The Role of Grammatical Transformations While Translating

     Mostly, translator takes the norms of his native language, its traditions, due to that one animals, plants, birds are feminine, and others are masculine, thus, changing one gender to another one. Change of the gender of nouns also depends on a word which a translator chooses for the target text among a great variety of synonyms. Nevertheless, the category of gender is rather developed in Russian that’s why the amount of transformation increases in this respect.  

2.2.4. Change of Parts of Speech

  Change of parts of speech is one of the most frequent morphological transformations. Such changes result from “different word use and their combinatory rules in English and Russian, and in some cases – absence of such a part of speech in Russian”[8].

  Noun is subject to such a morphological transformation most. While translating from English into Russian, an English verbal noun is converted into a finite verb.

     It is worth mentioning that some English nouns are translated as finite verbs and as verbal nouns.

     Translation of the predicate often provokes grammatical transformations, what is usually related with change of parts of speech (the latter results in syntactical transformations).

 
 

     There are cases when other parts of speech are changed. So, pronoun is often subject to transformation (converted into a noun).

Adjectives are often converted into nouns and backwards. For example,

 

Participle is often translated with a finite verb.

 

     An adjective which had an attributive function was converted into an adverb describing the way how the name sounds in Spanish. Such transformations occur rather often because the combination of a verb with an adverb describing the action is more typical of Russian. Also the transposition and transformation are worth mentioning because, as we can see, the verb have was rendered as звучит and actually the supplement name became the subject in the Russian sentence.

     Translation generates some other types of changes which may often correlate with change of sentence parts, thus, causing rearrangements of syntactical structure of the sentence.  
 

2.2.5. Unconformity of the Tense

     Sometimes the source sentences are translated into the target language without strict observance of the tense employed. It depends on the stylistical features and syntactical requirements. There cases when Present Simple is translated as Future Simple. In fact, it is the so called stylistic Future.

 

 

   Summing up morphological transformations, it is necessary to point out that:

1. The category of definiteness /indefiniteness, which is presented with corresponding articles in English, is often translated with additional lexical units to reach equal meaning and stylistic framing. It often results in further transformations within a sentence.
2. A translator should substitute singular with plural and backward if it requires norms of the languages. Since English has no category of gender, it should be introduced in Russian translated text. Besides, in the cases when pronouns are introduced of certain gender, a translator should consider not only grammatical features of the source language, but also peculiarities of national mind of native speakers.
3. Change of parts of speech is one of the most frequent transformation (nouns, pronouns, verbs, non-finite verbs, and adjectives). So, parts of speech are changed to reach equal meaning and expressiveness, thus, causing the change of syntactical structure, which will be considered in a detailed way in the following chapter.  Nevertheless, sometimes change of parts of speech cam be considered as inevitable in translation because changes can be explained by combinatory norms of words implied.
4. Translation’s decisions on unconformity of tenses occur mostly due to stylistic preferences and a little number of  Russian grammatical tenses. There are only 3 tenses in Russian as compared with very diversified tense system in English. That is the reason for a set of transformation typical of synthetical language that is Russian.

 
 

2.3. Syntactical transformations

2.3.1.Transposition of sentence members

   Transposition of sentence members results in change of syntactical structure of the sentence. This happens when a part of speech is changed. Considerable transposition of syntactical structure is connected with change of principle members of a sentence, especially, the subject. In English-Russian translations the reason for such changes is that “ the English subject seldom functions as the subject of the action”[5], for example:

• The object of the action (the subject is substituted with the supplement),
• Markers of time (the subject is substituted with adverbial modifier of time),
• Definition of place (the subject is substituted with adverbial modifier of place),
• Definition of cause (the subject is substituted with adverbial modifier of cause), etc.

  The reason for grammatical transformation in English is frequent use of nouns which signify inanimate objects or notions, as “the agent of the action (i.e. the subject), that can be considered as a sort of personification. Such personification is not a stylistic device at all, because it is a linguistic phenomenon, but not that of speech and does not have individual character”[8].

  One of the most wide spread syntactical transformations of this kind is substitution of an English passive pattern with a Russian active pattern, thus, “converting the English subject into the Russian supplement in the sentence; and in a Russian sentence the subject is the word which corresponds with the English supplement with by or there is no subject at all (the so called “indefinite-personal pattern); Passive Voice in English is converted into Active voice in Russian”[9].

  It should also be pointed out that sometimes the translator succeeds in keeping the structure of the source text without stylistic losses for the target text. For example,

  Transformations of such a kind (Passive into Active) are rather frequent and considered in many books and manuals on Grammar of English which are supposed for Russian students. They are reversible like other transformations above mentioned in the present work. The opposite transformation is applied (active into passive) while translating from Russian into English.

  There are many cases when the English subject is translated as the adverbial modifier. This transformation occurs when the English subject is in the beginning of the sentence and expresses some adverbial notions. In such cases the English subject becomes the adverbial modifier of place in Russian.

  One should remember that members of the sentence are changed due to stylistic purposes but not grammatical ones.

2.3.2. Transformation of Simple Sentence into Complex Sentence.

  The most relevant reason is of system character. Transformation is usually applied while translating simple English sentences with complex syntactical components – Infinitive, Gerund, and Absolute Constructions. “There is no Russian system analogue of the English syntactical complexes. That makes translation transformations inevitable”[10]. As a rule, when such complexes are translated into Russia, the type of the sentence is changed, and “the simple sentence converts into the complex sentence, more rarely into a compound sentence”[10].

  Simple sentences in English texts are subject to internal fragmentation while converting into complex structures in translation. Transformations can be explained by some grammatical reasons (for example, absence of the same category in Russian).

 

  Absence of the category of Gerund is the reason for this kind of transformation. Gerund is a very broad category in English which can be rendered into Russian with a lot of grammatical means  - noun, verb, clause, etc. Therefore, the simple sentence containing Gerund as the subject was transformed into the compound sentence where Gerund is represented as the subordinate clause.

  In other cases transformations are the result of stylistic reasons.

  Passive patterns are less employed in Russian as compared with English and have absolutely different stylistic connotation. English Passive is stylistically neutral; though it is more used in bookish and written speech, meanwhile in Russian Passive prevails only in bookish and written speech of official and scientific character[10].

  Reduction and simplification of complex syntactical structure result in drop of polysemy, creating monosemantic relations among components: “Translator analyses the initial sentence, transforms it into simpler and more definite forms, transposes them into the source language system and then reestablishes messages at this level into the source language system and then transpose them into the target language”[11].

3. Transformation of Complex Sentence into Simple Sentence

  Normative and stylistic factors are the main reasons for the syntactical transformation of this type in literary translation. In particular, there are a lot of complex sentences in English texts as compared with Russian ones.

 

  Thus, subordinate clauses may convert into participle (participle clause), adverbial participle (adverbial participle clause), and a verbal noun with preposition.

  English complex sentences with the patterns It (was)…that (who) are often translated as simple sentences in Russian. “ This regularity occurs mostly while translating attributive clause and adverbial clause”[12].

  The emphatic construction was transformed in an adverbial modifier of place but nevertheless it is stressed more that others parts of the sentence.  While translating similar construction from English, complex sentence usually is transformed into a simple one with a range of supplements substituting the emphatic constructions of the target text. It is the result of the difference between language systems of English and Russian, thus, causing lexical addition in the Russian text. Russian emphasis is often expressed lexically as compared with syntactical emphasis of English. 

  Emphatic constructions are rather difficult to translate because of hard search of the right and equivalent mean in the target language. The Russian language is rich with expressive means but they are mostly of lexical character but nevertheless the following example demonstrates that the lexical changes cause transposition of the whole sentence.

This short utterance involves at least 3 translation techniques to render the peculiarities of the original phrase. Moreover, we should mention such a translation technique as inversion to comment on this particular example. Inversion is the changing of the usual order of words and used to give emphasis or to be rhetorical in more formal situations, in political speeches, on the news, and also in literature.  Some native speakers may also use them occasionally in day-to-day conversation.  In the previous chapters we mentioned that Hemingway used a bit illiterate way of making up sentences to show that the utterance was not pronounced by a native English speaker but, in this particular novel, by a Spaniard. Thus, only a native English can distinguish the phrase uttered by a foreigner from that of native speaker. Unfortunately, this colouring is lost in translation. But here the translator got through the situation and made the phrase sound natural and very colloquial. Such words as Вот and и which are put in a little bit inverted order create the colloquial colouring. Also we should point out that inversion is present not only in the source text but in the target text as well because of the adverbial modifier of place вот через теснину. Here translator’s knowledge of the author’s literary style should be marked positively because otherwise this phrase would lose its ideal content.