PART III. GRAMMAR PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION
Chapter 1. FORMAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SOURCE TEXT AND TARGET TEXT Source language and target language texts differ formally due to a number of reasons of both objective and subjective character. Objective reasons are caused by the divergence in the language systems and speech models. Subjective reasons can be attributed to the speaker’s choice of a language form.
Thus, systemic dissimilarity of forms takes place when one of the languages lacks some grammar category and, therefore, has no corresponding form. For example, English possesses the morphological categories of the article or the gerund lacking in the Russian language; whereas in Russian there is a category of adverbial participle (деепричастие) missing in the English language. To translate these forms, one has to compensate them or restructure the sentence. Unique categories in one of the languages can occur at the syntactic level as well. For example, English absolute constructions, complex object and complex subject (with the infinitive and participle), are alien to the Russian language. Therefore, they require special attention from students of English.
On the other hand, there are linguistic phenomena that exist in both languages but differ in some details, which also causes difficulties in translation. For example, passive voice is found both in English and Russian, but in English it is represented by the indirect and prepositional passive construction (He is given a book. He is asked for.) but the Russian language has only the direct passive construction (Книга дана ему).
Objective reasons for formal dissimilarities include differences in word combination norms and models that make up language traditions. For example, in English it is possible to say Table I lists… but in Russian the similar structure is ridiculous (*Таблица 1 перечисляет…). It is much more “Russian” to verbalize the source of information as the adverbial modifier of place: В таблице 1 перечислены…
Similar structures in both languages can be used with different frequency in different types of text. Violation of the frequency rate can lead to awkward language usage. For example, an English scientific text utilizes more simple sentences, whereas in Russian one can find an abundance of complex sentences.
Thus the objective reasons for formal dissimilarities can be classified into those caused by the language system, by norm and by usage.
Subjective reasons for formal alterations in the target text are accounted for by a communicator’s (or translator’s) personal intention, emphasis or preference. These reasons include the communicative structure of the utterance, that is, emphasis on the logically stressed word that can lead to the change of syntactic structure:* A woman entered the room. – В комнату вошла женщина.
They also include pragmatic adaptations of the sentence to the receptor by adding or reducing some information in the utterance (which results in complex rather than grammar transformations): WSU is located in Pullman, WA. – Вашингтонский университет расположен в городе Пулман, штат Вашингтон.
Translator’s idiolect, or his/her individual language system distinguishing him/her from another person, is also responsible for the difference in formal alterations: He fell a week before Armistice was declared. – Он пал за неделю до того, как объявили перемирие. The translator chose here a complex sentence instead of a simple one (Он пал за неделю до объявления перемирия), perhaps because this structure was more typical for his idiolect than the second one.
Thus, difference in formal structures of the source and target texts can also be accounted for by the communicator’s logical accentuation, as well as by the pragmatic adaptation of the utterance to the receptor and translator’s idiolect. These reasons are of a subjective character, as compared with the first group.
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