Evidential Stance in Translation: Patterns of Complementation in Mediated Memories

Autobiographies allow for the analysis of evidential stance in the production of immediate knowledge opposed to mediate knowledge provided by autobiography translation, differentiating the author/translator narrative persona. This article analyses “REMEMBER-constructions” as linguistic marker for evidential stance used by the narrator to define the source of the knowledge narrated. The investigation of a purpose-built electronic corpus of non-translated and translated autobiographies in English and Japanese between 1990 and 2010 shows a higher proportion of markers related to a non-experiential (or “mediative”) stance in translation. These preliminary results may suggest a non-coincidence of the author/translator persona in the texts analysed, where the translator becomes a biographer.