Translating from Bulgarian – Bulgarian gerundial clauses in Slovene literary translations

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyse translation equivalents of Bulgarian gerundial clauses in Slovene translations of five Bulgarian literary works. (1) The analysed works include 477 gerundial clauses with different adverbial meanings, resulting from their semantic-syntactic inexplicitness or extensiveness – gerundial clauses represent co-occurring dependent predicative structures with a general adverbial meaning, more explicitly determined by the relation between the semantic content of the superordinate and the dependent gerundial structure. Bulgarian gerundial clauses most frequently indicate time, manner, time-manner, cause, time-cause and result. (2) Their most frequent translation equivalents are the so-called morpho-syntactic expansions which are morpho-syntactically more explicit than the corresponding translation units, cf. coordinate (32,3%), subordinate (24,1%) and special finite clauses (8%), which include detached and modified clause structures (with the gerundial clause transformed into the main finite clause or the gerund transformed into the predicate of the main clause). They are followed by non-finite or verbless clauses (19,5%), morpho-syntactically more reduced word/ phrase translation equivalents (11,9%) and omissions (4,2%). The prevalent translation structures are conjunctive coordinate finite clauses (27,9%), gerundial clauses (18%), temporal subordinate finite clauses (12,4%), prepositional phrases (10,3%) and detached finite clauses (6,7%). (3) The syntactic-semantic relation is expressed in the least explicit way by Slovene gerundial or verbless clauses, conjunctive coordinate and special finite clauses (approx. 55%), making them similar to Bulgarian gerundial clauses; more explicit syntactic-semantic properties characterise adversative, consecutive and causal coordinate clauses and word/ phrase translation equivalents. The original syntactic function – adjunct or predicative modifier – is maintained in most subordinate finite, gerundial or verbless clauses and word/phrase translation equivalents, while coordinate and special finite clauses diverge from the syntactic function of Bulgarian gerundial clauses. (4) The semantics of the source-text gerundial clauses is best preserved in subordinate/ coordinate causal finite clauses, object and predicative modifying clauses with a causal or modal meaning, subordinate finite clauses indicating condition, result, manner and concession, in modal adverbs, modal or temporal adverbial phrases and a qualitative adjective phrase; a similar semantic overlapping exists in the case of Slovene gerundial clauses which correspond to Bulgarian gerundial clauses with the following adverbial meanings: manner, cause, time, time- -manner, result, time-cause, time-condition, purpose-result and manner-cause. Semantic deviations from the source-text structures are more frequent in the case of adversative and consecutive coordination, comparative, final, temporal and relative subordinate clauses, prepositional phrases and verbless clauses. Conjunctive coordination and special finite clauses are, on the other hand, semantically extensive – they correspond to heterogeneous source-text meanings.