El "Pickwick" de Galdós: estudio traductológico de los verbos de habla a través de una aproximación [Benito Pérez Galdós's "Pickwick": a translational analysis of speech verbs using a computational approach]

In this paper, speech verbs in Charles Dickens's "Pickwick Papers" and their translation into Spanish by Benito Pérez Galdós are analyzed. To this end, a computer-assisted methodology which allows a systematic retrieval of speech verbs from the original novel has been used. The results pinpoint key choices contributing to one of Dickens's best known features in terms of characterization: his characters' exaggerated ways of speaking. This characterizing role, however, is not preserved in Galdós's translation. In fact, this version contains text omissions, an over-use of the Spanish verb dijo and even some translation inaccuracies, which neglect the characterizing value of this element. Galdós's version will be compared to Jose María Valverde's translation of the same novel in order to gauge whether and to what extent translators overlook this stylistic trait when rendering speech verbs in Spanish. OA