Selection of Material for Analysis

There are several criteria for selecting the material for analysis within the context of this research. First, it is of importance that novels chosen for analysis are written by Irish writers, as the focus of this study is on the representation of women as described by Irish writers. Secondly, the position of the authors and their novels in the marketplace, including their critical reception and recognition should be taken into consideration. It is done by looking at their presence in bestseller lists or in scholarly works on the genre. Third, all the novels chosen for analysis must have been translated into Vietnamese, because the main aim of this dissertation is to investigate the Vietnamese recreation of the representation of Irish women in female popular fiction. Following such criteria, five novels have been selected for this research. They are Watermelon (1995) by Marian Keyes; translated by a female translator named Cao Thi Lan Phuong and published in 2010. This book has 39 chapters and a prologue. Sushi for Beginners (2000) by Marian Keyes; translated by Do Anh Tuan, who is a male translator and published in 2009. The novel consists of 65 chapters, an epilogue and a prologue. Never Too

Late (1999) by Cathy Kelly; translated by Nguyen Thanh Tam and published in

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Ahern; translated by a group of translators and published in 2008. It has 51 chapters and an epilogue. Where Rainbows End (2004) by Cecelia Ahern; translated by Petal Le and published in 2010. This novel has 50 chapters.

As it has also been discussed in chapter 3, the representation of women in the chosen novels will be considered as the synthesis of several elements including the four virtues of women, the cultural references that are directedly related to their identity and also other paratextual elements such as titles of the novels and their covers. The length of the selected books and the several layers of representation appear to be problematic for comparative studies as argued by Tymoczko (2002):

In conducting research on translation, as is the case with other textual studies, it is a given that one cannot look at most texts exhaustively. The meaning of a text … as an organized artefact and as an object in a social context is in many … respects overdetermined. Thus, any extended text offers too much information to the researcher to be distilled into a normal academic ‘unit’ … The researcher therefore must select what is to be investigated and must focus the research, and the prime method of focus or selection is the research design … normally each project will require a specific research design. […] one needs just enough information to confirm or deny the pertinent hypotheses governing one’s research … (2002: 15-6) Attempting a comprehensive study of all the chapters and their translations in detail is not feasible, especially when it comes to the study of textual-linguistic norms. Therefore, it is essential to limit the length of material for analysis and selecting a number of chapters as representative of the entire ST seems to be the only solution. This limited amount of analysed translational text “should be large enough to be credible in [the] light of the purpose of the exercise but small enough to permit appropriate depth.” (Herman, 1999: 69-70). There is also a need to

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ensure that selections are representative and that segments selected convey the most characteristics and functions of the ST.

Taking into account the fact that Chick Lit has a solid formula, the first chapters are always the introductory sections, which play a crucial role in this literary genre as these sections are often used to introduce the scene-settings, the plots and the main characters. Therefore, it will be interesting and revealing to analyse these sections from a translational perspective. Moreover, such choices will also allow us to see how authors of a homogeneous genre, but writing at different times, have approached and dealt with similar issues. On the other hand, the lengths of individual chapters are also an important consideration. The length of each chapter of the selected novels varies, ranging from averagely eight pages in most books to about more than twenty pages as in Never Too Late. Therefore, it is important that the length of the selected material should be sufficient to provide an overview of the female characters potrayed in the novel. For these reasons, within the three novels: Watermelon (1995) by Marian Keyes, Never Too Late (1999) by Cathy Kelly and Ahern’s P.S I Love You (2004), the material selected for analysis will consist of the first fifty pages of each novel as these pages illustrate the most significant features related to the background of the female characters within chosen novels. Despite the fact that such choice of material provides general understanding of the representation of women, it appears to be subjective. There is a need to testify the findings from such selection of material as Tymoczko (2002: 21) argues:

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A basic requirement of sound research in any field is replicability … [one should therefore] test conclusions by … attempting to replicate results … by examining other relevant passages of the translations being worked with, by looking at other translations of other texts presenting similar cultural configurations.

Hermans (1999: 67) in his discussion of Toury’s descriptive procedures also shares the similar idea that findings from the application of DTS analysis model “should also be subjected to counterchecks using random text samples.” Therefore, within the two other novels: Where Rainbows End (2004) by Cecelia Ahern and

Sushi for Beginners (2000) by Marian Keyes, five chapters have been selected

based on the principle of random selection. This random choice of text samples from various chapters will provide a more insightful understanding of women’s representation in contemporary female popular fiction. The website

www.random.org is thus used for this process in order to provide a purely random selection of chapter numbers between 1 and 50 or 1 and 65.

Where Rainbows End consists of 50 chapters and each chapter contains 8 pages on average. The five chapters chosen randomly by the website are chapters 10, 13, 31, 40, 43.

Sushi for Beginners has 65 chapters and each chapter contains 10 pages on

average. The five chapters chosen randomly by the website are chapters 1, 20, 35, 50, 54.

A detailed comparison of the entire source textual content of each such chapter and its corresponding target text renderings, will be later conducted, in order to

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gather information on how translational norms, namely textual-linguistic norms work. This was based on Toury’s (1995) methodology of comparing what he terms

replaced and replacing segments of text. These terms are employed by Toury to

refer to the source text samples analysed, together with their corresponding, equivalent textual items in translation.

For both the motivated choice and the random choice, the extracted source text samples (replaced segments) dealing with themes related to the 4 virtues of women namely diligence, self-representation, speech and courtesy together with their corresponding samples in the target texts (replacing segments), will constitute a bilingual parallel corpus for the subsequent analysis. It should be noted that the corpus within the context of this research is theme-based and related to gender- behaviour norms, therefore, the translation can not be observed from lexical or grammatical level. Instead it should be examined from social and cultural contexts in which translation are produced. One would suggest analysing the representation of women in the five selected novels separately and comparing them one to another. However, I would argue that due to the formulaic nature of contemporary female popular fiction, as well as the fact all the novels are written by Irish writers, the approach of this research would provide a more general picture of how women are represented in Irish Chick Lit. Within these chosen pages and chapters mentioned above, a qualitative approach will be applied in order to investigate various aspects of both source and target texts. A detailed comparison of the

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source textual material and its Vietnamese renderings will be conducted so research objectives of examining the representation of women in Vietnamese translation.