What it is
An emphasis change alters how much prominence a part of the message carries, or which part carries it. The propositional content stays put; what moves is salience. Chesterman allows three directions: emphasis added where the source has none, reduced where the source marks it, or relocated from one element to another.
He lists the operation as S7 among the semantic strategies. It belongs there rather than with the syntactic group because emphasis is an effect rather than a construction. Languages mark it by very different means: word order, clefts, intensifiers, modal and discourse particles, dedicated focus positions, morphological markers. Because the inventories do not match, preserving the source's device and preserving the source's emphasis are two different operations, and they frequently point in opposite directions.
The boundary against neighbouring strategies is one of level. Fronting a constituent or building a cleft is a clause structure change described formally; calling the same event an emphasis change says why it was done, and one edit is often classified under both headings. Interpersonal change is genuinely distinct: it adjusts the relation between author and reader, not the internal prominence of the message.
When it applies
- The source marks focus positionally, and the target's fixed order cannot carry the marking.
- The source uses a modal or discourse particle with no target counterpart, so the value must be rebuilt from other material.
- The source device is routine in its language and marked in the target, so copying it over-marks the passage.
- Genre convention restricts the available devices, as in legislative drafting, where typographic emphasis and exclamation are not used.
Examples
TR>EN
- Source: Bu raporu Ahmet yazdı.
- Target: It was Ahmet who wrote this report.
- Comment: Turkish marks focus by position: the slot immediately before the verb is focal, and moving the object away places Ahmet there. English has no such slot and uses a cleft. The plain "Ahmet wrote this report" is grammatical and drops the contrast the word order encodes.
DE>EN
- Source: Das habe ich doch gesagt.
- Target: But I did say that.
- Comment: Two markers work together in the source: the fronted object and the particle doch, which appeals to knowledge the hearer already has. English rebuilds the value from an adversative conjunction and emphatic do-support. Nothing corresponds item for item, and translating the words alone leaves a flat statement.
NL>EN
- Source: Pas na de zitting is het stuk ingediend.
- Target: The document was not filed until after the hearing.
- Comment: Dutch fronts the adjunct and inverts, marking it as focal. English cannot invert here, so the prominence transfers to a negative construction. A negation has appeared where the source had none: the emphasis survives through what is elsewhere classified as negation of the opposite.
FR>EN
- Source: C'est le maire qui a signé l'arrêté.
- Target: The mayor signed the order.
- Comment: French clefts freely, as ordinary information packaging; the English it-cleft is marked and contrastive, so copying it each time raises the temperature of the text. Where the signatory's identity is at issue the English cleft is right; where the source is merely arranging its information, an unmarked clause reports the emphasis more faithfully than a copy of the construction.
Watch out for
Emphasis is the least verifiable of the semantic strategies, because the evidence for it lies in the passage rather than in the sentence. A reviser working sentence by sentence sees added intensifiers and missing particles and cannot see whether the balance of the paragraph has been kept. Emphasis is diagnosed over the passage and edited in the clause.
- Do not equate marker with effect. Retaining a particle with no target value and adding an unjustified intensifier are the same error in opposite directions.
- Added emphasis is interpretation. Deciding which element is prominent commits the translation to a reading, and where the source is neutral that reading is an addition.
- In binding text, prominence can be substantive. A focus particle limiting the scope of an obligation is part of what the provision says and is not available for stylistic redistribution.
References
- Chesterman, A. (1997). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Benjamins Translation Library 22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Ch. 4. Revised edition (2016), Benjamins Translation Library 123, Ch. 4.