Compensation and translation: James Ellroy’s White Jazz

• Main Authors: Daria Protopopescu, Nadina Vişan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti 2008-01-01
• Series: Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics
• Subjects: coinage; compensation; slang; translatability; translation loss
• Online Access: http://bwpl.unibuc.ro/index.pl/compensation_and_translation_james_ellroys_white_jazz

The current paper explores the Romanian translation of James Ellroy’s text “White Jazz”, with a view to explaining away the translator’s choices. The main issues at hand are the solutions provided for the ellipsis present throughout the novel and the slang used by the author, which is typical of L.A.’s ’60’s. The paper provides theoretical data supporting the translator’s choice of rendering certain slang expressions by paraphrase, explanation or even coinage of new words. We also look into how much has been compensated for and what was lost during the process of translation.