Logical relations in translation: the case of Hungarian–English news translation

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on the (re)creation of logical structure in translation. While their crucial role in the cognitive processing of discourse is indisputable, we know little about the actual behaviour of logical relations in translation and the way in which they structure discourse linearly and hierarchically. By applying Halliday and Matthiessenr’s taxonomy to the analysis of (linear) conjunctive cohesive structure and Mann and Thompson’s Rhetorical Structure Theory to reveal the (hierarchical) organization of logical relations, the study aims to generate hypotheses, based on an in-depth analysis of Hungarian–English news translation, regarding the discourse level translation strategies that accompany the target language (re)creation of logical/rhetorical structure. Findings indicate that while in the quantity of conjunctions and relational propositions in translations no statistically significant shifts occur, in their quality and the hierarchical organization of relational propositions considerable shifts appear, affecting the global meaning of the target text. It is argued that these shifts are triggered by a special set of discourse-level translation strategies, forming part of translators’ discourse competence. Raising future translators’ awareness of these may help produce target texts that are in line with the norms of the genre and are efficiently and adequately interpretable (i.e. coherent) for the audience.

KEYWORDS:

• Conjunctions
• relational propositions
• Rhetorical Structure Theory
• shift of coherence
• discourse-level translation strategies
• news translation

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and valuable comments and suggestions, which have helped me greatly improve the quality of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Krisztina Károly, DSc, is Associate Professor of linguistics at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. She is Director of the Language Pedagogy PhD Programme, Head of the Department of English Language Pedagogy of the School of English and American Studies, and director general of the Centre for Teacher Training. Her research interests relate to discourse analysis and translation studies, and within those to discourse-level translation strategies and news translation. She is co-editor of the international journals Across Languages and Cultures and Working Papers in Language Pedagogy.