The Translation of Idiolects in The Catcher in the Rye: An Approach through Lexicalized Structures

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to support the idea that the integrity of personal dialects (i.e., idiolects) must be respected in translation if they are perceived to be consciously created. In the present case, a corpus of lexicalized structures extracted from Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) has been resorted to in order to demonstrate how their recurrent use contributes to the creation of several idiolects. The analysis of those structures in both the Spanish and the Galicim1 translations of the book shows that the translators have failed to recognise the existence of idiolects in the source language. The abuse of translation by omission and the profusion of synonymous translations for the same structure lead to the disintegration of idiolects and make them inoperative, to the deUiment of the reader of the target language.