CHAPTER 4: Internal factors
4.4 Grammatical shifts
118 Example 27:
27.i. Afrikaans source text unit: “Ek verstaan dit, Ma, maar…” (Opperman, 2008:8) 27.ii. English translation with agent: I understand that, Mother, but…
27.iii. English translation in agentless passive voice: That’s understandable, Mother, but…
When producing a translation for dramatic performance, speakability should be a priority. . Example 27.iii. is a more elegant-sounding rendition than 27.ii., because it flows better and is easier to pronounce (since the first two consecutive words do not begin with vowels).
Discoursal shifts were rare in producing the target text of Kaburu, because the text mainly consists of people addressing one another; given this, using an agentless passive voice was deemed detrimental to the personal tone of the conversations in the text. However, in the case of example 27, the shift was a deliberate choice by the translator, made after careful consideration of various aspects of possible target language renditions.
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Level shifts occur when a grammatical concept is translated with a lexeme. A level shift occurs when the translator uses words to translate grammatical morphemes. This kind of shift happens when a translator chooses to translate the progressive aspect in English with the Afrikaans unit ‘besig om te’; for example, rendering ‘Ek is besig om te werk’ with ‘I’m working’. In this case, the word morpheme ‘-ing’ is used to convey in English what the word
‘besig’ conveyed in Afrikaans. In translating Kaburu, there were no instances that required a level shift.
Structure shifts refer to changes in the grammatical structure of the translation unit when it is rendered from the source language into the target language. This may occur when the verb has to be moved to be grammatically correct in the target language. Example 28 demonstrates this.
Example 28:
28.i. Source text unit: “Waaroor kla (verb) julle (subject) in Kanada?” (Opperman, 2008:25),
28.ii. Target language unit: “What do you (subject) complain (verb) about in Canada?”
In example 28, the verb “kla”/”complain” moved from before the subject “julle” in the source language unit to after the subject “you” in the target language unit. In this case, it is impossible to produce a grammatically correct target language unit without making the structure shift. Example 29 provides another instance where the verb has to move.
120 Example 29:
29.i. Source language unit: “die tafel dek” (Opperman, 2008:34).
29.ii. Target language equivalent: “set the table”
In example 29, the source language expression has an exact target language equivalent ‘set the table’ but, in the source language unit, the verb ‘dek’ is after the object ‘tafel’ and, in the target language unit, the verb ‘set’ is before the object ‘table’. This may also occur when an adverbial moves from the beginning of the sentence to the end. Example 30 demonstrates a structure shift with the adverbial ‘all around’.
Example 30:
30.i. Source language unit: Om jou hoor jy die leeus brul en die hiëna’s roep.
(Opperman, 2008:42)
30.ii. Target language unit without structure shift: all around you, you can hear lions roar and hyenas call.
30.iii. Target language unit with structure shift: …you can hear lions roar and hyenas call all around.
In example 30.iii a structure shift occurs to make the target language unit sound more natural because it avoids the double use of ‘you’ (as in example 30.ii.).
Class shifts occur when the translator chooses a target language unit from a different class to render a source language unit, and this occurred several times in the process of producing the translation of Kaburu. An example from Kaburu is the unit ‘Menswees’
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(Opperman, 2008:36). There is no one word target language equivalent, which necessitates a class shift from a unit consisting only of a noun to a unit that consists of a noun and a verb, namely, ‘being human’. In this case, it is impossible to translate the noun in the source language with only a noun in the target language because an equivalent does not exist, which makes this class shift inevitable.
Unit shifts occur when the translator moves a unit from one linguistic rank to another. An example from Kaburu is the word ‘oormôre’ (Opperman, 2008:46), which can only be translated with a phrase rank unit in the target language, this being ‘the day after tomorrow’.
In this case, a unit shift occurs from word rank in the source language to phrase rank in the target language.
Intra-system shifts occur when a small change is made necessary by a difference in source and target language systems. Usually, when translating between English and Afrikaans, singular and plural is quite simple to translate because the language systems correspond so closely. There are set singular and plural forms of words, and the translator simply renders the singular source language unit with the singular target language unit. However, in the English language system, there are words that refer to one item but carry a plural name – for example, scissors, trousers, glasses, and politics. This does not correspond with the Afrikaans language system, which means that these words must be translated in the singular form of the word to be correct in Afrikaans: scissors (skêr), trousers (broek), glasses (bril), politics (politiek). This necessary shift between singular and plural is an example of an intra- system shift. In Kaburu, the source language unit braaitang (Opperman, 2008:31) was translated with the target language unit barbeque tongs. In English, the word ‘tongs’ refers to both the singular and plural, but in Afrikaans ‘tang’ is singular and ‘tange’ is plural. In this case, the shift is necessary and inevitable. In all the examples above, the shifts occurred
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because of the differences between Afrikaans and English language systems. Although these two language systems correspond in many ways, the differences are extensive enough to necessitate various grammatical shifts.
Another kind of shift occurs because the English language system requires the marking of the progressive aspect of the verb by adding the –ing suffix. The Afrikaans language system, however, does not allow for such progressive marking. It can be argued that, because Afrikaans verbs lack the progressive element, they are pithier. However, creating an English translation of an Afrikaans text using verbs that are not marked for aspect is not possible because it sounds unnatural. The implication is that the translator needs to make this kind of shift to create natural sounding target language equivalents. This kind of shift can be referred to as an inflectional shift. It is not part of Catford’s model, but because it is needed in order to translate Kaburu, I have added it to this section. Example 31 is an example of a unit that necessitates an inflectional shift. In this example, Father informs Grandmother that he is terminally ill and uses the expression “ek gaan doodgaan” (Opperman, 2008:55) / ‘I will die’ or ‘I’m going to die’. It is argued that, in this case, it is better to use the verb ‘going to’
instead of ‘will’ to translate ‘gaan’ because it sounds more natural.
Example 31:
31.i. Afrikaans source text unit 31.ii. English target language rendition
Pa (aan Ouma):
Ma, ek is bevrees ek het nuus wat Ma gaan ontstel.
Father (to Grandma):
Mother, I’m afraid I have news that is going to upset you.
123 Ouma:
Ek weet klaar. Jy pak jou tasse. Jy gaan weg.
Pa:
Op ’n manier is Ma reg. Behalwe dat waar ek heen gaan, ek nie tasse nodig sal hê nie.
Ouma:
Waarheen gaan jy?
Pa:
Ek gaan doodgaan.
Ouma:
Ons gaan almal doodgaan.
Pa:
Ek het kanker, Ma.
Grandma:
I already know. You are packing your bags.
You are going away.
Father:
In a way you are right. Except that where I’m going, I won’t need bags.
Grandma:
Where are you going?
Father:
I’m going to die.
Grandma:
We’re all going to die.
Father:
I have cancer, Mom.
In this passage, it is better to translate the word ‘gaan’ with ‘going’ because it sounds more natural. Translating ‘gaan’ with ‘will’ will result in the following translation:
Example 32:
Father (to Grandma):
Mother, I’m afraid I have news that will upset you.
Grandma:
I already know. You will pack your bags. You will go way.
Father:
In a way you are right. Except that where I’ll go, I won’t need bags.
124 Grandma:
Where will you go?
Father:
I will die.
Grandma:
We will all die.
Father:
I have cancer, Mom.
Example 31.ii., with the inflectional shift, sounds much more natural than example 32, which has no such shift. In order to cope with this particular challenge, the translator needs to analyse the verbs carefully to judge whether or not a translation unit requires an inflectional shift.
Another instance where an inflectional shift is inevitable is when Elna tells her mother that she is not adapting to life in Canada (Opperman, 2008:31). She uses the Afrikaans verb sukkel / ‘struggle’ in the unit “Ek sukkel, Ma” which was translated with “I’m struggling, Mom”
instead of “I struggle, Mom”. Although the resulting target language unit sounds less succinct than the original source language unit, it is inevitable because avoiding it produces a target language unit that sounds unnatural.