Shirley Jackson, Kazuo Ishiguro and the geek readership: conditioning aspects of orality markers in translations of genre fiction and literary fiction

Abstract

This paper presents research results on orality markers in a genre fiction novel, A assombração da casa da colina, by Shirley Jackson (translated by Débora Landsberg), and in a literary fiction novel, Não me abandone jamais, by Kazuo Ishiguro (translated by Beth Vieira), both published by the Companhia das Letras Publishing Group. In line with Amorim (2018a, 2018b and 2021), this paper aims to assess whether translated best-selling, genre fiction works would be permeable to orality markers when compared to literary fiction ones. A quantitative survey and a qualitative analysis of the orality markers were carried out. Information on the popularity of the works and the level of the authors’ resonance amongst the academic field were collected. As Jackson’s book was published by an imprint aimed at the geek readership, we gathered information from a sociological survey about their social profile in Brazil. The results show that: a) both novels have a high level of orality markers; b) despite their differences, both authors profit from having high symbolic capital translated into literary awards and critical reception within the academic-university field. The findings suggest the existence of hierarchies governing the degrees of consecration/academic resonance regarding the differentiation of novels and their authors, even in the subfield of genre fiction, and that readers with different levels of cultural capital could perhaps exert some influence on the way in which translators/editors may project the representation of linguistic variation in  translations to come out.