The present thesis aims at analysing the writing style in the early works of Charles Dickens and discusses the linguistic challenges posed by the text to his translators. The main questions asked will be: To what extent have the translators succeeded in rendering his particular style of writing and What strategies do they use to achieve their goal. To attempt to answer these questions we will examine four translations of Oliver Twist, a typical novel of this period of Dickens' writing: the first two by Emile de La Bédollière and Alfred Gérardin, produced during the 19th century, and the second two by Sylvère Monod and Francis Ledoux, done in the 20th century. Five characteristics of Dickens' prose have been selected for analysis: the use of specialised language in the narrator's discourse, heavy nominal constructions, unconventional lexical associations, the presence of the oral style in the text and ambiguity. The four translators adopt different techniques for dealing with the author's extraordinary linguistic creativity and the tremendous complexity of his text. Some choose not to translate certain particularly difficult passages or constructions. Those who attempt to do so do not all use the same approach. Overall, we have noted two ways of dealing with the text: the 20th century translators appear to be more faithful to the source text, while those translating in Dickens' time take more liberties with it, although in some cases the distinction is not so clear. The analysis of these differences in translation strategy will lead us to ask how this attitude towards the source text affects the success of the target text and to what extent the notion of "faithfulness" should be called into question.
