GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN TRANSLATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH PAREMIOLOGICAL UNITS

Abstract

This article presents the findings of a research on the usage of grammatical transformations in translation of American English paremiological units (PUs) into the Russian and Spanish languages. Our purpose was to investigate the frequency of the application of particular transformations and compare and contrast the results depending on the target language. At the baseline we suggest a hypothesis that direct translation is going to be the most frequently used type of grammatical transformations in translation of American Pus to Spanish language, while the percentage of the use of this transformation in Russian translations is going to be considerably lower. The analysis results totally proved our hypothesis. Direct translation was encountered in 16% of Spanish translations of American English PUs, while only 5% of PUs were translated into Russian language using this transformation. The study also found that transposition is the most frequently used in translation to the Russian language (22%), which is explained by the fact that in English the word order in the sentences is fixed, while in the Russian language it is free. Such grammatical transformations as substitution of passive construction by active and substitution of the part of speech were found only in Russian translations and the percentage of their usage is quite low (3% and 2% respectively). The received data provide a means of identifying translation features that both languages have in common as well as determining the way the language difference affects the choice of translation transformations. A working model of translation of American English PUs to different languages can be developed on the basis of those results.