Transformational approach

Basic translation theories

Roughly, the human translation theories may be divided into three main groups which quite conventionally may be called transformational approach, denotative approach, and communicational approach.

Transformational approach

The transformational theories consist of many varieties which may have different names but they all have one common feature: the process of translation is regarded as transformation.

According to the transformationalapproach translation is viewed as the transformation of objects and structures of the source language into those of the target.

Within the group of theories which we include in the transformationalapproach a dividing line is sometimes drawn between transformations and equivalences.

According to this interpretation a transformation starts at the syntactic level when there is a change, i.e. if we change the word order during translation. Substitutions at other levels are regarded as equivalences e.g. when we substitute words of the target language for those of the source, this is considered as equivalence.

In the transformationalapproach we shall distinguish three levels of substitutions: morphologicalequivalences, lexicalequivalences, and syntacticequivalences and/or transformations.

In the process of translation:

· at the morphological level morphemes (both word-building and word-changing) of the source language are substituted for those of the target;

· at lexical level words and word combinations of the source language are substituted for those of the target;

· at the syntactic level syntactic structures of the source language are substituted for those of the target.

For example, in the process of translation, the English word room is transformed into Ukrainian words кімната or простір, Russian комната, пространство, German Zimmer, Raum.

The syntactic transformations in translation comprise a broad range of structural changes in the target text, starting from the reversal of the word order in a sentence and finishing with division of the source sentence into two and more target ones.

The most common example of structural equivalences at the syntactic level is that of some Verb Tense patterns ( future tense: in English shall/will go – (werden) gehen in German).

The above mentioned examples of transformations an equivalencies are the simplest and in a way artificial because a real translation transformations are much more complex and often different levels of languages are involved in translation. This kind of transformation is especially frequent when translation involves an analytical and a synthetic language, e.g. English and Ukrainian.

From above mentioned we can see that according to thetransformational approachtranslation is a set of multi-level replacements of a text in one language by a text in another, governed by specific transformation rules.

However the transformational approach is insufficient when the original text corresponds to one invisible concept which is rendered by the translator as a text in another language also corresponding to the relevant invisible concept.

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.003 сек.