How are sound effects (re)created in novel translation?: the case of A Past Unearthed

Translation is not solely a transfer of written information; it also conveys and generates aural, olfactory, temporal, spatial, tactile, and kinetic sensations. Translation of sound effects in literary works other than poetry has long been under-researched. Drawing on literary acoustics, this essay looks into how Gigi Chang, the translator of A Past Unearthed, maintains and enhances the immediacy, materiality, and visuality of sounds embedded in the novel. Through a meticulous textual analysis, it lays bare that Chang invokes varied, noisy, and chaotic aural sensations by employing such sound devices as conventional onomatopoeia, expressive vowel elongation, cacophony, and verb-loaded translation. Her sense-oriented translation generates a ‘printed sound effect’, and well demonstrates communicability and interconvertibility between aurality and visuality, and between orality and textuality in translation. This study offers a pointer for further research into sound effects in novel translations, and promotes the cross-pollination between translation studies and sound studies.