THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF

THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 
 

THE MOSCOW POWER ENGINEERING INSTITUTE

(TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY) 
 

The Institute of Linguistics 
 

Department of Applied Linguistics and Translation Techniques 
 
 

DIPLOMA PAPER 
 
 

Speciality: Translation and Translation Techniques 
 
 

Subject: “The Role of Grammatical Transformations While Translating

(based on “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway)” 
 
 
 
 

Performed by: Druzhinin Nikita 

Supervisor: Dorohina M. . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Moscow 2009

Abstract

     The present thesis focuses on the Role of Grammatical Transformations on the basis of the novel “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway. It comprises the introductory part, three subject chapters – lexical, morphological and grammatical transformations, and the conclusion.

     Chapter 1 overviews basic terminology and aims of the thesis and refers to the works of such scholars as Matuzkova E.P., Shekhovtseva M.D., Frolov A.A., Shveitser L.D., Levitskaya T.R., Fiterman A.M., Barhudarov L.S., Komissarov V.K., Vinogradov V.S., and Arturo Pascual. The first chapter outlines the scheme of the following chapter defining levels of analysis in translation.

     Chapter 2 begins with highlighting the importance of preserving the structure of the source text and induces explanation of the author’s literary style whose novel laid the basis of the thesis practical parts. The chapter involves practical research of three types of transformations. Each subdivision on transformation type points out the most typical transformations as in translation practice as in the understudied novel in particular.  The chapter ends with the table containing the most typical transformation with certain examples.

  The conclusion underlines the result of the research carried out. It defines the main role of transformations techniques and marks the reason for those transformations.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Introduction

 

     Translation implies correct and comprehensive rendering what is expressed in one language by means of the other language. [4] The present work is focused on the grammatical transformations that are vital while converting linguistic units of the source text into the text of the target language.

     According to the definition by V.N. Komissarov, literary translation is such a kind of translation, which is supposed to create a literary text in the target language and influence the reader emotionally and aesthetically. For this reason a lot of critics believe that the literary translation is a piece of art, which is dominated by masters only who follow only aesthetic criteria while making a translation. The reasons mentioned afore give the ground to consider the literary translation to be as a linguistic phenomenon as a literary one. Literary translation is not supposed to give exact translation of the original text but to render the meaning and the message in order to make the translated text more artistic. [5]

     The present thesis is focused on the matter of grammatical transformations and in particular their role in translation of any text whether it be literary work or text of business and technical contents. Relevance of the thesis concerns the fact that grammatical transformations are an inseparable part while translating a text of any complexity. While translation, the first mean that a translator employs is grammatical transformation, thus, converting the sentence of the source language into the sentence of the target language. Nowadays quality of translation faces high standards. That’s why analysis of different aspects of translation is vital in order to perfect translation techniques and mastering translator’s skills.  The notion of Russian English is rather well known among translators and people who deal with translation. Russian English is considered as a kind of translation drawback. As soon as polemics on Russian English appeared, translators of the country started to pay more attention to the quality of translations and the ways of getting rid of Russian English manner of translating, which implies overuse of Russian grammatical constructions while translating into English and few transformations. That is exactly the reason why consideration of all possible grammatical transformations is so vital to advance and perfect translator’s skills. But it is necessary to study out the essence and the notion of grammatical transformations and what aspects are associated with it.

      The matter is that the internal structure of the original language and the target language may differ considerably. Thus, grammatical transformations are very crucial in this respect. These differences of the languages are the main reason of grammatical transformations. Such differences can be partial or absolute. Absolute differences can be observed when the Russian language lacks a grammatical form, which is present in the English language, or on the contrary. There are cases when a grammatical category of one language is broader than that of the other. Sometimes when the principal parts of the sentence are replaced, the complete grammatical transformation takes place. When the subordinate parts of the sentence are replaced, here we have partial grammatical transformation. But more often these kinds of transformation take place simultaneously. It is worth mentioning that there are cases when one or another grammatical category is present in both languages but does not coincide in all forms.

     According to Chernyakhovskaya L.A., different syntax of Russian and English is one of the major reasons for grammatical transformations. In addition, different linguistic means emphasize the communicative message of the sense-groups, which employ various parts of the sentence. So, the English subject, which is usually in the beginning of the sentence, confers less communicative message in comparison with that of the final parts of the sentence.  This phenomenon is associated with theme and rheme in terms of translation, in particular, in English-Russian translation. So, semantic word order coincides with syntactic division of the sentence into the subject and the predicate (the subject is theme, the predicate is rheme) concerning rise of the communicative message. It is the factor, which is the reason for syntactic transformations while translating from Russian into English and backwards. For instance, the Russian thematic group that has free syntax is translated as the subject into English; this transformation helps to keep the message of the sense group. While translating it is necessary to bear in mind that an English speaking reader intuitively perceives the beginning of the sentence as the nucleolus information.

     Grammatical features of linguistic units involve a range of linguistic phenomena: word form, word combination, sentence, word order, grammatical meaning of forms, context functions of forms and meanings.   When translating, one should take into account not only the message that a linguistic unit communicates but also its grammatical features, which can influence considerably the structure of the whole sentence being translated.

     One should consider all the factors, which can influence the use of grammatical transformations:

• Syntactic function of the sentence;
• Lexical background, and lexical contents:
• The way of implying the message:
• Context (background) of the sentence;
• Expressive and stylistic function.

   Due to the logical structure of the sentence, a translator should not only change but also sometimes keep the foreign construction when it concerns exact rendering of the logical stress of the message. Contextual background of the sentence may also require its grammatical transformation. Such examples can be observed mostly while translating English period and a range of sentences beginning with one and the same personal pronoun.

   Translation transformations are subdivided into lexical and grammatical ones according to units of the source language that are considered as initial units in the process of transformation.

   A translator very often starts translation with a word, in particular, with changing its form that is why the issues of word formation, creation of new words, are of special importance for the process of translation.

   The necessity or importance of grammatical transformations has certain consequences. Abundant transformation causes free translation resulting in misinterpretation, incomprehensibility and artificial style. On the other hand, lack of translation transformations results in over-literal rendering. L.K. Latyshev defined the subject as follows: “ A translator who does not have enough experience in translating may carry to excess in two ways: the first is literal copying of the source text stemmed from unclear understanding of what is exact translation; and the second is extremely free translation with great number of unreasoned transformations as a result of avoiding literalism. In terms of Grammar understanding the sentence is to identify it with an appropriate pattern or a model. In other words, it means understanding the way that sentence is made up”. [17]

    The matter of word-formation techniques and transformations is considered in linguistics concerning translations of scientific and socio-political texts. It mostly concerns the fact that new formations are typical of the above listed genres (different types of neologisms, for instance). In this regard there is not much attention paid to the peculiarities of word building transformations while translating a literary work.

   The subject of the research is the role of grammatical transformations, classification of the basic word-building, morphological and syntactical transformations in translation from the Source language (English) into the Target Language (Russian), pointing out typical difficulties to achieve equivalent translation and, if possible, finding the ways of achieving it, frequency of using certain grammatical transformations and defining their role in translation, in particular, in the literary text to render the author’s style and emotional background of the literary work, etc.

   The main way of solving the problem set is comparative and contrastive method and analysis of translator’s decisions with contextual background taken into account. The basic material of the present thesis is the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway.

   The purposes determined the structure of the thesis. It includes the introductory part, three chapters with thematic sections and the conclusion.

      Chapter 1

      1.1. Overview of Basic Terminology and Aims

      Prior to discussing any problem or aspect, it is necessary to define clearly the subject itself and a range of means, which describe this particular subject. Translation is not an exception and always has to be defined according to the aims, which a researcher persuades. The present work is focused on the grammatical means of translation, which also have their diversity and peculiarities.

      Nowadays there is a number of linguistic theories concerning translation and interpreting as activity of transforming lingual units of one language into lingual units of the other language. Various scholars suggest different ways of understanding translation. Some suggest considering translation as a kind of psychological process, others think it to be based on grammar rules and norms of linguistics interlaced with cultural peculiarities of the source and the target language. Works and investigations of the following scholars were used for the present thesis: Матузкова Е.П., Шеховцева М.Д., Фролов А.А. «Перераспределение границ предложения и сверхфразовых единств в переводе»; Швейцер Л.Д. «Теория перевода: статус, проблемы, аспекты»; Левицкая Т.Р., Фитерман А.М. «Пособие по переводу с английского языка на русский»; Бархударов Л.С. «Язык и перевод»; Мизецкая В.Я. «Некоторые особенности перевода англоязычного драматургического текста»;  Комиссаров В.К. «Теория перевода»; Виноградов В.С. «Перевод. Общие и лексические вопросы»; Артуро Паскуаль «Эрнест Хемингуэй» - биография и творчество.

      Comparative analysis is the most frequent method of studying translation, its quality and pointing out some typical features of translation and estimates the techniques a translator used to reach the target of translation. The present work suggests the following investigation: overviewing the subject of translation, translation techniques, pointing out the principle grammatical transformations – lexical, morphological and syntactical and explaining on particular examples which role this or that type of transformation employed plays there. Thus, it will create the foundation to define the transformation role for each concrete example and then generalize it as a conclusion. All the theoretical material and terminology which precede the practical part of the thesis will be used for commenting each particular example.

       As a means of interlingual communication, translation is a transfer of meaning across cultures.  More specifically, translation is the process and result of creating in a target, or translating, language (TL) a text, which approximately the same communicative value as the corresponding text in the source language (SL). The target text, or translation, that is created by the translator never perfectly reflects, either in meaning or tone, the original source text (ST). The form and content of the original and its translation differ. This is due to the constraints imposed on the translator by formal and semantic differences between the source language and the target language. Nevertheless, the users of the target language usually accept a translation as a functional, structural, and semantic equivalent of the original. Even a very simple translation illustrates formal and semantic difference between the original and its translation. Leaving aside considerations of context, the English sentence “The student is reading a book” can be translated as “Студент читает книгу”. On a formal, or grammatical level, the Russian sentence is devoid of the meaning of the articles and the present continuous tense. The Russian sentence does not contain any explicit indication that a specific student is reading some unspecified book. Nor does it indicate that the process of reading is most likely taking place at the moment of speaking. However the Russian sentence carries some grammatical meaning which is absent in the English sentence. The verb “читает” is marked for person, number and conjugation while the noun “книгу” is feminine and is used in the accusative case. On a semantic level, the Russian sentence also contains some information absent from the English original. Some of the information lost or added in the process of translation may be irrelevant for effective communication and some of the information may be supplied or neutralized by context. It is important to understand that equivalence achieved in translation is relative.  
 

2. Levels of analysis and synthesis in translation

     The words “analysis” is of Greek origin. It means “the process of separating something into its constituent parts”. The word “synthesis” is also of Greek origin and means the combination of components to form a connected whole”. The translator is constantly involved in analyzing and synthesizing meaning, both while understanding the source text and creating the target text.

     The process of analysis and synthesis in which the translator is involved in takes place at least on 6 levels:

• Word level
• Phrase level
• Clause or sentence level
• Paragraph
• Text level
• Pragmatics, or sociocultural, level

 

     A word is a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used to form sentences with other similar elements. Words are the basic unit of language.

     A phrase is a small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit and not containing a finite verb. A finite verb has a specific tense, voice, person and number. It is used in the predicate of a sentence.

     A clause is a sentence which is used as part of a compound or complex sentence.

     A paragraph is a distinct section of a piece of writing, indicated by a new line, indentation, or numbering.

     A text is a written, printed or spoken piece of language regarded as a complete whole in terms of its form and content. A text may consist of one paragraph or, in rare cases, one sentence and word.

     Pragmatics is the study of language as it is used in a sociocultural context, including its effect on the participants in the process of communication. The translator must be aware of the situational aspects of language usage in order to produce authentic, i.e. culturally adequate, translations.  The translator has to work at all the six levels of text analysis and synthesis at the same time.