Lecture 9. Transformations in translation

1. What is transformation?

Transformation is any change of the source text at the syntactic level during translation. Even for the languages of different structure general structural similarity in translation is common enough. But total similarity of syntactic structures is a rare case, which means that in E-U translation we often observe transformations. Majority of syntactic transformations in E-U translation are occasional, i.e. the translator transforms the source syntactic structures on case-by-case basis, each case being dependent on the context, situation, pragmatic intent and other factors some of which are unknown and the translator’s decisions relevant to the case are intuitive.

The problem of translation equivalence is closely connected with the stylistic aspect of translation – one cannot reach the required level of equivalence if the stylistic peculiarities.

2. What types of transformations do you know?

The types of transformation are occasional and regular transformation.

3. What is an occasional transformation? Give examples

In E-U translation occasional transformations are the matter of translator’s individual choice and, in general, strongly depend on stylistic peculiarities and communication intent of the source text.

4. What regular transformations are typical for English-Ukrainian translation?

In E-U translation there are also cases of regular syntactic (grammatical) transformations are the matching rules for the grammars of the 2 languages involved in translation.

5. Which type of transformations presents major translation problems and why?

There are certain unique elements of the E and U grammar systems which present major translation problems. For example, English verbal complexes and Gerund are unique structures of the E grammar missing in U. Sequence of Tenses is a peculiar system of correlation between the Verb tenses in the main and subordinate sentences. And this fact may present a problem for translation, especially from U and E.

Regular transformations don’t present a serious problem for translation because of their regularity and predictability: necessary know the relevant rule and use it in translation practice, unlike occasional transformations and equivalents which require individual and sometimes unique solution

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 3638