TRYING TO KEEP FAITHFUL TO THE ORIGINAL IN THE ROMANIAN TRANSLATIONS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF’S MRS DALLOWAY, THE YEARS

Abstract

During her lifetime, Virginia Woolf preferred that her novels were translated by not making use of too much creativity, as that would change her original intentions. This was the case of Marguerite Yourcenar’s translation of The Waves, where she made use of too much creativity, being a writer herself.
A faithful translation as far as Woolf’s novels are concerned is a good solution. Woolf
herself believed that:
‘When you have changed every word in a sentence... have thereby altered the sense a little, the sound, weight and accent of the words in relation to each other completely, nothing remains except a crude and coarsened version of the sense’ (‘The Russian Point of View’, Common Reader 1).