The Reverse Side of Mark Twains Brocade: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the translation of dialect

Abstract

From its publication onwards, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had to face a great deal of controversy due, among other reasons, to its representation of the Missouri African-American dialect. Twain has since then been attacked for stereotyping Jim’s dialect, making him speak in the dialect of black-faced minstrels. However, as the author will attempt to show, such debates cannot possibly take place in other cultures for the simple reason that many translators have opted for standardising Jim’s dialect. Thus, in many translated versions all the characters appear to talk alike. The paradox is that Jim, a fugitive slave bereft of literacy because of his status, strikes the foreign ear as affected and high-brow as if he were Miss Watson herself. In what ways have translators failed to render Jim’s ethnic condition? In the dawn of the twenty-first century, can translation theory propose helpful strategies for translating Jim’s ethnic dialect?