Grace грация, и

GRAMMAR TRANSFORMATIONS

1) The choice of grammatical units in TL largely depends on the semantics and combinability of its lexical elements. Therefore there are practically no permanent grammatical equivalents. The variable equivalents in the field of grammar may be analogous forms in TL or different forms with a similar meaning.

It is common knowledge that English and Russian have different grammatical structures and categories that is why translating procedures comprise four types of transformation involving units of SL grammar: transpositions (перестановки), replacements (замены), additions (добавления) and omissions (опущения). The translator may solve his problem by preserving the syntactic structure of the source text and using the analogous TL grammatical forms or a “word-for-word translation”. This may be called “a zero transformation” and can be easily exemplified, e.g.: John took Marry by the hand. Джон взял Мэри за руку. Every word in the text used in a particular grammatical form and all the words are arranged in sentences in a particular syntactic order.

For instance, both English and Russian verbs have their infinitive forms. The analogy, however, does not preclude a number of formal and functional differences. We may recall that the English infinitive has perfect forms, both active and passive, indefinite and continuous, which are absent in the respective grammatical category in Russia. The idea of priority or non-performed action expressed by the perfect infinitive is not present in the meaning of the Russian infinitive and has to be rendered in translation by some other means.

“The train seems to arrive at 5”. – “Поезд, видимо, приходит в 5”.
“The train seems to have arrived at 5”. – “Поезд, видимо, пришел в 5”.
A dissimilarity of the English and Russian infinitives can be also found in the functions they perform in the sentence. Note should be taken, for example, of the continuative infinitive which in English denotes an action following that indicated by the predicate: “Parliament was dissolved, not to meet again for eleven years”. “Парламент был распущен и не созывался в течении 11 лет“. “He came home to find his wife gone”. “Он вернулся домой и обнаружил, что жена ушла”.
In most cases the translator has to resort to various types of grammatical substitutes.

Transposition is the rearrangement of elements of SL in comparison with TL.

Rearrangement of elements in TL may be exercised at different levels: word-order, phrases, clauses and sentences. The necessity to rearrange elements may be caused by various reasons:
- differences in the accepted word-order in SL and TL;
- availability of emphasis or its absence;
- diversity of means of communicative syntax.
A most common example of dissimilarity between the parallel syntactic devices in the two languages in the rule of sequence: the predicate is preceded by the subject and followed by the object. This order of words is often changed in the Russian translation since in Russian the word order is used to show the communicative load of different parts of the sentence, the elements conveying new information (the rheme) leaning towards the end of non-emphatic sentences. Thus if the English sentence ”My son entered the room” is intended to inform us who entered the room, its Russian equivalent will be. “В комнату вошел мой сын.” But in case its purpose is to tell us what my son did, the word order will be preserved: “Мой сын вошел в комнату.”

Replacement is such a transformation when grammatical forms, parts of speech, parts of the sentence, specific English grammatical phenomena, types of clauses, syntactic bonds are substituted by other grammatical forms, parts of speech, parts of the sentence, types of clauses and syntactic bonds.

In accordance with the requirements of the grammatical system of TL it may become necessary to change the grammatical form of a word:
“And your hair’s so lovely.” У тебя такие красивые волосы.
“The house was sold for 10 thousand dollars.” Дом был продан за 10 тысяч долларов.
Now, try to translate the following English words of the two columns into Russian and pass your comments on your translation.

A watch Opera-glasses

a clock water-colours
a funeral wages
a vacation dregs
an election cinders
a sledge ashes
money contents
chess headquarters
ink barracks
wood means
yeast summons
wallpaper stairs
fruit customs
twilight eaves
scent (perfume) works
knowledge shambles
advice ethics
search oats
applause whereabouts

A similar difference can be observed if one compares the finite forms of the verb in English and in Russian. The English and the Russian verbs both have active and passive forms, but in English the passive forms are more often used. As a result, the meaning of the passive verb in the source text is often rendered by an active verb in the translation: “This port can be entered by big ships only during the tide. Большие корабли могут заходить в этот порт только во время прилива”.