Grammatical shift

Transposition

Render a source word class by a different target word class, message unchanged. Also called Class shift or part-of-speech change.

Reference/All techniques

Either Word Phrase Vinay & Darbelnet (1958) Catford (1965, class shift) Newmark (1988) Chesterman (1997, G3) Molina & Hurtado Albir (2002)

What it is

Transposition answers a source item of one word class with a target item of another, while the content stays where it was. A noun is rendered by a verb, an adverb by an adjective, a participle by a finite clause. Nothing is added and nothing is dropped: only the grammatical clothing changes.

Vinay and Darbelnet described the operation as a move from a base expression to a transposed expression, and split it into obligatory transposition, where the target language offers no alternative, and optional transposition, where the translator chooses. They added a caution that is easy to overlook: the two versions are equivalent in sense but not necessarily in style, since the transposed expression often shifts the weight of the sentence. Newmark set out four types: the automatic change that leaves no choice, such as plural against singular; the change forced because the source structure has no target counterpart; the change made because a literal version is grammatical but not natural; and the rendering of a lexical gap by a grammatical structure. Catford described the same phenomenon in systemic terms as a class shift, an equivalent belonging to a different class from that of the source item. Chesterman carries it into his syntactic strategies as G3, and Molina and Hurtado Albir retain it in their inventory of techniques.

The boundary against modulation is the point of grammar. A transposition can be demonstrated in the morphology of both texts; a modulation is a claim about the angle from which a situation is described. The boundary against unit shift is rank: transposition changes class at constant rank, whereas a unit shift moves the equivalent up or down the rank scale.

When it applies

  • The source uses a nominal style that the target language realizes verbally, as in administrative French and German against ordinary English drafting.
  • The source construction has no counterpart at all, so the class change is forced rather than chosen.
  • A literal rendering is grammatical and accurate but no competent target writer would select it.
  • A source item has no target lexical counterpart and is best carried by a target grammatical structure, which is Newmark's fourth type.

Examples

FR>EN

  • Source: dès son lever
  • Target: as soon as he gets up
  • Comment: The standard illustration. French nominalizes the event, English predicates it. The English noun "rising" exists but belongs to a register the French phrase does not carry.

DE>EN

  • Source: Er schwimmt gern.
  • Target: He likes swimming.
  • Comment: German locates the preference in an adverb, English in a main verb. There is no English adverb covering gern, so the transposition is obligatory and not a stylistic decision.

NL>EN

  • Source: Zij is een goede zwemster.
  • Target: She swims well.
  • Comment: Noun to verb, adjective to adverb, in one move. The literal version is available in English and says something slightly different: it classifies the person rather than reporting the activity.

TR>EN

  • Source: Sigara içilmez.
  • Target: No smoking.
  • Comment: A finite Turkish verb form answered by an English nominal. The target-language convention for prohibition notices is nominal, so preserving the verb would produce a sentence that is accurate and unusable as signage.

Watch out for

Transposition is the least contentious of the oblique procedures because it can be shown rather than argued. Its risks lie in what it drags along with it.

  • Turning a nominalization into a verb obliges the translator to supply a subject and a tense. In legislation and contracts the source often nominalizes precisely to leave the actor and the moment open, and the verbal version closes both.
  • An optional transposition made for rhythm is not stylistically neutral. Vinay and Darbelnet's own caution applies: emphasis moves with the word class.
  • One transposition tends to force another. Track the chain, because a sequence of individually defensible steps can leave the sentence saying more than the source did.
  • Where the rank has changed as well as the class, the operation is a unit shift. Revisers working in Catford's terms will separate the two.

References

  • Vinay, J.-P. & Darbelnet, J. (1958). Stylistique comparée du français et de l'anglais: méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier. English translation by J. C. Sager & M.-J. Hamel (1995), Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation, Benjamins Translation Library 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Catford, J. C. (1965). A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press, Ch. 12.
  • Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall, Ch. 8.
  • Chesterman, A. (1997). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Revised edition 2016, Ch. 4.
  • Molina, L. & Hurtado Albir, A. (2002). "Translation Techniques Revisited: A Dynamic and Functionalist Approach." Meta 47(4), 498–512.

Structural triggers

This technique is not always a choice. The parameters below are the structural differences between languages that call for it, the first group compulsorily and the second as a strong tendency.

Forced by

Morphological typeMotion and framingPossessionSubordination strategies

Invited by

Case markingHead directionalityRelative clauses

Terminological situations that call for this

The entries below describe states of a concept or of its designation in which this technique is the operation that answers them. They are reasons of evidence and of conceptual fit rather than of grammar.

How terms are built

Related entries

Chassé-croisé Unit shift Modulation Clause structure change

Translation that can be checked

Every Translyta delivery comes with a quality report and a terminology report, so the decisions described here are visible to your reviser instead of buried in the text.

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