into the verbal group ‘Podes estar’, with a nominal group elided functioning as a Grammatical Subject (Thompson 2004:49) in target text 2. All these verbal groups from Example 3 are instances of modalisation related to the probability type. More specifically, they realise possibility. In addition, ‘pode’ and ‘Podes’ can be considered Finites, since seemingly they function as ‘auxiliary verbs’ and indicate the verb tense. In target text 1, the Grammatical Subject is a third person whereas in the target text 2 it is a second person. When it comes to interpersonal meaning, on the one hand, both translations realise the possibility significance as regards the Finite ‘shall’. On the other hand, the Grammatical Subjects differ: in target text 1, the Grammatical Subject is the woman represented in the third person, and in target text 2, it is the woman represented in the second person. This might have a slight impact on the narrative mode of the translations, which may bring about different interpretations of the character uttering the sentence, in this case, the woman’s husband.

Example 4:

Source text:

Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself! (Gilman 1999)

Target text 1:

Isso não soa inocente? Mas sei que ela estava estudando o padrão, e estou determinada a não permitir que ninguém além de mim o descubra! (Gilman 2014)

Target text 2:

Não vos parece uma desculpa inocente? Mas eu sabia que ela estava a estudar o padrão, e estou decidida a que ninguém descubra as suas características, senão eu. (Gilman 2006)

In Example 4, the dependent clause ‘nobody shall find it out but myself’ from the source text, in which the Finite ‘shall’ is realised, has a ‘modalising’ meaning from the interpersonal metafunctional perspective. More specifically, it realises modalisation of the probability type. In target texts 1 and 2, the source-text nominal and verbal groups ‘shall find it out’ have been translated into the verbal and nominal groups ‘o descubra’ and ‘descubra as suas características’, respectively, both of which also have a significance of probability. Moreover, the nominal and verbal groups ‘o descubra’ and ‘descubra as suas características’ are realised in hypotactic clauses (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:438-442), that is, in dependent clauses. Both D’Ávila and Lopes have made the same translational choice as regards the verbal group ‘shall find * out’, as it seems they were guided by apparent systemic mechanisms. In other words, the hypotactic structure may have influenced and conditioned their translational decision when translating that passage. This is related to Barcellos’ finding when suggesting that translators are not always free to retextualise however they want due to the author’s linguistic decisions (See subsection 1.2 of this paper).

Example 5:

Source text:

We shall sleep downstairs tonight, and take the boat home tomorrow. (Gilman 1999)

Target text 1:

Dormiremos no andar de baixo hoje e levaremos o barco para casa amanhã. (Gilman 2014)

Target text 2:

Vamos dormir hoje no andar de baixo, e amanhã apanharemos o barco para casa. (Gilman 2006)

In Example 5, the verbal group of the wording ‘We shall sleep’ realises modalisation of the probability type as do the verbal groups ‘Dormiremos’ and ‘Vamos dormir’ in target texts 1 and 2, respectively. As far as meaning, such translations are quite similar, but they do shift in terms of interpersonal structure. In the verbal group ‘Dormiremos’, from target text 1, the Finite is ‘fused’ with the Predicator (Thompson 2004:49). In the verbal group ‘Vamos dormir’, from target text 2, there is also such ‘fusion’, but Lopes has opted for composed verbal form in the future such as shown in Example 1. Furthermore, both translations can be considered agnate forms of one another. Experientially speaking, both translated verbal groups realise the behavioural significance, but their structures raise distinct interpersonal interpretations, for it seems that the woman’s husband utterance is more affectionate in target text 2 than it is in target text 1. Perhaps one would not perceive this interpersonal detail if analysing just one translation.

Example 6:

Source text:

I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! (Gilman 1999)

Target text 1:

Creio que terei que voltar para trás da estampa ao cair da noite, e é tão difícil! (Gilman 2014)

Target text 2:

Acho que terei que voltar para detrás do padrão quando a noite vier, e isso é difícil! (Gilman 2006)

In Example 6, the clause ‘I shall have to get back’ from the source text presents modulation of the obligation type, but the obligation is not incontrovertible, because it may be contested. The wording ‘I suppose’ connotes uncertainty and realises an interpersonal grammatical metaphor (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004:698-699) that projects the clause ‘I shall have to get back behind the pattern’. The obligation meaning realised by this clause, in which one observes the Finite ‘shall’, is conditioned by such metaphor, since this clause is a dependent one in a logical relation of hypotaxis (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014:438-442). D’Ávila and Lopes have similarly translated such wording as ‘terei que voltar’, which denotes their expertise in interpreting the obligation meaning of the clause from the source text.

Taking into account the research questions, the literature review, the methodology adopted, and the results in this paper, I present the final remarks in the next section.

Final Remarks

This paper investigated the realisation of the Finite ‘shall’ in a small corpus composed of the short story ‘The yellow wallpaper’ (Gilman 1999) and its counterparts in two of its translations into Portuguese, by Bruna Albornoz D’Ávila (Gilman 2014) into Brazilian Portuguese, and the other by José Manuel Lopes (Gilman 2006) into European Portuguese. The investigation showed that the Finite ‘shall’ and its counterparts in Portuguese were not a recurrent linguistic element in the corpus. For that reason, its six occurrences, considering both the source text and the target texts, do not tell much in terms of the style of the author, the translators, and their texts. Nonetheless, the analysis seems to have been useful, since it presented stylistic features of such texts, and explored a linguistic item that is apparently and more frequently studied in law texts. This paper can thus contribute to further descriptions of this linguistic item in a different type of original and translated text.

In the corpus, the occurrences of the Finite ‘shall’ and its counterparts in the translations were realised mostly as modalisations, which partially corroborates the idea that this interpersonal meaning is frequently found in narratives in the English language (Stephany 1995 as cited in Neves 2006:186). Moreover, a single occurrence of modulation was observed, as shown in Example 6, which can be slightly interesting, for the realisation of the Finite ‘shall’ as a modal of obligation is far more common in legislative texts, as confirmed by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004:179). The investigation of modality in literary texts and/or texts of literature helps to understand how the subjectivity of characters are outlined, and in the translations of those texts, it helps to understand how the translators convey such subjectivity, which can be indicative of their stylistic traits as well as of their translational strategies.

As expected, the verbal groups in which the Finite ‘shall’ was realised had their counterparts in Portuguese translated in a different way from the structural perspective. For instance, in Example 1, D’Ávila translated ‘nego’ for ‘I shall deny’, which, besides eliminating the modality meaning from the source text, showed the ‘fusion’ of the Finite with the Predicator, which also occurred in other examples (cf.: for instance, Examples 5 and 6). Such ‘fusion’ is very common in the Portuguese language (Alves, Lacerda & Rodrigues 2006:13), as already mentioned. Also, it showed the retrieval of the Elliptical Grammatical Subject through verbal desinence. In Example 1, Lopes optioned for composed verb forms in Examples 1 and 5 - namely, ‘irei negligenciar’ and ‘Vamos dormir’, respectively. As can been seen, Lopes used composed verb forms more often than did D’Ávila. This can be considered a stylistic feature of Lopes’s. Example 3 showed how the Finite ‘shall’ can also present a ‘closer’ equivalent in Portuguese, structurally speaking, since ‘pode’, translated by D’Ávila, and ‘podes’, retextualised by Lopes, can be regarded as instances of ‘auxiliary verbs’, and, as a consequence, more easily perceptible Finites. Other structural implications include how the translation of main clauses can influence the rendering of hypotactic clauses, perhaps restricting the translational choices, as can be observed in Examples 2, 4 and 6. In sum, as far as semantics is concerned, when it comes to the Finite under observation, the target texts are quite similar to the source text. The former differ from the latter structurally, which can be regarded as something idiosyncratic on the translators’ part. Furthermore, it is worth highlighting that the translation of ‘nego’ for ‘I shall deny’, by D’Ávila, seemed to be foregrounded.

Finally, because this paper is a case study, it does not provide sufficient data to make generalisations. The corpus utilised is small, and, for that reason, it cannot provide evidence of linguistic patterns. For further research, it is thus suggested that the Finite ‘shall’ and other modal Finites be investigated in larger corpora of literary texts and/or texts of literature and its counterparts in other languages, as well as in old and more recent texts, in order to describe the occurrences of such Finites. This can enable researchers to better understand the probable variability of translations of this and other Finites. Even though it is not possible to make generalisations, as previously noted, one can observe examples of realisation of a Finite that does not seem to be commonly investigated in texts artistically written. Then I hope that this paper can inspire other investigations on this topic.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Bianca R. Teixeira for the invaluable help in copyediting the manuscript.

I am indebted to my parents, my sister, and my aunt Lena for the unconditional love and support all through the years.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Oct-Dec 2018

History

• Received
  22 Dec 2016
• Accepted
  28 Mar 2018