La traduction du discours indirect libre

The French language disposes of subtle means of indicating free indirect discourse or style, such as the variation between passé simple and imparfait, the indefinite pronoun on and the demonstrative determiner ce. The dual voice they give rise to in virtue of their double anchoring in the speech situation and the narration is a challenge in translation into a language lacking these means. Even if Swedish has formal correspondants to on and ce, these are not used in the same way in narrative texts. Two Swedish translations of Guy de Maupassant’s Une vie reveal, in spite of their differences, that other markers, such as the combination of the preterit tense with the deictic adverb nu (‘now’), familiar and evaluative expressions, and adverbs of modality, are chosen to mark free indirect discourse and indicate the subjective point of view of represented thought.