Syntactical Shifts in Translation of Texts on the Country’s History and Culture

Abstract

Translation of texts on the country's history and culture has been and remains in demand in Lithuania. In order to convey the message of such texts effectively, the translator has to take into consideration their function, to be familiar with their structure and style, and to be aware of differences between the source and target languages, which are reflected by translation transformations (shifts). The article focuses on syntactical transformations in English translations of Lithuanian texts on the country's history and culture. Earlier and more recent theoretical approaches to translation shifts and linguistic analysis are discussed, such as the attitudes of Vinay and Darbelnet, Catford, van Leuven-Zwart, Armalytė and Pažūsis, Toury, Chesterman, Molina and Hurtado Albir, Cyrus, Gudavičius, Palumbo, and Leonavičienė. Syntactical patterns emerging in the analysed corpus are discussed, and the dominant trends are reflected. The discussion of shifts is important for translation pedagogy as it helps to obtain answers to practical questions about translation. The findings of the analysis might be interesting from the standpoint of ethnolinguistics.