Literary translation and insufficient grammatical competence

Abstract

Abstract The author discusses the role of grammatical competence in translation of literary texts from Slovene into English at university level Translation activity presupposes a maximally developed grammatical competence, which should enable translation students to use the target language creatively. Incomplete grammatical competence is one of numerous problems for students tackling translation for the first time. The most notorious grammatico‐linguislic problems that Slovene students of English despair of are article usage, collocations and verbal aspect. The article deals with some problems that students encounter when choosing the appropriate aspectual form in the translation of literary texts, especially for ‘scene setting’ and ‘strings of actions following one another’. It is a paradox that in their very observation of grammatical rules, students will often make grammatical or stylistic aspectual mistakes. Misleading or simply wrong rules at all levels of English teaching have to be unlearnt. One wa...