Main Issues of Translation Studies45

1.13Cases of more or less incomplete shift from grammar to lexis are quite frequent
in translation between other languages. For example, the English: This text is intended
for . . . may have as its French TL equivalent: Le présent manuel s’adresse à . . . Here the
SL modifier, This – a term in a grammatical system of deictics – has as its TL equivalent
the modifier Le présent, an article + a lexical adjective. Such cases are not rare in French,
cf. also This may reach you before I arrive = Fr. Il se peut que ce mot vous parvienne avant mon
arrivée. Once again the grammatical item this has a partially lexical translation
equivalent ce mot.4
1.2 Category shifts. In 2.4 we referred to unbounded and rank-bound translation: the first
being approximately ‘normal’ or ‘free’ translation in which SL–TL equivalences are set
up at whatever rank is appropriate. Usually, but not always, there is sentence–sentence
equivalence,5 but in the course of a text, equivalences may shift up and down the rankscale,
often being established at ranks lower than the sentence. We use the term ‘rankbound’
translation only to refer to those special cases where equivalence is deliberately
limited to ranks below the sentence, thus leading to ‘bad translation’ = i.e. translation
in which the TL text is either not a normal TL form at all, or is not relatable to the same
situational substance as the SL text.
In normal, unbounded, translation, then, translation equivalences may occur
between sentences, clauses, groups, words and (though rarely) morphemes. The
following is an example where equivalence can be established to some extent right
down to morpheme rank:
Fr. SL text J’ai laissé mes lunettes sur la table
Eng. TL text I’ve left my glasses on the table
144
Extension
B
SECTION
3