Intratextual Factors Analysis - Report on Translating a Book Passage

        

           In this report I will try to analyse the passage from the book In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and present the troubles I had during the translation process.

          The given text deals with the description of the character of Herbert William Clutter, in which we are told about his physical appearance and success in agricultural career. From what the author tells us, we can see that Herbert is an average looking man, not handsome, but far from ugly. Even though he was not the richest man in Holcomb, he was the most respectable one. This passage seems like a digression from the actual story line where the information about the character are given factually, with a complete lack of emotions. We get a peek into his present self with a hint of what he looked like when he was still in the University. A lot of physical attributes, few of which are of complex structure, are used in describing him, so that we can complete a picture of him in our minds. The author uses long sentences, with lots of commas and dashes, which was tricky when it came to my composition of translated text, but I didn’t find that to be really big problem. 

          The book In Cold Blood, which the mentioned excerpt is from, is considered as original non-fiction novel. Main character and his whole family were murdered and Capote spent a lot of time investigating before he wrote the book. The action is placed in 1950/60s and it explores the psychological relationship between two murderers who were not capable of the act individually. It also explores the lives of the victims and the effect of the crime on the community where they lived.  I informed myself about this at Wikipedia, which apparently manage to prove itself useful from time to time.

          As for the problems I had while translating, I must say that this text was not as troubling as the previous one. All the words were familiar, and biggest issues were related to converting measures and finding best solutions for names of the organizations the main character was member of. The question of the phrase man’s-man figure we discussed in class, what significantly reduced the time I needed for translating. The only word that I remained uncertain of is rimless, and although I know what it means, I just couldn’t find suitable replacement for it in Serbian.

          After informing about the plot of this book, it now seems like a very interesting reading, especially because it’s regarded by the critics as a pioneering work of the true crime genre.