The Role of Grammatical Transformations While Translating

      Antonymic translation involves translating a phrase or clause containing a negation using a phrase or clause that does not contain a negation or vice versa. Nevertheless, antonymic translation is more related with stylistic devices of translation because it is personal decision of the translator to imply this technique concerning some speech patterns in the source text.

     Antonymic transformation concerns word combinations more often. This kind of transformations is effected at the phrase or word combination level.

     The whole subordinate clause can be transformed with antonymic translation that proves effectiveness of this method if a translator has the purpose to keep author’s taciturn and laconic style of writing.

      So, meaning and use of Russian and English word-building suffixes diverge considerably. Every language has rather productive suffixes, for example, the English suffix –er. “ The suffix –er is capable of forming a noun which means an agent of an action derived from practically any word. <…> That is why verbs are often used when nouns with –er are translated into Russian”.¹ Actually the following example shows how a translator can apply meaning extension or sense development. It regards the word driver and the way how it was translated. Meaning extension involves translating a cause by its effect or vice a versa.

     Translation often practices when one part of speech is converted into other one. An English verbal noun with –er is “frequently and regularly”² converted into a Russian finite verb.

     Sometimes a translation technique of addition is used to translate words with –er according to stylistic norms. A translator often uses by his personal view.

      While literary translation, one should consider not only word-forming peculiarities but also “rich stylistic resource of the Russian language in comparison with the English language”[6].  This factor should be taken into account when emotional and expressive constructions typical of literary texts are translated. So, a great number of various Russian diminutive, affectionate, pejorative suffixes allow a translator to convey the speaker’s attitude to the subject.

      Loss-of-meaning compensation involves adding to or reinforcing a target text in one place to compensate for something that hasn’t been translated in a different place in the source text. Sometimes it can concern the reproduction of certain parallel lexical and syntactical model as it is observed in the examples below.

   The considerable part of translator’s work is dedicated to rendering various colloquial phrases. Such situations usually occur while translating some dialogues when characters interchange utterances of sub neutral stylistic level and the translator must confer the same colouring to the target text.

     A translator can employ paraphrasing to reach the equivalent energy of the phrase or render the atmosphere and the mood which are relevant to the situation described.

 

Imperative Mood and an exclamatory sentence were transformed into Indicative and an interrogative sentence though a rhetorical one. Such transformations occur when translating colloquial sentences and immediate utterances. Actually, the present example can be considered as a case of concretization because the translator made the idea of exclamation more exact and showed that the speaker had no idea of the seal but didn’t ask whose it was, or some other reasons.

   It is possible to point out the following concluding the subject of lexical transformations:

1. Word-building suffixes and prefixes are different in various languages in terms of their productivity and their additional meanings. The most productive English suffix –er is usually translated into Russian as a finite verb corresponding with the meaning of the verb form which the noun with –er was derived. Transformation of the noun with –er provoked some syntactical transformations as well.
2. Though there are more affixal formations in English than in Russian, Russian possesses more affixes of higher stylistic value than English does.  In this respect a translator has to use lexical means introducing modal words and emotional lexis to reach adequate translation.
3. Various parts of speech and phraseology can be employed when English formations are translated in order to make an adequate translation. It concerns some set expressions which are typical of and natural for the target language.
4. It is important to know the literal style of the author because it limits the number of translation techniques and the translator makes conveying closer to the original. In this particular case, the translator should not have used grandiloquent lexis

2.2. Morphological transformations

 

     Differences between English and Russian result in real difficulties a translator faces and these are morphological transformations which are often the only mean to overcome the difficulty. Morphological transformations involve change of a part of speech, special character of translation of an article, specific translation of tenses and mode, the categories of number, gender, etc. Some types of morphological transformations will be considered in a more detailed way.

2.2.1.  Article

     Article determines whether the noun is definite or indefinite. That’s why one should bear in mind that while translating from English into Russian it is necessary to convey the meaning of articles. “When a translator pays little attention to that, the meaning of a Russian sentence is not quite equivalent to the original one”³. The meaning of articles is usually rendered with lexical means, or word order; thus, the following transformations are used: substitution and addition (absence of article in Russian results in its substitution with other lexical unit, thus, causing addition), omission (if an article has no additional meaning, it can be omitted while translating).

 

2.2.1.1. Indefinite Article

     Indefinite article generally classifies subject and its belonging to some class disregarding its specific features and peculiarities. Sometimes indefinite article is very close in its meaning to such indefinite pronouns as some and any. In that case its meaning should be rendered in the translation. E.V. Kurovskaya points out that “use of an article with a naming component determines the use of those meaningful components which could be expresses with the article in the original text” [7] and sometimes the article with a naming component can change semantics considerably.

 
 
 
 

2.2.1.2. Definite article

     Definite article has the limiting function. “ It marks a subject out of a class of similar ones, makes it more concrete”[8]. Sometimes definite article has its primary meaning of a demonstrative pronoun from which it is derived.

 
 
 

2.2.2. Unconformity of the Category of Number

      Both Russian and English have the category of number. However, use of nouns in singular and plural are often different in terms of countable and uncountable nouns. This fact causes transformations while translating, in particular, substitution of an English noun in plural with a Russian one in singular, and backwards.

      There a lot of cases exist when one form in singular in Russian corresponds with an English form in plural.

E.g. овес – oats, лук – onion, картофель - potatoes, окраина (города) – outskirts, etc.

And on the contrary, a Russian form in plural  corresponds with an English form in singular.

E.g.деньги -  money, чернила -  ink, новости -  news,сведения – information, etc.

Thus, substitution of number stems there [9].

 

2.2.3. Grammatical Gender.

     English category of gender is rather relative. Practically, the category of gender is concerned when it comes to reference to the real biological gender. As for Russian, here reference to the grammatical gender is obligatory, thus, determining a grammatical transformation – substitution of a word form while translating from English into Russian.