Armstrong Nigel. Translation, Linguistics, Culture: A French-English Handbook

Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2005. — x, 218 p. — (Topics in Translation 27). — ISBN 1-85359-806-2.This book takes a linguistic approach to translation issues, looking first at the structural view of language that explains the difficulty of translation and at theories of cultural non-equivalence. A subsequent chapter on text types, readership and the translator's role completes the theoretical framework. The linguistic levels of analysis are then discussed in ascending order, from morpheme up to sentence, while a summarising chapter considers various translation types and strategies, again considered in relation to text type, author and reader.The Linguistic Bases of Translation
Purpose of this Book
Saussure’s Theory of Language
The Speech Community
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Linguistic Determinism
Linguistic Relativity
Codability
Structure of the Book, and Summary
Approaching a TextThe Translator’s Role as ‘Secret Agent’
Text Types
Culture Infused in Language
Culture Detachable from Language
Intermediate Summary
Acceptability and Competence: Strategic Translation Decisions
Equivalence
Translation Loss and Compensation
Some Genuine Examples of Loss and Compensation
Translation Issues at the Word Level
The Word and the Morpheme
Word Categories
Inflectional Morphology: Verb Inflection
Translation Issues at the Morphological Level: Non-Standard Forms
Translation Issues at the Morphological Level: Derivation
Lexical and Grammatical Words
Translation Issues Relating to Word Cohesion
Complex Words
Denotation and Connotation
Style and Register
Nominalisation
False Friends
Words in Combination
The Structural Organisation of Meaning: Paradigms and Syntagmata
Grammatical Paradigms
Lexical Paradigms and Polysemy
Lexical Paradigms and Synonymy
Lexical Paradigms and Hyponymy
The Interaction of Synonymy, Polysemy and Hyponymy
Lexical Paradigms and Antonymy
Homonyms
Collocation: The Tendency of Words to Co-Occur Regularly
Attitudinal Adjectives
Word Compounds
Idioms
Figurative Expressions
Clichés
Translation Issues at the Syntactic Level
Definition of Syntax
Syntactic Units
The Sentence
The Clause
The Phrase
Translation of Phrase Function Rather than Structure
Apposition
Absolute Constructions
Elliptical Constructions
Emphasis within the Sentence
Prepositions
Idiomatic Constructions
Inversion
The Passive
Structural False Friends
Verbs used Intransitively
Non-Standard Syntax
Translation Problems and Procedures in Syntax
Translation Types and ProceduresBorrowing
Calques
Literal Translation
Linguistic Transposition
Modulation
Equivalence, or Pragmatic Translation
Adaptation, or Cultural Transposition
Exegetic Translation
Gist Translation
Non-Translation, or Compression
Some Examples of Transposition and Modulation: Astington’s Categories
General Comments on Astington’s Categories
Ordering of Elements Within the Sentence
Types of Procedure: Cultural or Linguistic?
Some Miscellaneous Issues
Translating Humour
The Text Level
Improving the Source Text
Metaphor
Metonymy
Coherence and Cohesion
Anaphora, Cataphora
Translating Coherence and Cohesion
Multiple Equivalence
Punctuation
The Translation Commentary
Example of a Translation Commentary
Concluding Remarks