Translatioin of Political Literature

Translatioin of Political Literature

Plan

Introduction

Chapter I

§ I. Translation and its aims.

§ II. Translation of Political literature and terms.

Chapter II

§ I. Grammatical difficulties of translation

§ II. Lexical difficulties of translation

§ III. Stylistic difficulties of translation

§ IV. The difficulty of translation of set phrases and idioms

§ V. List of set expressions used in Political Literature

Conclusion

Summary

Introduction

In this Qualification Paper we’ve set forth to study the translation

methods of Political literature and political terms at a deeper level,

their types and ways of their translation of Political literature, to

consider the function of political literature in everyday life of the

humanity.

The object of this Qualification paper can be considered as one that

gives the detailed review of the ways political literature and political

terms can be translated into Russian language. It also helps to improve

one’s understanding of the principal rules of translation which plays

leading role while processing translation.

The aim of this work is to introduce the translation approach to

Political literature so that to make it easy to perceive for those willing

to keep up their educational and scientific carrier in the science of

translation, it was purposed to broaden their view on translation studies

and peculiar features while translating Political literature.

In this work we set the following tasks:

- to review all the sources of Political literature

- to reveal the methods of translation of Political literature

- to investigate grammatical, lexical, stylistic and phraseological

difficulties of translation of political literature

We should mention that this research work represents a great

theoretical value for those willing to take up their future carrier in the

field of translations as invaluable reference to the methods and the ways

of translation of Political literature.

And the practical value of this work involves the idea that

translation represents a field aimed at training future

translators/interpreters to translate verbal and written materials on

Political subjects basing on the study of International politics, to

differentiate the language features of English, Russian and other languages

as well as political lexicology, phraseology, syntax and style.

The source information for this research work has been carefully

studied and investigated before it was applied to the given work.

The originality of this work is in its creative approach to the study

and methods of translation, besides, it contains a detailed review of ways

and methods of translation.

The given Qualification paper contains introduction, two chapters,

conclusion and bibliography list.

The first chapter gives a detailed review of the study of the theory

of translation and also reveals the role of political literature and terms

in everyday life of the humanity which are believed to be interesting to

future translator/interpreters. It also discussed the methods of

translation of political literature with purpose to make it easier for

translator to achieve adequate translation in the target language.

The second chapter deals with the detailed study of grammatical,

lexical, stylistic difficulties involved in translation of political

literature. It also gives some hints on translation of idioms and set

expressions and their behavior in literature.

We have also attached some samples of translation of political set

expressions so that to enable the future translator to benefit from the

given paper in their further researches in the fields of translation.

In conclusion we have summed up the results of our laborious

investigation translation of political literature.

At the end of the research paper we have attached the bibliography

list to enable the future translator to use information sources used in

this Paper.

Chapter I.

§ I. Translation and its aims.

Most translators prefer to think of their work as a profession and

would like to see others to treat them like professionals rather than as

skilled or semi-skilled workers. But to achieve this, translators need to

develop an ability to stand back and reflect on what they do and how they

do it. Like doctors and engineers, they have to prove to themselves as well

as others that they are in control of what they do; that they do not just

translate well because they have ‘flair’ for translation, but rather

because, like other professionals, they have made a conscious effort to

understand various aspects of their work.

Unlike medicine and engineering, translation is a very young

discipline in academic terms. It is only just starting to feature as a

subject of study in its own right, not yet in all but in an increasing

number of universities and colleges around the world. Like any young

discipline, it needs to draw on the findings and theories of other related

disciplines in order to develop and formalize its own methods; but which

disciplines it can naturally and fruitfully be related to is still a matter

of some controversy. Almost every aspect of life in general and of the

interaction between speech communities in particular can be considered

relevant to translation, a discipline which has to concern itself with how

meaning is generated within and between various groups of people in various

cultural settings. This is clearly too big an area to investigate in one

go. So, let us just start by saying that, if translation is ever to become

a profession in the full sense of the word, translators will need something

other than the current mixture of intuition and practice to enable them to

reflect on what they do and how they do it. They will need, above all, to

acquire a sound knowledge of the raw material with which they work: to

understand what language is and how it comes to function for its users.

Translation is a process of rendering a text, written piece or a

speech by means of other languages. The difference of translation from

retelling or other kinds of transfer of a given text is that that

translation is a process of creating an original unity in contexts and

forms of original.

The translation quality is defined by its completeness and value. “The

completeness and value of translation means definite rendering of the

contextual sense of the original piece and a high-grade functional-

stylistic conformity.”

The concept “high-grade functional-stylistic conformity” clearly points

on two existing ways of rendering the form in unity with the meaning: the

first one is a reproduction of specific features of the form of the

original piece and the second one is the creation of functional

conformities of those features. It means when translating the specific

features of an original literature we should rather consider the style

inherent for the given genre but than direct copying the form of an

original. While translating, we should also remember that different lexical

and grammatical elements of an original might be translated differently if

accepted by the norms of conformity to the whole original. The translation

adequacy of separate phrases, sentences and paragraphs should not be

considered separately but along with achievement of the adequacy and

completeness of the translating piece as a whole because the unity of a

piece is created through collecting the components.

No matter how a translator (interpreter) is talented he should remember

two most important conditions of the process of translation: the first is

that the aim of translation is to get the reader as closely as possible

acquainted with the context of a given text and then second – to translate

– means to precisely and completely express by means of one language the

things that had been expressed earlier by the means of another language.

A translation can be done:

1. from one language into another, kin-language, non-kin,

2. from literary language into its dialect or visa versa

3. from the language of an ancient period into its modern state

The process of translation, no matter how fast it is, is subdivided

into two moments. To translate one should first of all to understand, to

perceive the meaning and the sense of the material.

Furthermore, to translate one should find and select the sufficient

means of expression in the language the material is translated into (words,

phrases, grammatical forms).

There are three, most identified types of translation: literary,

special and sociopolitical.

The ways of achieving the adequacy and completeness in those three

types of translation will never completely coincide with each other because

of their diverse character and tasks set to translator (interpreter).

The object of literary translation is the literature itself. And its

distinctive feature is a figurative-emotional impact on the reader, which

is attained through a great usage of different linguistic means, beginning

from epithet and metaphor up to rhythmical-syntactic construction of

phrases.

Thus, in order to preserve figurative-emotional impact on the reader

while translating a work of art, the translator (interpreter) will try to

render all the specific features of the translating material. That’s why,

on the first place one should reconstruct the specific features of an

original and the creation of functional conformities to the features of the

original play the subordinate role.

The objects of special translations are materials that belong to

different fields of human activities, science and technology. The

distinctive feature of this type of translation is an exact expression of

the sense of translating material, which is attained through wide usage of

special terms.

Thus, in order to render an exact and clear meaning while translating

such materials alongside with the selection of term equivalents, on the

first place one has to create functional conformities to the features of an

original, and the creation of specific features of the original play the

subordinate role.

And finally, the objects of social-politic translations are the

materials of propaganda and agitation character, and therefore a bright

emotional sense abundant with special terms.

Concerning the achievement of adequacy this type of translation

possesses the features of literary and special types of translation as

well.

§ II. Translation of Political literature and terms.

Political literature like any other scientific kind of literature have

languages items characteristic to them, that requires the translator to be

precise and sharp. Most books on general politics are characterized by the

passion of expression, polemic style and the specific feature is in

blending the elements of scientific speech from one side with different

emotionally colored means of expression from another side.

The translation of political literature can be considered in two ways:

as a field of linguistic activity and as a separate field in science.

As a field of linguistic activity translation of political literature

represents one of the types of special translations possessing as objects

of its activity different materials of political character.

The political translation comes out into a special field of study due

to its specific features of written and verbal speech on political topics,

which is specified by its essential character and the knowledge of this

science. Sometimes these features are so diverse that in order to

understand them (Russian and English politics as well) one should have a

special knowledge without which it would be very hard to clearly perceive

the inner sense on politics or a translated piece.

Therefore, the study of specific features of written and verbal speech

acquires great importance to translators (interpreters). To the features

mention above belong the following:

1. maximal filling the political literature with special political

terms, and in verbal speech (among the politicians) – filling it

with words of political jargon – slang.

2. presence of special idiomatic expressions and phraseological

units in verbal and written speech that are rarely used in

colloquial speech and general literature.

As an example, I should bring the following idioms: blitzkrieg –

молниеносная война, Comprehensive Program of Disarmament - Всеобъемлющая

программа разоружения, principal powers – крупные державы, status quo –

статус кво and many others. We have to mark - if the quantity of political

idioms is limited, then the amount of “politically” related phraseological

idioms is vast in English and Russian languages.

3. the presence of some stylistic deflection from general literary

norms is sometimes very great.

a) wide usage of elliptic constructions, especially in

periodically publishing materials, propaganda and other kinds

of politically important printing media.

b) preciseness and beauty of self-expression which is achieved by

the usage of elliptic constructions along with wide usage of

passive constructions and an often substitution of придаточных

предложений by absolute constructions and деепричастными

оборотами.

c) the presence of official writing style, mostly in documents of

official provisions that cover administrative and political

questions.

d) strictly regulated use of verbal forms and word phrases in

special chapters of political literature and political

documents.

As was told before, while translating a political character, like doing

any other special translation a great importance is given to translation of

special terms.

In our philological literature exist lots of definitions to the concept

of term, but the essence of majority comes to the following:

Term – is a word or a combination of words, which define a notion

(subject, a phenomenon, property, relation or a process) that is

characteristic for the given field of science, technology, art or a sphere

of social life.

Terms differ from the words of general usage by definite semantic

limitations and specific meanings they define. Its very hard to

overestimate the general and scientific meaning of terms since the concrete

knowledge demands definite expression and a term does not only fix the

concept by its notion (name) but specifies it diverging it from adjacent

components.

For better functioning, terms must express systematization of notions,

express their essence or at least be semantically neutral and at the same

time be unambiguous and precise.

The phenomenon of a separate field of science and the terms that fix

them should be systemized that offers gender availability around which

group notions are formed. Thus an English term representative which

presents a group notion and forms a group of notions that belong to this

group: representative forum (представительный форум), business world

representative (представитель делового мира), representative to the talks

(представитель на переговорах), representative to the public (представитель

общественности), representative of political circles (представитель

политических кругов), representative to NATO (представитель НАТО),

representative of various strata or the population (представитель различных

слоёв населения).

The capability of a term to express a systematic state of notions and

easily merge with new phrases that represent new group notions that

consequently appear along with the development of a definite field of

science or knowledge maybe called its systematic capability.

The systematic capability of notions helps us to clarify the relation

of notions, raise their semantic definiteness and ease their understanding

and remembering.

In terms, formed on the base of mother tongue we may differ direct

meaning and terminological meaning.

The direct meaning of a term is formed through the elements of the

language used for their formation; the terminological meaning defines the

concept of notion expressed by the term.

The terms, direct and terminological meaning of which correspond to

each other, correctly orientate and underline the so-called their

interrelation. These terms are able to express the essence of notions.

The terms, whose direct and terminological meaning does not correspond

to each other belong to semantically neutral group of terms.

And at last, the terms whose direct and terminological meaning

contradict each other, should be admitted as completely unsatisfactory

because they distort the genuine relations among the notions, disorientate

the hearer and do not possess any semantic definiteness.

Unambiguousness of a term also influences its clear semantic features

but since we do not have any researches in this field this concept cannot

always be applied. Therefore, up to 10% of English and American political

terms do not possess even a relative semantic definiteness, i.e.

definiteness in some political concerns. This situation may be explained by

the fact that the terms according to their nature are firstly simple words,

and consequently, they develop according to general laws of linguistics.

The result of this is the appearance terminological homonyms that hinder

the normal functioning of political terms in a language.

The definiteness of a term requires preciseness of an expressed idea.

It also raises the semantic definiteness of the term averting its misusage

according to it form.

Not all the terms, of course, possess the above-mentioned qualities,

but the translator/interpreter of political material should take them into

consideration while forming new terms and solving the question of

preference to one of the available term-synonyms.

The correct translation of political literature is a laborious work

despite the terms’ considerable possession of definite semantic clearness

and independence in usage.

While speaking of difficulties of translation, we imply as a matter of

the first importance, the translation general political literature, which

either do not yet have any equivalents in the translating language or have

several similar notion for the term in question or at least have one

equivalent but of doubtful adequacy. There are lots of word phrases and

idiom and terms of this kind and their number is growing with development

of technology and interrelation of people and especially with the

development of Political sciences.

To achieve a correct translation we can recommend to group the

political literature and the used in them according to their field of

application and some principles of translation of each group. All the

political terms and idioms existing in politics can be divided into three

groups:

1. terms – defining the notions of a foreign reality but identical

to the reality of the Russian language march - марш

2. terms – defining the notions of a foreign reality absent in the

Russian one but possessing generally accepted term-equivalents

National Guard – Национальная Гвардия, Territorial Army –

Территориальная Армия.

3. terms – defining the notions of a foreign reality that are not

available in the Russian language and not having generally

accepted term-equivalents: alert hanger – ангар вылета по

тревоге.

The adequacy of translation of the first group is achieved by the use

of terms implementing corresponding notions in Russian language.

At the same time, it is very important for the notion expressed by the

notion of another language to correspond in meaning rendered in Russian

language only by its main, essential attributes. The translation of an

English term poll into Russian опросы населения (голосование) is possible

only for the correspondence of their principal meaning though the

organization and methods of polling are quite different in both countries.

An adequate translation of the second group is comprised in the

selection of generally accepted Russian terminological equivalents.

Even terms, not fully meeting the above mentioned requirements due to

the terminological meaning fixed for it through the linguistic activity

will adequately fit into these rules.

An adequate translation of the words of the third group may be achieved

by means of creation of a new terms, which will have to completely merge

into the existing system of political terms underlying the systematization

of available notions, reflect the essence of the notion it expresses or at

least not to contradict it and possess an unambiguousness within its field

of application.

Thus, we have considered all the general principals in achieving and

adequate translation including translation of political literature and the

essential features of translation of political terms.

Chapter II

§ I. Grammatical difficulties of translation

The translation process of political literature from one language into

another is inevitable without necessary grammatical transformations (change

of structure). It gets great importance while making translation to add or

omit some words since the structures of languages are quite different.

Grammatical transformations are characterized by various principles –

grammatical, and lexical as well, though the principal role is given to

grammatical ones. Very often these grammatical changes are mixed so that

they have lexical-grammatical character.

The vigil of the British Embassy, supported last week by many prominent

people and still continuing, the marches last Saturday, the resolutions or

organizations have done something to show that Blair doesn’t speak for

Britain.

Круглосуточная демонстрация у здания британского консульства,

получившая на прошлой недели поддержку многих видных деятелей, всё ещё

продолжается. Эта демонстрация и состоявшиеся в субботу поход, а также

предпринятые различными организациями резолюции, явно свидетельствуют о

том, что Блэр отнюдь не говорит от имени всего английского народа.

While translating this article we have made the following changes.

The sentence was divided into two parts. We often do that when

translating short newspaper articles (news in brief) and the first lines of

the articles of informative character (leads). Practically, we are forced

to do that because the first lines usually contain main information given

in the paragraph. These sentences containing various information are not

characteristic to the style of Russian writing. The division of the

sentence made us repeat the word демонстрация.

The word vigil – бдение acquired here quite another political meaning

круглосуточная демонстрация. Since ночное бодрствование is one of the

semantic components of the word vigil the term круглосуточная демонстрация

fully renders the sense of the given word. Besides, we have to mention that

one of the words was translated like word expression получившая поддержку.

We have also added additional words like у здания (посольства),

состоявшиеся (в субботу походы), а также принятые различными (организациями

резолюции). The word last in the last Saturday was omitted because it would

make the translation more difficult, but we can conceive it by the

contextual meaning of the sentence.

The strengthening function of the phrase have done something to show

was rendered by the adverb явно свидетельствуют.

And the English cliche to speak for was translated by the Russian one

говорить от имени. And at last I should say that I metonymically translated

the word Britain into весь английские народ.

Thus, while translating this sentence we have made use of grammatical

transformations and lexical as well.

As you know, English has an analytical character and therefore the

relation between words is mostly expressed by word-order, that’s by

syntactic means, and morphological means play the secondary role. The

priority of the role of syntactical changes appears in many cases but they

do not always have similar conformities in Russian language which makes the

translator make use of various transformations while translating a piece of

political literature. Here we can point to well-known features of the

location of syntactic items in the English, e.i. the combination of

logically incompatible homogeneous part of the sentence, the essential use

of introductory sentences, the break of logical chain of the sentence, and

especially while expressing the noun and the attribute of the sentences.

The syntactic structure of a language imposes restrictions on the way

messages may be organized in that language. The order in which functional

elements such as subject, predicator, and object may occur is more fixed in

some languages than in others. Languages vary in the extent to which they

rely on word order to signal the relationship between elements in the

clause. Compared to languages such as German, Russian, Finnish, Arabic, and

Eskimo, word order in English is relatively fixed. The meaning of a

sentence in English, and in languages with similarly fixed word order such

as Chinese, often depends entirely on the order in which the elements are

placed. (cf. The man ate the fish and The fish ate the man).

The structural features of English language require structural

completeness of the sentence. One can not omit a word without supplying

another one instead. This criterion is governed by stylistic preference of

the language to prevent word and make the sentence more emphatic. Even if

the repetition is frequent in English its use in most cases is logically

required and stylistically proved to be necessary. Otherwise, repetition is

accepted as unnecessary component of the sentence or one of the stylistic

shortcomings of the translation. The demand of syntactical completeness of

the sentences and others stylistic criteria explain here the wide usage of

structure filling words (слова заместители). The structure filling words

include pronouns (one, ones, this, that, these, those) and verbs (to do, to

be, to have, shall, should, will, would, can, could, might, may, must,

ought, need, dare).

Its quite evident that the structure filling words do not have

denotative meaning, they are absolutely contextual. They should be related

to conforming nouns and the verb form the fill and only afterwards they

acquire lexical completeness. The verb-filling words are usually divided

into two parts: fully filling and partially filling ones. To the first

group belong the verb to do in the Present Indefinite which act in the role

of fully filling word. It can replace the verbs of function. To the second

group belong all other structure filling words. They act like a part of the

whole just like the representative of compound verb form.

While translating the structure filling words we have to use words with

complete meaning (sometimes pronouns) or make use of some other kinds of

functional filling.

The new British Government will face many problems, both acute and

chronic: an acute one will be Northern Ireland, acute among chronic ones

will be inflation and rising prices.

Новое британское правительство столкнётся со многими проблемами как

неотложного, так и затяжного характера. К неотложным проблемам относится

положение в Северной Ирландии, а к проблемам, носящим затяжной характер, -

инфляция и рост цен.

While translating this piece we had to decipher the structure filling

words and render their meaning by means of conforming nouns.

When comparing the grammatical categories and forms of English and

Russian languages we identify the following differences: a) the absence of

the categories in one of the comparing languages, b) partial correspondence

and c) complete correspondence. The necessity of grammatical

transformations arise only on two first cases. When comparing the English

with Russian we should mention that Russian does not have the notions like

article and gerund and absolute nominative constructions as well. Partial

conformity and unconformity in meaning and usage of corresponding forms and

constructions also demands grammatical transformations. We can refer to

this case the partial unconformity of the category of number, partial

unconformity in the forms of passive constructions, partial unconformity of

the form of infinitive and gerund and some other differences in expressing

the modality of the clause and so on.

First of all we should consider the article for article both definite

and indefinite which despite its abstract meaning very frequently demands

semantic expression in translation. As we know both these articles

originated from pronouns; the definite one originated from index pronoun

and the indefinite one from indefinite pronoun, which refers to number one.

These primary meanings are sometimes obvious in their modern usage. In this

cases their lexical meaning should be rendered in translation otherwise the

Russian sentence would be incomplete and ambiguous for denotative meaning

of articles is an inseparable part of the whole context meaning of a given

sentence. There are cases when classifying function of indefinite articles

is so obvious that one should render its meaning by some lexical item.

It is commonly stated that government should resign if defeated in a

major issue in the House of Commons which has been made one of confidence.

(The Times).

Обычно утверждают, что правительство должно подать в отставку, если оно

потерпит поражение в Палате общин по какому-нибудь серьёзному вопросу,

который оппозиция считает вопросом о доверии правительству.

In this case the indefinite article acquires the meaning of the pronoun

some. One can easily see its historical relation with the number one in the

following example:

Yet, H.G. Wells had not an enemy on earth.

Однако у Герберта не было ни единого врага на свете.

As has been pointed before the most difficult are cases when

classifying meanings of indefinite articles demand semantic transfer in

translation.

We need a Government which believes in planning ahead for jobs and

which will use available labor to build homes for the British people.

Нам нужно такое правительство, которое было бы убеждено в

целесообразности планирования занятости и использовало бы наличную рабочую

силу в строительстве домов для населения.

The emphatic role of the indefinite article in its classifying function

is more expressed in the following sentence.

The Vietnam war had revealed the true nature of a U.S. foreign policy

that can be purchased ruthlessly for the benefit of a view in the “military-

industrial complex”.

Война во Вьетнаме вскрыла истинную природу той внешней политики США,

которая проводится беспощадными методами ради выгоды немногих

представителей «военно-промышленного комплекса».

Pretty often the definite article demands translation in cases when it

comes before numerals.

The two sides also signed a Treaty in the Limitation of Underground

Nuclear Tests.

Обе стороны подписали договор об ограничении подземных испытаний

атомного оружия.

The Southern nations remained quiet between 1948 and 1958 as Latin

America’s economy grew at an impressive annual rate of 4.3 percent.

С 1948 по 1958 южные страны пребывали в относительном спокойствии, в то

время как экономика Латинской Америки развивалась впечатлительным темпом в

4.3 процента в год.

In the following sentence both articles demands translation.

The influence and authority of the UN Secretariat depends to an extent

(though not nearly to the extent that is popularly supposed) on the talents

of one individual – the Secretary-General. The job is a peculiar one.

Влияние и авторитет секретариата ООН зависят в известной степени (хотя

и не в такой степени, как обычно полагают) от качеств одного человека –

Генерального секретаря. Это чрезвычайно своеобразная должность.

The lexical meaning of the article is strongly expressed when it acts

in like a link connecting parts of the sentences or two separate sentences

as given in the example above. From the mentioned above cases we can judge

that missing article translation may lead to misinterpretation or incorrect

and incomplete translation of a sentence.

The role of verb complexes in English is quite evident therefore we

will consider only some peculiar cases of verb transformations during

translation.

First of all let us consider the verb construction with the preposition

for:

…American military bases on foreign territories which are intended for

launching missiles possessed by United States’ armed forces.

… американские военные базы на территориях других государств, которые

предназначены для запуска ракет американскими ВВС.

In this case the infinitive construction is translated like adverbial

modifier of purpose.

The construction with secondary predicate (so-called Nominative with

the Infinitive) is widely used in newspaper style due to its preciseness

and because it help to avoid the responsibility for the given information.

The United States Congress is aimed to control all the financial

expenses of the Government.

Целью конгресса Соединённых Штатов является контроль всех расходов

правительства.

It is natural that transformation is required while translating

sentences with participles of absolute nominative construction.

But often enough grammatical transformations are necessary while

rendering conforming forms and constructions for some divergence in their

meaning and usage. Such differences of opinions are observed in cases of

usage of the category of number. This refers to both countable and

uncountable nouns. Countable nouns have single and plural forms in both

languages that usually coincide still we observe cases when their usage is

different, ex.:

War Atrocity on Peace Conference Eve (news head).

Зверства (интервентов) накануне мирной конференции

Concerning uncountable nouns, especially those expressing abstract

notions we may have much more difficulties because most of them are

paradigmatic. For example: ink – чернила, money – деньги and so on.

Increasingly, Southern Africa is becoming the arena of national

liberation struggles.

Южная Африка всё больше и больше становится районом национально-

освободительной борьбы.

Sometimes, despite the availability of the plural form in Russian – its

usage is impossible owing to difference in combination and usage.

The Nile Valley appears to have been unfit for human habitation during

the Stone Ages.

Долина Нила, по-видимому, была не пригодна для жизни человека на

протяжении всего каменного века (во все периоды каменного века).

In Russian the Stone Age expression is of a historical nature and is

never used in plural.

In cases when plural form is to be preserved for it carries some

inherent sense one has to apply countable nouns, ex.:

Strikes broke out in many British industries.

В ряде отраслей промышленности Англии вспыхнули забастовки.

Sometimes, owing to some reasons some of constructions has wider usage

in one languages comparing with other languages. The best example of this

is the passive form – widely used in English mostly due to disappearance of

word flexion. As a result, both indirect and predicative object maybe

transformed into the objects of passive construction.

Stones and bottles were showered upon a Negro demonstration in

Milwaukee by white racists.

Белые расисты обрушили град камней и бутылок на негритянскую

демонстрацию в Милуоки (забросали камнями и бутылками).

We should notice that the passive-active transformation can not give

sufficient result for in passive construction the stress is being made on

the object of action and in the active construction the stress is being

made on the agent of action. The widespread use of passive construction in

English happens often enough because it is explained by unimportance of the

doer of that action and it is most often in newspaper style at the same

time the most important is to attract attention to the passage. Since the

structure and word order of simple sentence is subject + predicate + object

the importance of stylistics is bigger then to distinguish the object one

chooses the passive construction.

Divergence are found in some other cases of infinitive usage –

infinitive in substantivized constructions (like post-positive attribute)

and infinitive expressing following actions, for example:

The president warned of drastic steps to be taken against racialists in

the Zambian copper belt.

Президент предупредил, что будут предприняты решительные меры против

белых расистов в Медном поясе Замбии.

The infinitive functioning as attribute is translated into object

clause with the verb in the Future tense.

The Continuative Infinitive is often mistaken for the infinitive of

purpose, but in this function it expresses the action following the after

the action expressed by predicate and represents the logical development of

things.

The Soviet Union decided to sign the Treaty with Germany and only did

to discover that Germany itself violated it two years later.

Советский Союз решил заключить договор с Германией. Но два года спустя

Германия сама нарушила его.

The Continuative infinitive very often is used with the adverb only

which stresses it. This emphatic function can be rendered in many ways.

Thus, all the considered cases – absence of conforming form, partial

correspondence, differences in character and use – urge translators to make

necessary grammatical transformations while translating some piece. Those

grammatical transformations maybe divided into following types:

1) substitution

2) transposition

3) omission (ellipsis)

4) supplementation

Substitution is one of the grammatical relations among the parts of the

sentences. In substitution, an item (or items) is replaced by another item

(or items), ex:

I like politics. And I do.

In this example, do is a substitute for like politics . Items commonly

used in substitution in English include do, one, and the same, as in the

following examples from Halliday and Hasan:

You think US will start the war against Iraq? – No one does.

We make use of substitution while translating a piece because of

several reasons: absence of similar construction in Russian language,

unconformity in usage of corresponding forms and constructions and some

lexical reasons, which include different word usage and different norms of

combinability in English and Russian and the absence of the part of speech

with corresponding meaning.

An attempted overthrow in Peru.

Попытка совершить переворот в Перу.

In Russian we do not have the conforming participle II of the verb

пытаться. And this made us change the part of speech; the participle

attempted was translated into Russian by the noun попытка. The expression

попытка переворота does not conform to the norms of Russian language that’s

why we have to apply additional word совершить.

While translating the following text we will have to use substitution

several times.

On the whole the “popular’’ press – with the New York Daily News as its

cheer-leader – is vociferous in its support of the President’s policies and

merciless toward those who attack them. But among the so-called “quality”

papers led by the New York Times there is a growing mood of doubt and

questioning.

В общем «массовые» газеты, во главе с Нью-Йорк дейли ньюс», громогласно

поддерживают политику президента и беспощадно обрушиваются на тех, кто

критикует её. Но среди так называемых «качественных» газет, возглавляемых

«Нью-Йорк таймс», всё больше растут сомнение и неуверенность (в её

правильности).

In the first sentence are used the verbal noun, verb link and two

predicative parts expressed by adjectives with object clauses. In this

translation verbal nouns very replaced by predicative ones (именные

сказуемые были заменены глагольными): поддерживают and обрушиваются. Both

predicative parts of the sentence have been translated by adverbs:

громогласно, беспощадно. In the second sentence the introductory

construction there is was translated by predicative verb and the participle

growing was transformed into the function of an attribute. The noun mood

was omitted and its attribute of doubt and questioning was turned into its

object.

The transformation of ‘active’ into ‘passive’ is also when a translator

uses substitution.

More light was shed yesterday on the effect of C.S. gas, which was

claimed by Pentagon to be virtually harmless to health.

Вчера поступили дополнительные сведения о вредном действии газа C.S.,

который, по утверждению Пентагона, якобы не опасен для здоровья.

The phraseological unit more light was shed was translated by means of

lexical transformation and the passive construction was replaced by an

active one. The passive construction in the object clause also undergone

lexical transformation – verbal construction was substituted by substantive

one: по утверждению.

This example can illustrate the fact that lexical and grammatical

transformations are closely related with each other.

Transposition, that’s, change of structure of the sentence may be

caused by several reasons. But the main of them, as it has been mentioned

before is the difference in the structure of the English and Russian

languages. The fixed order of words in English bears hierarchic character,

first come the primary parts of the sentence; noun, predicate followed by

secondary parts. In Russian the word order is not fixed but one can observe

the tendency to locate the main information at the end of sentences

expressing it be the noun. The academic grammar of Russian points that the

word order in Russian sentences follows the model: adverbial modifier,

predicate and then the noun – that’s the order absolutely opposite to

English. In Russian, the secondary part of the sentence can stand at the

beginning if it represents the starting point of expression and introduces

theme of given information, ex:

Вчера в Вашингтоне состоялась пресс-конференция.

The essence of the information is пресс-конференция – which is

expressed by the noun located at the end of the sentence. Nevertheless,

this word-order is not obligatory, ex:

Премьер-министр выступил вчера по телевидению.

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