Translating The Help: Converting the African-American Dialect

Abstract

Kathryn Stockett's 'The Help' is a novel that has become widely known for its use of a thick African-American dialect. The Dutch translation of this novel has been produced by Ineke van Bronswijk. Although she has attempted to maintain the source text's elements, her translation barely recreates the atmosphere that the African-American Dialect evokes in the source text. Therefore, this paper seeks to address and solve the largest translational problems that this dialect poses. It attempts to locate the most prominent features of the African-American dialect and tries to convert them into a natural Dutch translation. Moreover, the purpose of this paper is to produce a new translation of a selection of fragments from 'The Help' that adheres more closely to Stockett's stylistic intentions.