Translation strategies related to the omission of verbs when translating from Russian into French

Abstract

While there is a vast literature on translation transformations and techniques, little attention among Russian researchers is paid to the omission. The article attempts to contribute to the debate by analyzing the omission as a translation technique, as well as verb omission examples when translating a literary text from Russian into French. The omission means elimination of a source text (ST) element while translating into target text. The omission can occur at the semantic or structural-semantic levels. The latter implies not only semantic but also syntactic changes. The omission can be due to the redundancy of an element in the ST. Redundancy in ST can be caused by the structural features of the source language, repetition of information in the text or by the opportunity to extract information from the situational context. The analysis of examples of verb omission taken from the translations into French of the novel Oblomov written by Ivan Goncharov showed that the use of this technique in relation to Russian verbs obeys the general patterns of the use of omission listed above: a French translator can omit a verb and use a more economical construction allowed by the norms of the French language; can translate one verb from two ST verbs with the same meaning; can eliminate the original verb if it’s meaning can be derived from the situational context. However, the original verb can convey stylistic meanings that are important in the work; if this verb is omitted, stylistic meanings disappear.

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