§1.Grammatical Aspect of the Translation
It is obvious that every word in the text is used in a particular form and all the words are arranged in sentences in a particular syntactic order. Grammatical forms reveal the semantic relationship between the words, clauses and sentences in the text. According to V. Comissarov1 “they can make prominent some part of the contents that is of particular significance for the communicants.”
Though the bulk of the information in the original text is conveyed by its lexical elements, the semantic role of grammatical forms and structures should not be overlooked by the translator. Grammatical aspect of the Source Text (ST) may be reflected when using parallel forms and structures in Target Language (TL).
However, in many cases equivalence in translation can be best achieved if the translator does not try to mirror the grammatical forms used in the ST. It is natural that there are no permanent grammatical equivalence and the translator can chose between the parallel forms and various grammatical transformations. He may opt for the latter in case there is no absolute identity of grammatical forms in SL and TL.
For instance, the idea of prior action expressed by the Perfect Tense is not present in Russian Language. The similar difference can be observed if one compares the finite forms of the verb in English and Russian. Both the English and Russian verbs have active and passive forms, but in English passive forms are more numerous and often used. It is not characteristic of Russian where the Passive
Voice is used in formal style only. As a result the Passive Voice in the ST is often rendered by the Active one in the translation: He was given a cool reception –Ему оказали холодный прием.
Speaking about grammatical equivalence L. Barhudarov 2 singles out two types of Grammatical Transformations: Transposition and Substitution. T. Levitskaya and A. Fitterman 3, on the contrary, do not admit that there are grammatical and lexical transformations in their pure form. They suggest their definition – Lexico -Grammatical Problems of translation.
As far as translation of Winnie-the-Pooh is concerned we think that Bahudorov‘s classification is more appropriate for our analysis.
1. Transposition
Transposition is a way of translation which supposes the change of language elements order in the Target Text as compared to the Source Text4 . The most common case of Transposition is the change of word order in the sentence structure. It is known that the word order in English and Russian sentences is different. It means that the Theme and Reme pattern is not the same for English and Russian sentences5 .
| E.g.: | A suburban train was derailed near London last night. |
| Вчера вечером вблизи Лондона сошёл с рельс пригородный поезд. |
We come across the following types of Transposition in Zahoder’s translation:
1. The change of word order in the structure of Simple Sentence.
| E.g.: | And then he brightened up suddenly. |
| И вдруг он совсем просиял. |
2. The change of structural elements in the Composite Sentence.
| E.g.: | Pooh was very excited when he heard this and suggested that they should have an Expotition to discover the East Pole. |
| Услышав это сообщение, Пух очень взволновался и предложил немедленно устроить Искпедицию к Восточному Полюсу. |
3. The change of sentence order in the text.
| E.g.: | ” So much for washing”, said Eeyore” Roo’s fallen in!” cried Rabbit and he and Christopher Robin came rushing down to the rescue. |
| -Ру упал в воду! - закричал Кролик. - Доумывался! – сказал Иа-Иа. Кристофер и Пух кинулись на помощь. |
2. Substitution
Substitution is the most frequent and diverse kind of transformation. It is characteristic of both grammar and lexical aspects of translation. There are two kinds of grammatical substitutions: Morphological Substitution and Syntactical Substitution. Let us takeMorphological Substitution. It is subdivided into:
- Part of Speech Substitution which means that one part of speech in ST, is substituted for another one in TT. It happens when grammatical pattern in the original text does not coincide with that in the TT.
| E.g.: | What about of mouthful of something? |
| А не пора ли нам подкрепиться? |
- As far as “mouthful” is translated as “глоток”, ”кусок” the translation aiming at preserving the same part of speech would be impossible. Very often adjectives performing their predicative function are substituted by verbs.
| E.g.: | Eeyore frisked about the forest waving his tail so happily that Winie-the-Pooh came over all funny. |
| Иа - Иа принялся носиться по лесу с таким восторгом, что у Вини - Пух защекотало во всем теле. |
- The Substitution of Grammatical meaning for Lexical one. L.Barhudarov does not include this kind of Substitution into his classification, but we think it is extremely important for rendering stylistic peculiarities of the original text.
| E.g.: | Indeed, he has eaten most of it (honey). |
| К счастью, оказалось, он съел ещё не всё. |
The translator could have translated it without the word ”оказалось”, but having aim of emphasizing the result that Pooh faced, B. Zahoder introduces this very word. Thus, the goal of rendering the specific role of the Present Perfect in this context was achieved completely.
There is an inverted substitution – when lexical meaning is rendered by grammatical one. Let us take an example from the passage where Baby Roo was washing (very proud he could do it by himself) and suddenly fell into the river:
| “So much for washing!” said Eeyore. |
| –Доумывался! – сказал Иа. |
Though it could be rendered “Вот и всё умывание !” and we could speak of more accurate translation, Zahoder’s variant which is based on Grammar Substitution(the lexical meaning is rendered by word formation resources of Russian language) sounds much better. Combination of Russian prefix “до-” and reflective postfix “-ся” (like in words “допрыгался”, “дописался” etc.) in a certain contextual environment helps the translator to render Eeyore’s attitude, his image of always grumbling sort of pessimist, and even to convey his sarcastic intonation. The following example seems to prove the same phenomenon: a “small high vice” is translated as “тоненький голосок”. Russian diminutive suffixes -еньк (-онк), -ок (-ек) mean something small and delicate. More over, they render the speaker’s emotional attitude – tenderness. However there is the reverse of the medal – using these suffixes quite often the translator takes the risk of making the text sound too sweet. For instance, silly old Bear is always translated as “глупенький мой мишка”. Perhaps, it would be more feasible to omit one of the suffixes and to translate it like “глупый медвеженок” or “глупый мой мишка”.