Construction Grammar as a Framework for Describing Translation: A Prolegomenon

Abstract

This paper explores Construction Grammar as a potential framework to describe translation, arguing that it is a model of language capable of addressing in an integrated way a wide range of problems recognized by translation studies, without drawing a sharp distinction between the linguistic and the cultural issues. Construction Grammar is a non-modular, non-derivational and inherently functional model of language. The knowledge of the language user is represented as a network of constructions. A construction is understood as a language-specific pairing of form and meaning/function, a cluster of properties cutting across the traditional modules of language description, which may include phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse properties. Constructions thus understood include morphemes, lexical items, phrasal patterns, sentence patterns, idioms, intonation patterns, discourse patterns, etc. Construction Grammar declares the aim of accounting within an integrated framework for all the conventions that the speaker of a language uses in communication. It is argued that the constructional view of language and the scope of the constructional model are highly convergent with the needs of translation studies and can offer a range of tools to address various aspects of the translation process. This article focuses on the possibility of describing the lack of exact equivalence between the constructions of the source and the target language, and the possibility of identifying very precisely the so-called gains and losses and through them the translator’s priorities in decision-making.