
Translating the Elusive
Marked word order and subjectivity in English-German translation
Monika S. Schmid(Author)
John Benjamins Publishing Co
Published on 15. December 1999
Book
Hardback
174 pages
978-90-272-1641-0 (ISBN)
Description
This work presents an in-depth analysis of text- and speaker-based meaning of non-canonical word order in English and ways to preserve this in English-German translation. Among the sentence structures under discussion are subject-verb inversion, Left Dislocation, Topicalization as well as wh-cleft and it -cleft sentences. Various approaches to the description and analysis of the meaning potential of these structures are presented and discussed, among them theories of grammaticalization, subjectivity, empathy and information structure.
English as a rigid word order language has quite different means of creating meaning by syntactic variation than a free word order language like German. Contrastive analyses of English and German have emphasized structural differences due to the fact that English uses word order to encode the assignment of grammatical roles, while in German this is achieved mainly by morphological means. For most 'marked' constructions in English a corresponding, structure-preserving translation does not lead to an ungrammatical or unacceptable German sentence. The temptation for the translator to preserve these structures is therefore great. A case study discusses more than 200 example sentences drawn from recent works of US-American fiction and offers possible strategies for their translation.
English as a rigid word order language has quite different means of creating meaning by syntactic variation than a free word order language like German. Contrastive analyses of English and German have emphasized structural differences due to the fact that English uses word order to encode the assignment of grammatical roles, while in German this is achieved mainly by morphological means. For most 'marked' constructions in English a corresponding, structure-preserving translation does not lead to an ungrammatical or unacceptable German sentence. The temptation for the translator to preserve these structures is therefore great. A case study discusses more than 200 example sentences drawn from recent works of US-American fiction and offers possible strategies for their translation.
Reviews / Votes
Schmid's analysis of marked word order and its communicative clues provides us with a manageable tool for the comprehension of meanings that tend to escape and this is the main strength of the book, together with its clear structure. -- Jutta Muschard, Hannover in Germanistik, Band 130, heft 3 (2002)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 245 mm
Width: 164 mm
Weight
460 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-272-1641-0 (9789027216410)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Monika S. Schmid
Translating the Elusive
Marked word order and subjectivity in English-German translation
E-Book
12/1999
1st Edition
John Benjamins Publishing Company
€118.99
Available for download
Person
Content
1. Abbreviations; 2. Acknowledgment; 3. Introduction; 4. 1. Notions of speaker attitude; 5. 2. Information structure; 6. 3. Non-canonical word order; 7. 4. Translatability; 8. Conclusion; 9. Notes; 10. Texts; 11. Bibliography; 12. Subject Index; 13. Author Index