Replacements
Replacements are by far the most common type of grammatical transformations. Replacements can affect practically all types of linguistic units: word forms, part of speech, sentence elements, sentence types, types of syntactic relations, etc.
a) Word Forms
Replacement of word forms are quite common in translation. A few examples will suffice: The
struggles of the Indian people in all parts of the US - Борьба индейского народа во всех районах
США; a novel about the lives of common people - роман о жизни простых людей (replacement of
plural by singular). He said he knew the man - ОН СКАЗАЛ, ЧТО ЗНАЕТ ЭТОГО ЧЕЛОВЕКА. (replacement
of Past by Present). The door was opened by a middleaged woman -Дверь открыла пожилая
женщина. (Replacement of Active by Passive). See also the preceding lecture.
b) Parts of Speech
This type of replacement is Also fairly common. Especially typical is the replacement of English
noun (derived from verbs) by Russian verbs; English makes a far greater use of the so called
nominalization, i.g., employment of verbal nouns to denote actions (Nomina Actions), that does
Russian. Hence the necessity of replacement in translation, as in the following cases: It is our
hope that… - Мы надеемся, что… The abandonment by Irene of all the glittering things he had
given her - Когда Ирен оставила все безделушки,которые он ей подарил.
The same is true about the so called. "Nomina Agentis", which in English are usually represented
by nouns with the suffix -er. Russian either has no nouns of the type at all (e.g., corresponding to
Such English nouns as riser, packer, drinker, sleeper) or uses them to denote people of permanent
occupation as, say, писатель which denote a person who indulges in professional writing whereas
in English the word writer may denote 'a person who writes or had written .something` as in the
`the writer of this note` - Тот, кто написал эту записку CF. He is an early riser -Он рано встает.
John is a sound sleeper - Джон крепко спит. I am very rapid packer.-Я очень быстро укладываюсь.
She is very good dancer - Она очень хорошо танцует.
Fairly often, English adjectives are replaced by Russian nouns (in an oblique case or preceded by
a preposition): Australian prosperity - (экономическое) процветание Австралии. The Soviet
acceptance of this proposal - принятие этого предложения СССР. Youthful joblessness -
безработица среди молодежи. Generational style of life - образ жизни, свойственный для данного
поколения ( the above examples are very typical of the so called `journalese` ).
English comparative forms of adjectives higher, lower, longer, shorter, better etc. are
frequently replaced by Russian nouns (derived from adjective stems which, in their turn, are
verbalized) повышение, понижение, увеличение, сокращение, улучшение и т.д.
They demand higher wages and better living conditions - Они требуют повышения заработной
платы и улучшения жизненных условий.
c) Sentence elements
This is sometimes referred to as syntactic restructuring of the sentence in the process of
translation. It consists in changing the sentence functions of words in a sentence, a process which
is usually due to the same tendency as is observed in transpositions, viz., preserving the functional
sentence perspective. In English, as in Russian the `theme` is generally (with some exceptions)
placed at the beginning of the sentence; however, this placed is, of course, reserved for the
sentence subject, the result being that the "theme" of the English sentence is, as a rule, also its
subject, though semantically it is not always the doer of the action expressed by the predicate
verbs: it may be its object (goal) or even denote some adverbial relation (time, place, cause, etc.).
In Russian the word order is relatively free, therefore, the first word or word group within a
sentence (its theme) must not necessarily be at the same time its syntactic subject. Hence the
subject of the English sentence is often replaced in Russian by a corresponding secondary
element, such as object, adverbial of time, place, cause etc., with concomitant changes in the
stylistic pattern of the whole sentence, often with necessary lexical changes. See the following
examples: He was met by his sister -Его встретила сестра. He was given money - Ему дали
денег. The new film is much spoken about -О новом фильме много говорят. (and other Passive-Active
transformations; see above ). Last week saw the 500 strong meeting of shop stewards and trade-
union officials... - На прошлой неделе состоялось заседание старост и профсоюзных деятелей в
котором приняло участие 500 человек. The tent sleeps six people - В палатке могут спать 6
человек. Rhodesia has hanged five African guerrillas. - В Родезии казнены 5 африканских
партизанов. New terrorist attacks have injured six people -В результате нападения террористов
6 человек было ранено. The fog stopped the traffic - Из-за тумана движение транспорта было
остановлено. Figure 2 gives a summary of the results of such experiments - На рис. 2 показаны
сводные результаты этих экспериментов.
It is self-evident that in the process of translation from Russian into English the process goes in
the opposite direction: cf. В комнате воцарилась тишина.- The room turned silent. В радио-
технических устройствах часто встречаются системы из электропроводов. Radio equipment
often includes systems of electric wires.
d) Sentence types
A very common transformation in the process of translation is the replacement of a simple
sentence by a complex one and vice versa. Thus, while translating from English into Russian it
often becomes necessary to render English structures with nonfinite verbal forms by means of
subordinate clauses, thus turning a simple sentence into complex, as for instance:
I want you to speak English -Я хочу что бы вы говорили по-английски. I heard my mother go out
and close the door - Я услыхала, как мама вышла из комнаты и закрыла дверь.
Here is a book for you to read - Вот книга,которую вы должны прочитать. The general is a good
man to keep away from - Генерал, конечно не плохой человек, но лучше от него держаться
подальше.
A substructure of this transformation is known as unification or, conversely, division of sentences
in translation, that is, a replacement of two simple sentences by one complex or compound and
vice versa: cf. Thousands of Algerians tonight fled from the dead city of Orleansville after a 12
second earthquake had ripped through central Algeria, killing an estimated 1,1000
people.
This is a typical "lead", that is the first sentence (and the first paragraph) of a news item which
contains the bulk of the information the details of which are given below in the main text of the
report. Such a device is alien to Russian newspaper articles, which makes it necessary to divide
the English sentence into two or more Russian sentences, as below: Сегодня ночью в центральных
районах Алжира произошло землетрясение, длившееся 12 секунд. Число жертв, по
предварительным подсчетам, составляет 100 человек. Тысячи жителей бежали из полностью
разрушенного города Орианвилля. ( Notice the change in the order of sentences).
More rarely, unification of two or more sentences into one complex or compound, sentence takes
place as in the following case: The only thing that worried me was our front door. It creaks like a
bastard,- Одно меня беспокоило - наша парадная дверь скрипит как оголтелая.
e) Types of syntactic relations
Both English and Russian have such types of syntactic relations as coordination and
subordination. However, the former is more characteristic (i.e., occurs more frequently) of spoken
Russian that of English; hence it is often necessary or desirable to replace subordination of
sentences by coordination while translating from English into Russian, cf. He had a new father
whose picture was enclosed... -У него новый папа - это он заснят на карточке… So I started walking
way over east, where the pretty cheap restaurants are, because I didn't want to spend a lot of
dough. Я пошел к восточным кварталам, где дешевые рестораны: не хотелось тратить много денег.
From the purely grammatical point of view this transformation is optional; however, taking into
consideration what was said concerning the relative frequency of grammatical forms (see the
preceding lecture). Such transformations are necessary if we want to make our translation sound
natural, that is, to avoid undesirable heaviness in style.
Likewise, both English and Russian make use of syndetic and asyndetic coordinate structure, but
their relative frequency differ: Russian, especially spoken Russian, prefers asyndetic coordination
in multimember structures where English often employs the syndetic type, as, for instance: All I
have in it is two dresses and my moccasins and my underwear and socks and some other things.
В нем только два платья, туфли, белье, носки и всякие мелочи.
In the original, the conjunction and is used four times while in the Russian translation it appears
only once, before the last constituent, the rest being joined asyndetically.