What question did this study set out to answer?

This work aims to analyze the relationship between pseudotranslation and disnarration in storytelling.

February 2, 2026

Pseudotranslation, Disnarration, and All That Could Have Been (but wasn't)

Key Points

This work aims to analyze the relationship between pseudotranslation and disnarration in storytelling.
Reviews recent scholarship on pseudotranslation and disnarration.
Analyzes the historical context and development of both concepts since the 1980s.
Connects narratological and translation studies perspectives.
Establishes the common goal of both pseudotranslation and disnarration in literature.
Demonstrates how both concepts elaborate on narratives that could have existed but did not.

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay examines recent scholarship on pseudotranslation (works presenting as translations for which no original exists) and the disnarrated (narrative phenomena that elaborate on scenarios that could have occurred in a given narrative but did not). Though texts containing elements of one or both date back millennia, both concepts, coincidentally, only began undergoing systematic study in the 1980s: the disnarrated by Gerald Prince and pseudotranslation by Gideon Toury and Julio César Santoyo. This essay argues for reading these two concepts, one from narratology and the other from translation studies, together, in order to elaborate on their shared goal: telling a story that never was, but could have been, and now is.

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Cite This Study

Trask Roberts (Thu,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6980fd3cc1c9540dea80f000 https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2026.a980961

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