Reporting clauses in English original and translated fiction

Abstract

The bachelor thesis is concerned with the means of introducing direct speech. It explores reporting clauses in English original and English translated fiction. It presents a corpus based study, focusing on the differences between English original and English translated reporting clauses and the influence of Czech reporting clauses on their English translation counterparts. The analysis is carried out on a sample of 100 reporting clauses from English original fiction and 50 reporting clauses from English translated fiction and their counterparts in the Czech original, extracted from the InterCorp parallel corpus. Reporting clauses are analysed with respect to the reporting verb and optional modification in the reporting clause. The analysis also focuses on translation shifts between Czech reporting clauses and their English translation counterparts. The findings confirm the hypothesis that English translated reporting clauses exhibit a tendency for greater diversity compared to English original reporting clauses as a result of the influence of the Czech original. Keywords: reporting clauses, reporting verbs, corpus-based study