What it is
A sentence structure change works on the sentence as a whole rather than on any one of its clauses. Two operations fall under it. The first alters the ranking of clauses: a subordinate clause is promoted to a main clause, two coordinated clauses become a main clause with a dependent, a relative clause becomes an independent statement. The second alters the packaging: one sentence becomes two, or several become one.
Chesterman lists it as G7, the largest of his syntactic strategies below the level of text organization. The unit it operates on is the sentence as the orthography marks it, which is why the strategy is easy to describe and easy to underestimate: the boundary between two sentences is a piece of punctuation, and moving it changes how the propositions on either side are weighted.
Two boundaries keep the category honest. Clause structure change operates inside a single clause and leaves the sentence's architecture alone. Coherence change, Chesterman's Pr6, concerns the arrangement of ideas above the sentence: resequencing argument steps, merging paragraphs, adding headings. Splitting a sentence in place is repackaging; moving one of the resulting sentences elsewhere in the argument is a coherence change. A split rarely travels alone, because the relation formerly carried by subordination has to be carried by a connective or by nothing, and that is a cohesion change.
When it applies
- The source language tolerates far longer sentences than target convention does, as with German administrative prose or Turkish nominalizing registers.
- The source packs a chain of steps into one instruction and the target's instructional convention gives each step its own sentence.
- Clause depth in the source exceeds what a target reader can hold, so the sentence is grammatical but not usable.
- The source's short adjacent sentences state a relation the target would express within a single sentence.
Examples
DE>EN
- Source: Die Frist ist abgelaufen, weshalb der Antrag nicht mehr bearbeitet werden kann.
- Target: The deadline has expired. The application can therefore no longer be processed.
- Comment: German attaches the consequence as a relative clause; English handles the same relation with a sentence boundary and an adverb. Notice what the split makes necessary: the subordination carried the causal link, and the connective now has to carry it instead.
TR>EN
- Source: Formu doldurduktan sonra imzalayıp bankaya teslim ediniz.
- Target: Fill in the form. Then sign it and submit it to the bank.
- Comment: Turkish chains actions with converbs and reaches its single finite verb at the end. English instructional convention prefers one action per sentence. The alternative rendering, "After filling in the form, sign it and submit it to the bank", is equally accurate and keeps the original packaging. Text type decides between them, not grammar.
NL>EN
- Source: De vergunning is verleend. De werkzaamheden kunnen dus beginnen.
- Target: The permit has been granted, so work may begin.
- Comment: Joining rather than splitting. The two Dutch sentences state a decision and its consequence, and the connective marks the relation explicitly, so absorbing them into one sentence adds nothing. Joining is defensible here because the source states the link; joining sentences whose relation is merely adjacent asserts a connection the author did not.
Watch out for
Splitting is the change most often recommended and most casually performed, on the general ground that shorter sentences read better. A split is not neutral. It gives independent assertive force to material the source presented as subordinate, and the reviser's question is always whether it altered the argument or only its packaging.
- Test the ranking before the length. A subordinate clause qualifies its main clause; promoted to a sentence of its own it stands as a separate claim.
- Sentence boundaries can carry legal weight. A proviso attached to the sentence it qualifies binds only that sentence, and standing alone it may read as governing an entire provision. Cross-references of the form "in the second sentence of paragraph 3" are anchored to boundaries and read literally.
- Joining imports a relation. Where the source leaves two statements side by side without a connective, the reticence may be deliberate.
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.