Structuring Information in English

Abstract

This paper describes an empirical study of information structure (Functional Sentence Perspective) in the English translation of a German special-language text, an investment report. The focus of the study is on sentence beginnings, where German typically locates known information and English locates the grammatical subject, sometimes preceded by certain types of adverbial phrase. A special-language text is chosen, as the more formulaic nature of special languages may restrict choices in translation, thereby providing a challenging test-bed for the claim that translators tend to resolve syntactic/communicative tensions by prioritizing the syntactic requirements of the target language. The aim of the study is three-fold: to establish whether information structure is carried over from source to target language on a sentence-by-sentence basis; to describe the means by which this is achieved where applicable; and to describe what happens where this is not the case. The analysis draws on a framework adapted from Thompson’s (1978) pragmatic-grammatical language typology continuum. The results of the study show that in the case of both sentence-initial thematic arguments of the verb and adverbial adjuncts, a range of restructuring techniques is used to mirror the perspective of source sentences. While these techniques are not always deployed, changes in perspective in translation do not necessarily disrupt the communicative build-up in the target-text sentence.