Passive- and passive-like constructions in the translation of a Croatian legislative text into English
Passive- and passive-like constructions in the translation of a Croatian legislative text into English
Author(s): Irena Brdar, Božana KneževićSubject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera, Osijek
Keywords: translation; passive; passive-like construction; thematic structure; legal discourse
Summary/Abstract: This paper is based on the study of the translation pairs of passive sentences found in two legislative texts, a corpus of 23,140 words. The two texts are used to de-termine the passive voice frequency and retention or change in the grammatical (passive and passive-like) and thematic structures of extracted passive sentences in the Croatian (source) and English (target) texts. While English in the legislative text and official document shows a bias in favour of the passive periphrastic, Croatian mainly retains the se passive. The main conclusion of the study confirms the hypothesis that a change in the grammatical structure does not always trigger a change in the thematic structure. In a number of cases it is the word order that shows the function of thematic shift and not the passive.
Journal: Jezikoslovlje
- Issue Year: XI/2010
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 25-51
- Page Count: 27
- Language: English