Literary Translation as Language Contact: A Pilot Study on the Finnish Passive

Abstract

This article approaches literary translation from a contact-linguistic perspective and views translation as a language contact situation in which the translator “moves” between the source and target language. The study touches upon the possible linguistic effects of the source text on the translated text and relates the translation-mediated cross-linguistic influence to other language-contact situations. The study investigates the use of Finnish passive in a corpus of literary texts consisting of Finnish translationsfrom Estonian and German and comparable non-translated Finnish literary texts. The translated texts are compared with non-translated ones by using corpus-linguistic tools, and the results are related to a previous contact-linguistic study on the use of the Finnish passive in spoken interviews of Finnish migrants in Estonia. The main objective is to test methodological tools that could be used for this kind of comparative purposes.In addition, the study approaches the question whether translation as a type of language contact affects the use of the Finnish passive in a similar way as an oral language contact situation. All in all, the study shows that there are some features that differentiate the investigated literary translations from non-translated Finnish texts but the evidence is not unambiguous. The article discusses the possible reasons for the mainly non-conclusive results of the analysis and points out factors that should be taken into account in future studies, such as the size of the sub-corpora and the possibly biased text or genre specific stylistic characteristics. The methodology clearly has to be adjusted and more in-depth methods developed in order to acquire a fuller picture of the Finnish passive in literary texts and to confirm what is author, translator, genre or source-language specific in the use of the Finnish passive.

Მითების Სტრუქტურა

“…rodesac misioner-eTnologi k. strehlou ekiTxeboda aruntanel (Australiens Arunta) avstralielebs, Tu ratom aRniSnavdnen isini zogierT dResaswauls, isini mas ucvlelad pasuxobdnen: "imitom, rom winaprebma amgvarad moiTxoves". 1 axali gvineis tomebi, kaiebi, TavianTi cxovrebis stilisa da muSaobis Secvlis winaaRmdegebi iyvnen, rasac isini Semdegnairad xsnidnen: "swored ase iqceodnen nemusebi (miTiuri winaprebi) da Cvenc igivenairad vagrZelebT~. 2 erT-erTi ceremoniis amgvar detalTan dakavSire-biT, kiTxva dausves momReral navahos, raTa aexsna mizezi, man ki upasuxa: "vinaidan Tavdapirvelad wminda xalxma ase gaakeTa".…”

“…2 erT-erTi ceremoniis amgvar detalTan dakavSire-biT, kiTxva dausves momReral navahos, raTa aexsna mizezi, man ki upasuxa: "vinaidan Tavdapirvelad wminda xalxma ase gaakeTa". 1 Cvenc zustad analogiur gamarTlebas vpoulobT pirvelyofil tibeturi tomebis ritualTan dakavSirebiTac, romelsac Tan sdevda locva: "rogorc samyaros Seqmnis pirvelive dRidan moxda, Cvenc aseve unda SevwiroT (...) rogorc Cvenma winaprebma gaakeTes mravali saukunis win, iseve vakeTebT Cvenc dRes". 2 hindus tomebis Teologoebisa da ritualistebis gamarTlebac arafriT gansxvavdeba am mosazrebebisagan.…”

“…mokled, "namdvil" istoriebSi saqme gvaqvs sakralurTan an zebunebrivTan; xolo "mcdar" ambebSi, piriqiT, profanul SinaarsTan, radgan koioti ukiduresad popularulia am miTologiaSi iseve, rogorc danarCen sxva, Crdilo-amerikul miTologiebSi, sadac is gvevlineba SeniRbul, gamyidvel da moRalate, gamomrCenel da gaiZvera arsebad. 1 paralelurad, Serokes tomebi ansxvaveben sakralur miTebsa (kosmogonia, planetaTa warmoSoba, sikvdilis gaCena) da profanul istoriebs, romlebic xnsian, magaliTad, cxovelTa zogierT anatomiur Tu fiziologiur cnobismoyvareobas. igive gansxvaveba xdeba afrikaSic: hereros tomebi miiCneven, rom is istoriebi, romlebic yveba tomebis sxvadasxva dajgufebis warmoSobis Sesaxeb, aris namdvili, vinaidan, isini asaxaven iseT ambebs, romlebic namdvilad moxda, im dros, rodesac metnakelbad komikur zRaprebs aranairi safuZveli ar gaaCnia.…”

Fiction in Russian Translation: A Translationese Study

“…Translationese in literary texts There are several corpus-based studies of literary translations. Most of them explore single features: passive constructions (Kolehmainen and Riionheimo, 2016), that-complementiser (Olohan, 2001), non-finite constructions, phrasal verbs, connectives (Ku-nilovskaya, 2017), keywords (Puurtinen, 2003), etc.…”

Translationese in Russian Literary Texts

“…However, it is also a fact that translationese indicators can be specific for language pairs and registers, and literary translation is an Most corpus-based translationese studies of literary texts offer a single-feature analysis and do not employ machine learning (ML), e.g. passive constructions (Kolehmainen andRiionheimo, 2016), that-complementiser (Olohan, 2001), phrasal verbs (Cappelle and Loock, 2017), complex non-finite constructions, clause connectives and keywords (Puurtinen, 2003). Popescu (2011) and Lynch and Vogel (2012) are the only works known to us that use ML approach to the study of translationese in literary texts.…”