Translating Evaluative Language in Literary Translation -With Examples from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

This paper aims to shed light on the difficulty involved in rendering evaluative language in literary translation and its implications for preserving ST character personalities in a translation. For this purpose, the paper first gives an overview of the theory of appraisal (or evaluation) developed within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics and, then, applies the theory to analyzing evaluative langauge in the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and two Korean translations. The analysis shows that the two Korean versions differed partially in the translation of some key evaluative terms in the ST, with potentially divergent effects on the images of ST characters in the minds of readers. The analysis also indicates a shared tendency to intensify negative evaluations in the ST, bringing a certain trait into sharper focus. The paper concludes by emphasizing extra prudence in rendering evaluative language in literary translation, pointing out that a lack of it may risk disrupting evaluative chains constituted in the TT, which can lead to ST character misrepresentation.