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Target
Vol. 11:2 (1999) ► pp.289–315

Clefts in Translations between English and German [1] 1

| Humboldt University, Berlin

A great number of translation problems are linguistic in nature, but they can only be properly diagnosed and their solutions 'objectively ' assessed if one takes account of the context in which the problematic elements occur. The paper focuses on a prototypical case of such translation problems: English cleft sentences and their counterparts in German. Clefts are claimed to establish a rhetorical relation with a propositional antecedent located beyond the local context, thus contributing to the formation of textual macro-structures. While the local context determines the focal interpretation of clefts within the current discourse, the appeal to earlier ideas attributes to the cleft a higher degree of contextual relevance.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1.Basic Hypotheses
    • 1.2.A First Look at Clefts in English and German
  • 2.The Original
    • 2.1.Empirical Observations
    • 2.2.Linguistic Assumptions on Clefts
    • 2.3.Some More Observations and a First Hypothesis
    • 2.4.The Semantic Basis of the Discourse Effect
  • 3.Translations into German
    • 3.1.Systematic Variations
    • 3.2. Improving the Translation
    • 3.3.Focus
    • 3.4.Securing the Appropriate Focus Structure
      • 3.4.1.A Closer Look at Endfocus
      • 3.4.2.Reordering
      • 3.4.3.Retaining the Cleft
  • 4.Summarizing the Discussion
    • 4.1.The Priority of Appropriate Focus Structures
    • 4.2.The Grammatical Differences
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 March 2000
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.11.2.06doh
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