The Role of Grammatical Transformations While Translating

">Here approximately the same set of grammatical transformation is used. The translator keeps the same way of narration involving such word as печален, предатель, and бывает. It proves that the translation is not only mechanical reproduction of the foreign text but also a well disciplined and carefully planned literary work. As for some other transformation employed in the above example one can notice that the translator introduced a person into his translation. The translator overviews the idea from the point of view of a person who can betray, quit and have such sadness. The word sell-out is very specific here because it possesses a series of meaning which are different from and connection between these meaning can be traced with the help of association and figurative thinking. Sell-out is распродажа, торг, полный аншлаг, концерт, and измена. The necessary word goes the last in the list of meaning that a dictionary provides.

 
 
 
 
 
 

     The given examples show that one should consider transformations within one sentence as a complex unity. Sometimes one transformation provokes another one, thus, resulting, in a sort of linguistic “chain reaction” but syntactically based one. The role of each transformation is important for the target text because it approaches the source text and the source idea to notions and construction which are understandable for the foreign readers.

     100 examples were analyzed within the framework of the thesis. 56 examples were considered in the present work and given comments on with main transformation techniques pointed out and explanation. It is necessary to consider transformations as a complex unity with a unit of translation. The volume of the unit depends on translator’s decision, stylistic norms of the target language and certain linguistic factors (absence of some categories in the target language). The following table involves only general examples on types of transformations.

     Here are examples sourced from the 40 pages of the novel “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. The percentage shows the occurrence of certain types of transformation within the material understudied. Some of the examples reveal the translator’s technique of keeping the author’s style with means of the target language.

Comparison of the part of the novel resulted in the following percentage: lexical transformations account for 23 %, morphological ones – 30 %, grammatical ones – 50 %. The rest 7% account for other types of transformations that can be grouped as occasional ones and not relating to the subject of the thesis.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Conclusion

     Comparative linguistic analysis is an important method of research works that is analysis of form and contents of the text by comparing them with those of the source text. The method was applied to the present research work. Analysis of the literary text is of special interest. Comparative analysis allows revealing the translation technique, equivalent units and finding out what transformations should be applied to make a translation quite equivalent in terms of lexis, grammar, and stylistics.

      Transformations can be lexical and grammatical depending on the source lingual units which were considered as material for transformations. English and Russian are different in terms of lexis and grammatical systems that is why study of grammatical transformations is vital for literary translation. The study of grammatical transformations helps to reveal main obstacles and difficulties to create stylistically and emotionally equivalent target text. A translator will be more linguistically oriented concerning the translation from certain language (English, in particular) after studying, classifying and pointing out the most frequent grammatical transformations. However, translation problem focuses on choice of the right word and implementing a complex of lexical and grammatical transformations, shifting from lexical units to grammatical ones. And it is well known from translation practice that a translator pays his attention to some unknown lexical units, then peculiar grammatical patterns are considered involving those words and finally, translator processes the entire unit of translation. As it was mentioned, the translation unit varies from a word to sentence and even more.

      Word formation is related with lexicology but the essence of word formations can be revealed only within texts, within a sentence, first of all. Word formation affixes in the two languages differ not only in terms of their productivity but also in terms of additional connotations. Meanwhile, change of a part pf speech is very frequent while translation and one of the most productive translation techniques.

     Russian is rich with stylistic resources as compared with English that has limited set of such means. Due to that, the translator often has to introduce additional modal and emotionally expressive words into a literary translation to reach the adequate translation that is implementing addition.

      On the other hand, Russian possesses a great number of some expressive suffixes which English lacks considerably, thus, inducing repetition, introducing additional words into translation, word combinations and phraseology.

      Analyzing morphological transformations allows pointing out that change of parts of speech is the most frequent transformation. Change of sentence parts is important to reach expressively equivalent translation. But it often causes syntactical transformations. It is possible to say that some morphological transformations result in syntactical transformations almost inevitably.

     Articles define subjects in English but as there is no such a category in Russian, the target text involves additional lexical means. The meaning and connotation of an article is translated with adding such words as волне, один, какой-нибудь, adjective +такое, так + adjective, вот.

      As there is no grammatical gender in English, a translator should effect this kind of transformation with national features and peculiarities taken into account.

      Principal types of syntactic transformations can be generalized into 4 main classes:

1. Transpositions: changing the order of lingual units in comparison with the order in the source text. Words, word combinations, parts of a complex sentence and independent sentences within a text are main elements subject to transposition. The role of transposition is to arrange word and elements of the sentence in the target text in such an order that would be comprehensive and idiomatic for the target language. Transposition reflects the way of catching an idea by a foreign reader.
2. Substitution or changes are one of the most frequent translation transformations. A translator can change grammatical units and lexical ones. Thus, grammatical and lexical changes are effected. Grammatical changes involve:
1. change pf a word form;
2. change of parts of speech;
3. change of sentence members (transposition);
4. syntactical changes within a complex or a compound sentence.
3. Additions: this type of transformations focuses on compensating losses of appropriate words while translation.
4. Omission: it is opposite addition. Semantically abundant words are usually omitted while translating that is they express notions which are clear from the context without them.

   The translator determines the role of each transformation because it is the translator who decides which transformation is necessary to render the author’s idea. Some transformations are supposed to keep the original structure of the sentence; others transpose it considerably but help to create idiomatic language of the source text and, thus, implementing its main role that is convey the idea and emotion which the author aspired to tell the reader.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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