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ENGLISH TRANSLATION STRATEGIES FOR RUSSIAN QUASI-SUBJECT CONSTRUCTIONS

Linguistics , UDC: 811 DOI: 10.25688/2619-0656.2023.11.06

Authors

  • Shestopalova Anna Mikhailovna

Annotation

The current research covers Russian quasi-subject constructions such as Smeshki nemedlenno prekrashchayutsja and dwells on possible English translation strategies. The paper points out that in some cases quasi-subject constructions cannot be translated with their English counterpart such as The giggling stops instantly, therefore respective translation strategies call for further investigation. The discrepancies in translation patterns are associated with the quasi-subject construction lacunarity seen in both Russian and English, which in turn is linked to structural arrangement features of the syntactic construction. Specifically, various predicate forms (Russian reflexive verb vs. English Active Voice verb) allow to consider the degree of subject involvement. The following structural and semantic discrepancies might eventually affect the final translation strategy. The goal is to review the existing quasi-subject construction translations collected from the Russian National Corpus’s parallel database. The samples are analyzed regarding the subject type within the original construction (non- defining agentive, non-defining non-agentive and defining non-agentive subject), which allowed to group the empirical data and outline general translation patterns. The results suggest a set of translation strategies and respective language means used to translate subject type information to the target language. The paper concludes that the subject type appears to be relevant when making a translation decision.

How to link insert

Shestopalova, A. M. (2023). ENGLISH TRANSLATION STRATEGIES FOR RUSSIAN QUASI-SUBJECT CONSTRUCTIONS Bulletin of the Moscow City Pedagogical University. Series "Pedagogy and Psychology", Russian and comparative studies, 90–105. https://doi.org/10.25688/2619-0656.2023.11.06
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