Transformation Technique in the Process of Translation

Translation transformations are complete changes of the appearance of atranslated word, phrase, or sentence. In foreign translation theory, transformations are known as shifts of translation. Translation transformations can be of threecategories:

-grammatical transformations,

-lexical (semantic) transformations,

-complex (lexical and grammatical) transformations

When translating, a person transforms the source text into a new form. Transformation is converting one form into another one. There are two transformation concepts in the theory of translation.

In one of them, transformation is understood as an interlinguistic process, i.e., converting the source text into the structures of the target text, which is translation proper. Special rules can be described for transforming source language structures as basic units into target language structures corresponding to the basic units. For example, to translate the “adverbial verb” one must introduce an adverb, denoting the way the action is performed, into the target language structure: She stared at me. – Она пристально смотрела на меня.

In the second concept, transformation is not understood as broadly as replacing the source language structures by the target language structures. Transformation here is part of a translation process, which has three phases56:

Analysis: the source language structures are transformed into basic units of the source language. For example, the sentence I saw him enter the room. is transformed into I saw him. He entered the room.

Translation proper: the basic units of the source language are translated into the basic units of the target language: Я видела его. Он вошел в комнату.

Synthesis: the basic units of the target language are transformed into the terminal structures of the target language: Я видел, что он вошел в комнату.

As is seen, this concept develops the ideas of generative grammar introduced by N. Chomsky.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of this model? It is employed in contrastive analysis of two language forms that are considered to be translation equivalents, as it verbalizes what has been transformed in them and how. This model provides us with transformation techniques. It explains how we translate equivalent-lacking structures into another language. This model is important for teaching translation bacause it recommends that one transform a complex structure into a simple one.

However, a disadvantage of this model consists in inability to explain the choice of the transformation made, especially at the third synthesis phase. It does not explain the facts of translation equivalence on the situational level. It also ignores sociocultural and extralinguistic aspects of translation.

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