Clause Structure and Subjectivity in English and Finnish: What Changes in Translation?

Abstract

The article compares the relationship between clause structure and the construal of subjectivity in English and Finnish. The data are taken from English into Finnish and Finnish into English authentic translations. The English transitive construction involving subjectivity is treated as an extension of agentive transitive construction. The article shows that the English transitive construction involving subjectivity tends to translate intransitively in Finnish, with the speaker viewpoint coded by a local case (PATH). The Finnish translations are 'existential' sentences, with an inverted figure-ground organisation. Finnish intransitive constructions involving subjectivity (with the verb nakya 'be visible', among others) are translated into English either transitively or with other, lexical means. As a result of the changes, some of the English translations show a lower degree of subjectivity than the Finnish original sentences. The changes in translations can be traced back to certain typological differences in the two languages, notably to differences in the category of subject, word-order and the use of the transitivity prototype.