Modal verbs in L’Étranger and its Romance translations: Old problems and new perspectives

Abstract

In this paper we compare L’Étranger to two Spanish translations in order to shed light on two theoretical issues. Firstly, the externalization problem (Laca, 2018): where do temporal and aspectual auxiliaries realize preferably in Sp. vs. Fr.? Are high perfects related to low perfects? Secondly, perfect tenses raise a problem when it comes to translate epistemic modal sentences from Fr. into Sp. In a configuration with a low perfect the modal may accept both the imparfait and the simple past. Each of the solutions has a particular contribution on discourse. Epistemic modals will also prove to serve both as a means to indirectly order the situations described in the foreground and to achieve the characteristic impression of vividness of L’Étranger due to their particular semantics.