Crosscultural Problems in the Translation of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary

Abstract

Through this analysis I hope to illustrate what a great amount of responsibility a translator has with any kind of text in general, how much s/he can improve or damage it, and I would like to get an answer to the question of how much of the original text we can retain from the translation. I believe Bridget Jones’s Diary is very good material to project these problems upon, as besides being an international bestseller and source of a very successful film, it is considered to be well-known in several non-English speaking countries, including Hungary. Still, I would like to prove that it is very difficult for foreigners to capture the whole meaning of the text, and their understanding depends on the translation in a number of ways.