Translating Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary into Maltese

Abstract

The Translator, when taking up a piece of work, tries to create an excellent Translation. Over the years, many translators have theorised and put into practice that which according to them would make a good translation. Everyone has opinions about translations; the average bilingual will compare a parallel text and approve the translation or reject it as a bad piece of work. Helen Fielding' s Bridget Jones 's Diary, presents an interesting set of problems for the translator. Before tackling the problems this kind of text presents, a question was asked: The translator is 'first a reader and then a writer' - What do other readers think? Hence this dissertation, began with a survey (the results of which can be found in the first chapter), in which Target Language speakers gave their opinions on different translations of two excerpts from the book. The results were analysed, and guided by these results and by various theories of translation, the first Chapter of Bridget Jones 's Diary was translated into Maltese. The translation was annotated, in order to explain how different problems were dealt with and to show the reasoning behind certain decisions.