subject: Difference Between Marked And Unmarked Translation Of English Thematized Sentences [print this page] In this article, efforts have been made to investigate whether the audience consider the matter of thematization and thematic structure in their translation, in other words, whether they translate marked theme of English thematized sentences in a form of marked or unmarked themes in Persian. The degree of markedness is taken under consideration in this paper i.e. marked translation of English thematized sentences is divided into two categories as more emphasized marked themes and less emphasized marked themes. Audiences preference for choosing more emphasized and less emphasized marked themes and also unmarked themes is presented in this paper. Finally, the analysis of the data indicated that there are some differences between marked and unmarked translation of English thematized sentences.
Theme and rheme analysis is an area that has attracted the attention of some translation scholars. The basic premise is that sentences consist of themes, which present known, context-dependent information, and rhemes, which present new, context-independent information. Because they represent new information, it is rhemes rather than themes which push text development forward. Thematic progression can be defined as the choice and ordering of utterance themes, their mutual concatenation and hierarchy, as well as their relationship to hyperthemes of the superior text units to the whole text, to the situation. A trend of theme-rheme analysis initiated by researchers like Deyes (1918) has successfully pointed translation theorists in the direction of a much more fruitful line enquiry. This involves grafting text- typological considerations onto patterns of thematic progression as these unfold.
What follows is an examination of the enabling options of the theme systems which convert clause into utterances and texts issued in the course of communication _ spoken or written _ and structured so as to present information in a marked or unmarked manner. Bell mentioned that the theme system operates through two systems both of which are concerned with the placing of information units in the structure of the clause and providing a range of options which allow clause structure to be manipulated so that varying degrees of prominence can be achieved by the information contained in the clause. The two systems are:
Thematization: this organizes the initiation of the clause and acts of direct the attention of the receiver of the message to the parts the sender wishes to emphasize. The key elements involved in this are theme and rheme.
Information: this organizes the completion of the clause and, like thematization, also directs attention to parts of the massage. The key elements involved are information distribution and information focus.
The two theme systems provide options for the expression of discoursal meaning as required by the textual macrofunction.
Theme itself contains two subsystems: thematization and information each of which are involved in information distribution but in different ways. The first is concerned with the distribution of information in the clause and, specially, the initiation of the clause and acts to direct the attention of the receiver of the message to those parts of the structure of the signal which the center whishes to emphasize. The second, in contrast, is concerned with the distribution of information in the context of the tone group. In contrast with the propositional terms, thematization makes a single distinction: theme versus rheme. The theme is the initial unit of a clause and the rheme the reminder. The fact is that the overall choice and ordering of themes play an important role in organizing a text and consequently forming the whole message. What is known, or may be inferred, or is the starting point of a communication is to be regarded as the theme of a sentence and the elements which convey the new piece of information are the rheme.
Grzegorek (1984) introduces four main types of thematization in English: 1- passivization, 2- clefts and pseudo-clefts, 3- topicalization, left-dislocation, focus movement, and 4- presentation sentences with preposed expressions. She compared these thematization types with those existing in Polish language. She says that thematization is governed by a variety of factors, most of which are of pragmatic rather than purely syntactic nature. Hallidayan linguists identify three main types of marked theme in English: fronted theme, predicated theme, and identifying theme.
By observing the analysis of each individual part of the translation test, some conclusions can be drawn. In the area of topicalization, most items were translated into Persian as less emphasized marked themes and few items were translated as unmarked themes. As both less emphasized and more emphasized marked themes belong to one greater category i.e. marked themes, the difference between marked and unmarked translation of English thematized sentences regarding their effect on the audience, is considerable. The only part of the test in which unmarked translation is more frequent than marked one, is the second part related to passivization.
Most English passive sentences are translated as active sentences because active sentences are frequently used in Persian contrary to English. By observing the results of the third part of the test related to cleft sentences, it can be concluded that most English thematized sentences are translated as more emphasized marked themes like source sentences. Finally, in the fourth part of the test, most items are translated as less emphasized marked themes. By considering the results derived from the analysis of the translation test as a whole, most English thematized sentences are translated as less emphasized marked themes and few items are translated as unmarked themes. As we know, the difference between less emphasized and more emphasized marked theme is the degree of markedness. If we consider both of them as one major category i.e. marked theme, it can be stated that most English thematized sentences were translated as marked themes. By this conclusion, we can assert that markedness does not greatly vary in English thematized constructions compared to Persian equivalents. If we want to consider these two types of marked themes individually, we can say that less emphasized marked themes are more frequent than more emphasized one but the difference between them seems not to be considerable. Nevertheless, both less emphasized and more emphasized marked themes are more frequent than unmarked themes in the translation of English thematized sentences.
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