3 Translation procedures and shifts

3.1 Translation procedures

Talking points

1. Give and characterize the main types of technique and procedure.

2. Characterize grammatically focused procedures.

3. Characterize pragmatically focused procedures.

4. Characterize semantically focused procedures.

5. Explain the following terms: explicitation, simplification, transposition, modulation.

Tasks and exercises

1. Read and translate the following sentences. Comment on the changes (pay attention to explicitation and addition)

1. Oliver Barett III was a walking, sometimes talking Mount Rushmore. A stonyface. (E. Segal)

2. "Here she is, Grandmama!" Zoya had reappeared with the little dog. (D. Steel)

3. Once their plane had landed at Heathrow they were made aware that the holiday was over. (J. Archer)

4. After Simon has been back at the Commons for a week he felt a sense of dйjá vu, a feeling that most members returning to the House for a second or even third time often experience. (J. Archer)

5. A witty older girl named Virginia sat under a big Western Union clock in that office and traded dirty jokes with me. (J. Heller)

6. Heloise wrote to her bank, in England, to explain what was about to happen and to seek advice about her holdings, all of which were in different areas of enterprise within the Rio Verde Railway. (W. Trevor)

7. I bet you look pissed-off when you're with your wife. (N. Mailer)

8. When the marquee listed The Cheerleaders it went unnoticed by the passing traffic. When XXX was added the next day, traffic stopped and tempers rose in the coffee shops around the square. (J.Grisham)

9. Give me ten," Henry said, and Mrs Bride said she had only fives and Henry said two fives then. (W. Trevor)

10. Quick as flash, while his mother was occupied with the kettle, Dudley stole the rest of Uncle Vernon's grapefruit. (J.K. Rowling)

2. Translate the following sentences; pay special attention to the italicized words

1. It was only ten in the morning, but already it was unseasonally warm. (B. Bryson)

2. Almost twenty years later, after getting her master's in mathematics from Johns Hopkins and studying number theory on a full scholarship from MIT, she submitted her doctoral thesis. (D. Brown)

3. Near the Pont Notre Dame he bought a bowl of soup for one sou ... (I. Stone)

4. Harry was from Buffalo, New York, and he had never been a painter in Rome ... (P. Auster)

5. The main shopping street had been pedestrianized and the Market Square had been turned into kind of piazza with a show-off paving and the usual array of castiron trimming. (B. Bryson)

6. The Shelby County Justice Centre is a twelve-story modern building downtown. ... It houses the district attorney and the sheriff. (J. Grisham)