The Process Of Bringing The Story To You: A Translation Analysis of Nicholas Evans's The Horse Whisperer

Abstract

This essay explores Sigríður Halldórsdóttir’s Icelandic translation of Nicholas Evans’ The Horse Whisperer, translated into Icelandic as Hestahvíslarinn. The question I seek to answer is how effectively Sigríður managed to translate the novel into Icelandic, maintaining both the form and the meaning of the story. I show examples of problems concerning both punctuation and phrases that translator had to solve. Finally, in the second part of the essay I examine whether the translator of the subtitles, Björn Baldursson, has looked at the translation of the novel and if there are examples that demonstrate it. Examples show that because of the movie adaptation of the novel there is some important information missing in the movie which leads to the effect that the audience interprets the story differently than the reader of the novel. The conclusion that can be drawn from analysing this translation is that translator must always be faithful to the original. Both of the translators that I examined, the translator of the novel and the translator of the subtitles, are successful in their work and handle difficult situations well. The Horse Whisperer is a well written novel with all kinds of feelings and emotions that makes a translator’s job harder concerning interpretation. However, Sigríður has translated the story well and made it possible to evoke pretty much the same emotional responses as the original text. However, as in all translations, there are things that the translator could have done better as I show in some of the examples.