Stylistic normalisation in translation: The case of the Czech transgressive (Analysis on the InterCorp parallel corpus)
Abstract
The Czech transgressive is a non-finite verb form expressing adverbial meanings, such as concomitant circumstance, means or manner (cf. Dvorák 1983; Nádvorníková 2010).
In Haspelmath & König (1995), this form is considered a converb, along with the French gérondif and the English participial -ing forms. In contrast with the English and French forms, however, the Czech transgressive is used very rarely (and only in written texts), because of its archaistic stylistic mark.
For this reason, English and French converbs are usually translated in Czech by a (coordinate or subordinate) finite verb form (73% in English, (seeMalá & Šaldová 2015), and 65% in French, (see Cermák & Nádvorníková 2015)). The use of finite equivalents, however, entails explicitation (of tense, mode, person and logical relation with the matrix clause) and may overweigh the target sentence (and make the translator split it in two, cf.
Nádvorníková 2017). In this paper, we will analyse occurrences of transgressive in translated texts in comparison with non-translated ones, in order to find out whether its use is influenced by the effect of normalisation (see e.g.
Baker 1996; May 1997; Vanderauwera 1985). The research is carried out on the English-French-Czech part of the InterCorp parallel corpus, limited to fiction, and on a comparable translation corpus of Czech (Jerome).