ANALYSIS OF FRENCH TRANSLATIONS OF JANE AUSTEN’S NOVEL TITLE SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Abstract
The purpose of the study is to analyze four French titles of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility translated by Isabelle de Montolieu (1815), Jules Castier (1948), Jean Privat (1979), Pierre Goubert (2000). The analysis of the title translation is carried out comparing the meanings of its lexemes (interpreting the key elements: sense, sensibility) in English and French dictionaries of the 18th-19th centuries (specifically for Jane Austen’s original and de Montolieu’s version), modern English and French dictionaries, and associative databases of modern language usage. The method of reconstruction of associative fields is used to reveal general thematic categories, which include the most frequent associations (the core of associative fields). The analysis is based on the data of French associative dictionary DAF (Institute of Linguistics, RAS in cooperation with NSU). The conclusion emphasizes that the French title Le Coeur et La Raison (by J. Castier and P. Goubert) is the most relevant one among the French translations. The analysis is a part of a larger research based on studying the full-text versions of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility done by French and Russian translators.

Keywords: associative field, associative experiment, English, French, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, translation