The Role of the Students' Awareness of Subordinate Clauses and Reduced Forms in their Translations

Transcription

1 The Role of the Students' Awareness of Subordinate Clauses and Reduced Forms in their Translations Mohammad Ali Vosough Yazdani 1 Hossein Younesi 2 This paper reports on a study that investigated the students' awareness of the English subordinate clauses as well as reduced forms and absolute constructions, which influence their comprehension of texts including these grammatical points, and ultimately affect their translating the texts into Persian. The researchers decided to administer the standard TOEFL test to 86 students majoring English Translation in the Islamic Azad University, Tehran North Branch. Excluding the very sharp students and the very slow ones, the researchers selected 75 male and female participants and divided them into two homogenous groups, namely the control and experimental groups. The researchers selected a passage that included the grammatical points mentioned above. They decided to use the passage for translation and administered the pretests to both groups before starting the treatment. The posttests and the analyses of the results showed there was a significant difference between performances of the two groups. Key Words: subordinate clauses, reduced forms, translation 1 - Islamic Azad University - Tehran North Branch 2 - Islamic Azad University - Tehran North Branch

2 Introduction Acquiring the knowledge of distinguishing and producing the clauses, their reduced forms, their types, their contribution to the construction of sentences, and also their ways of connectedness to the sentences has practically appeared to be a challenging task for the Iranian English Translation (ET) Students. As a student of English Translation, a learner is in dire need of acquiring the awareness to recognize the boundaries and functions of clauses and phrases in compound and complex sentences in order to extract the true meaning of the text. Beyond that, he or she has to acquire the mastery to build up various clauses and phrases as being the constituents of two- or more -clause sentences since such dominancy over grammatical structures equip the learners with the required capacity while translating the other way round from their native tongue, say Persian, into English. To empirically investigate this area in order to realize how such grammatical awareness aids the learners with their translation task and to further contribute to the methods which aim at practically assisting the said trainees in their task of translating in both directions, the present study has rendered itself to examine the provision of such an ability and observe how and to what extent grammatical awareness of complete and reduced clauses works effectively in enabling the learners not only to distinguish the said structures within sentences but also to construct the similar constituents in translating both from English to Persian and vice versa. Research Question As the area of investigation was pinpointed above, the following research question will pop up: Q: Is there any difference between the students' awareness of subordinate clauses and reduced forms and their presenting acceptable translations? Statement of the Hypothesis To examine the above research question, the following corresponding null premise was formulated. HO: There is no difference between the students' awareness of subordinate clauses and reduced forms and their presenting acceptable translations. Review of the Related Literature Grammar Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (1989) defines grammar as," a description of the structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language". Bowen et al (1985) in TESOL TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES maintain, "In many ways it would seem preferable to discuss the grammar of the written language first, and the oral language later." They argue that this is inherent in the history of the language and is "shown by the derivation of the word grammar: gram comes from the Greek word graphein" to write" (Bowen et al, 1985:160). rules that are used unconsciously. Knowledge of grammar is thought by many to be the central area of the language system (Cook, 1991, p.9). No matter how important the other components of language are, they relate. According to Penny Ur, we can apply the term "grammatical" to units smaller than sentences (1996, p. 75). She maintains, "A brief phrase said or written on its own can be grammatically acceptable or unacceptable in its own right: a tall woman sounds right; *a woman tall does not." According to Ur, the same may be true of single words. Take the following pairs of examples: (went vs. goed: women vs. womans). A specific instance of grammar is usually called a "structure". Examples of structures would be the past tense, noun plurals, the comparison of adjectives and so on. Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammars are the two sub-categories of Applied Grammar. While Descriptive Grammars attempt to precisely describe the linguistic processes, a particular user employs without telling the user how to speak or understand, Prescriptive Grammars emphasize on the rules that govern the

3 use of language. Unlike the Descriptive Grammars, Prescriptive grammars establish a "proper" way in which to speak or write. These grammars, sometimes referred to as pedagogical grammars, frequently blur into each other. Halliday (quoted in LDAL p. 182) restricts the term "modifier" to pre modifiers and calls post modifiers Qualifiers. LDAL defines "head" as the central part of a phrase. "Other elements in the phrase are in some grammatical or semantic relationship to the head" (Richards et al, 1989, p.128). The following example can help us get a better picture of the concept: the fat lady in the floral dress The noun lady is the head of the phrase. As for the post modifiers, Gramley and Pätzold (1992) maintain the noun head can be followed by several types of modifying expression. Gramley and Pätzold claim: A few adjectives can be post-positive, both fixed expressions (secretary general, president elect) and adjectives, and participles with complements (a woman true to her principles, a house made to order). Those adverbs of time and place which can modify nouns also follow (the valley beyond, that car there, years before).many of these adverbs are variants of Prepositional Phrases (PPs) which are the most frequent post modifiers (the valley beyond ours, a story about love and war, a person of distinction). PPs themselves are sometimes, but by no means always, variations of clauses, both non-finite (the valley situated beyond ours, the woman sitting beside you, the valley to visit) and finite (the valley that is situated beyond ours, a student who comes from Ghana). Clause According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, a clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses, the subject may not appear explicitly. Clauses are generally classified as either dependent or independent. An independent clause can stand alone as a complete simple sentence, whereas a dependent clause must be connected to or part of another clause. The dependent clause is then described as subordinate to a main clause. One major way to classify dependent clauses is by function, that is, by the roles they play in the clauses they are subordinate to. There are three main kinds of dependent clauses: noun clauses, adjective clauses, and adverb clauses, so called for their syntactic and semantic resemblance to noun phrases, adjective phrases, and adverbials, respectively. Subordinate Clauses If a clause can stand alone as a sentence, it is an independent clause. Some clauses, however, cannot stand alone as sentences. In this case, they are dependent clauses or subordinate clauses. A noun clause is an entire clause that takes the place of a noun in another clause or phrase. Like a noun, a noun clause acts as the subject or object of a verb or the object of a preposition, answering the questions "who(m)?" or "what?". An adjective clause is a dependent clause which takes the place of an adjective in another clause or phrase. Like an adjective, an adjective clause modifies a noun or pronoun, answering questions like "which?" or "what kind of?" Note that an adjective clause usually comes after what it modifies, while an adjective usually comes before. In formal writing, an adjective clause begins with the relative pronouns "who (m)," "that," or "which." In informal writing or speech, you may leave out the relative pronoun when it is not the subject of the adjective clause, but you should usually include the relative pronoun in formal, academic writing. An adverb clause is a dependent clause that takes the place of an adverb in another clause or phrase. It contains subject (explicit or implied) and predicate, and it modifies a verb. An adverb clause answers questions such as "when?", "where?", "why?", "with what goal/result?", and "under what conditions?" The following examples answer "when" and "why" questions. Usually, a subordinating conjunction like "because," "when (ever)," "where (ever)," "since," "after," and "so that," will introduce an adverb clause. Note that a dependent

4 adverb clause can never stand alone as a complete sentence. According to Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk, adverbial clauses function mainly as adjuncts or disjuncts. In those functions, they are like adverbial phrases, but in their potentiality for greater explicitness, they are more often like prepositional phrases (Greenbaum and Quirk, 1990): We left after the speeches ended. We left after the end of the speeches Present and Past Participles When thinking about participles, do not be misled by the words present and past. These terms refer to different forms of verbs, not to different times or tenses. All present participles end in -ing e.g. the laughing worker, the falling rock, the stinging remark The past participles of all regular verbs end in -ed e.g. the injured player, the cracked vase. However, irregular verbs have various past participle endings such as thrown, ridden, built, and gone ( Participial Phrases both present and past participles can be used in phrases (called participial phrases) that modify nouns and pronouns. A participial phrase is made up of a participle and its modifiers. A participle may be followed by an object, an adverb, a prepositional phrase, an adverb clause, or any combination of these. Example: Holding the torch steadily, the girl approached the monster. In the following sentence, the participial phrase includes a present participle (making), an object (a great ring), and a prepositional phrase (of white light): She waved the torch over her head, making a great ring of white light. Let us examine the following example: Guiding the ball through the upper chutes, down a run over lane, off the slingshot bumpers to the flippers, I cradled it there, bouncing it back and forth until I had a perfect shot through the spinner. Here, the first phrase includes a present participle (Guiding) and its object (the pinball), followed by a series of prepositional phrases. The second participial phrase again contains a present participle (bouncing) and its object (it), followed by a pair of adverbs (back and forth) and an adverb clause. Both participial phrases modify "I," the subject of the sentence. Note that participial phrases cannot stand alone as complete sentences: they must modify a noun or pronoun in the sentence. Translation Translation according to Nida (1984) consists of providing, in the receptor language, the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines translation as translation n.1 the act or an instance of translating. 2 a written or spoken expression of the meaning of a word, speech, book, etc. in another language (The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2002). In Hatim and Munday's words: "the first of these two senses relates to translation as a process, the second to the product" (2004.p3). They also use the definition in the specialist Dictionary of Translation Studies ( Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997) to draw the following distinction: "The first sense focuses on the role of the translator in taking the original or source text (ST) and turn it into a text in another language (the target text, TT). The second sense centres on the concrete translation product produced by the translator" (p.3). Translation is a science, an art, and a skill. It is a science in the sense that it necessitates complete knowledge of the structure and make-up of the two languages concerned (Abdellah, 2004). It is an art since it requires artistic talent to reconstruct the original text in the form of a product that is presentable to the reader who is not supposed to be familiar with the original. It is also a skill because it entails the ability to smooth over any difficulty in the translation, and the ability to provide the translation of something that has no equal in the target language. Translation develops three qualities essential to all language learning: flexibility, accuracy and clarity. It trains the learner to search (flexibility) for the most appropriate words

5 (accuracy) for what is meant (clarity). This combination of freedom and constraint allows the student to include their own thoughts to a discussion which has a clear focus the text. Earlier in this section, we mentioned what Eugene Nida (1969) claimed, "The process of translation passes three phases." Nida believes a careful translator analyzes the SL message into its simplest and structurally clearest forms in the first place. The translator then transfers the message at this kernel level. The last phase for the translator to follow is to restructure the message in the TL to the level that is most appropriate for the audience addressed (Hatim & Munday, 2004). A similar observation was made by Lawrence Venuti (2007) who suggested," The structural differences between languages, even between languages that bear significant lexical and syntactical resemblances stemming from shared etymologies or a history of mutual borrowing, require the translator variously to dismantle rearrange, and finally displace the chain of signifiers that make up the source text"(p.29). Criteria for a good translation A good translation according to A. F. Tytler ( ) is one that gives a complete transcript of the ideas and sentiments in the original passage, maintains the character of the style and has the ease and flow of the original text ( A. F. Tytler, 1790, cited in Translation Journal and the Author 2004). A good translation is one that carries all the ideas of the original as well as its structural and cultural features. The following summarizes the characteristics of a good transition: A good translation is easy to understand; it is fluent and idiomatic. Whatever the challenges, a good translator should benefit from four main macro-skills in the field of translation reading comprehension, researching, analytical, and composing skills. Observing these basic skills can help any novice translator to produce a good translation. Methodology Participants In this study, a sum of 75 male and female undergraduate students was selected from the total population majoring in the English Translation program at the Islamic Azad University, Tehran, North Branch. To select the participants with similar level of language proficiency, the researchers administered a TOEFL test to 86 terms six and seven junior students and 75 of them were selected to act as experimental and control groups. The control group received no special treatment. The students in this group translated texts and passages similar to those of the experimental group. The instructor helped the students in the experimental group to review the above-mentioned grammatical points. In some cases, he checked the students' understanding of the clauses of different types as well as reduced forms and absolute constructions. Instrumentation The researchers administered four tests in this study: a proficiency test on grammar and a translation test to ensure the homogeneity of the participants. The proficiency test consisted of 50 grammatical multiple-choice items selected from the structure section of the TOEFL. After determining the experimental and control groups, the researchers administered a pretest on translation. The same test serving as the posttest was given to both groups after 12 weeks. The test material used to serve as the pretest and posttest was a selection of 20 sentences used in a short reading passage. Procedures Data Collection The tests were administered during the normal class hours. First, the general proficiency test i.e. the grammar test was given to the participants in order to assess their language proficiency levels. It was administered in a 60-minute class session. The translation pretest and posttest were given in 80-minute class sessions the pretest and the posttest were administered at the beginning of the academic term and at the end of the term respectively. The participants were permitted to use English-Persian dictionaries.

6 Scoring The scoring procedure can be analyzed in three phases: 1. The total proficiency test score was 100 points with two points for each correct item with no negative points for the wrong answers or for the questions left unanswered. 2. There were 100 points for the translation tests. The possible range of scores in the translation test would be The researchers asked two more colleagues to rate the students' translations to remove any misjudgment. Comparison of the correlations among the researcher and the raters In order to examine the reliability of the measurements done by the researcher, the correlation between the raters' results and the researchers' results were compared. The formula used for measuring the correlations was the Spearman rank-order correlations. For every translation test, three correlations were obtained: one between the researcher and the first rater, one between the researcher and the second rater and one between the two raters. So, for both translations six correlations were computed. The results are exhibited in tables 1 and 2. Table 1: Comparison between Correlations on translation of texts in experimental group Between the researcher and the first rater Between the researcher and the second rater Between two raters P=0.85 P=0.80 P=0.89 These figures in Table 1 indicate that there are strong correlations in rating. The high correlation between the researcher and the two raters and also the correlation between the two raters is probably the result of training given to the raters. Table 2: Comparison between Correlations on translation of texts in control group Between the researcher and the first rater P=0.86 Between the researcher and the second rater P=0.79 Between two raters P=0.91 As it is indicated in table 2, the correlations between the researcher and the two raters and also the correlation between the two raters are acceptable. Data Analysis Initially, using the SPSS Version the researchers carried out the descriptive statistics for all measures involved in this study. The results are reported in Table 3. Table 3: Descriptive Statistics Deviation Maximu m Minimu m N precont postcont preexpe r postexp er Valid N (list wise)

7 The t-test was employed to compare the means of pairs of pretests and posttests administered to the two groups. Table 4 illustrates the results. Table 4: Paired Samples Statistics Error Deviati on N Preco nt Postco nt Preex per Postex per Pair 1 Pair 2 In regard to the research question "Is there any difference between the students' awareness of subordinate clauses and reduced forms and their presenting acceptable translations?" the results illustrated in Tables 5 and 6 indicate that there is significant difference between the students' awareness of subordinate clauses and reduced forms and their presenting acceptable translations. Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected. Table 5: Group Statistics Error Deviation N group Postexperi men tal Postcontrol Postte sts Table 6: Independent Samples Test 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Upp er Lower t-test for Equality of s Error Differe nce Difference Sig. (2- tailed) df t Levene's Test for Equality of Variances Sig..007 F Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed Posttes ts

8 Conclusion and Pedagogical Implications The purpose of this study was to examine the strategies used by students majoring English Translation translating texts carrying clauses and phrases of different types. Translating is a complex process in which the competent translator orchestrates a number of knowledge sources using a variety of strategies to comprehend what they read before they translate them into another language. These sources include what Smith (1994) refers to as "visual information" which involves awareness of linguistic and print conventions, as well as "nonvisuals information" to make sense of what they read or hear. In their attempts to make sense of what they translate, the translators resort to a number of strategies, which are deliberate, conscious plans they execute when processing textual information. These strategies enable them to interpret printed or oral information quickly and efficiently. This study described the basic skills and strategies that novice translators as well as student translators need to master in their daily experiences with translation tasks. The main skills proposed are reading comprehension, researching, analytical, and composing skills. The study suggested other sub-skills and strategies for planting one's feet firmly in the land of translation. The skills and strategies presented in this study represent just the basic level for beginners and students. However, advanced, and professional translators may find them relevant as well. Therefore, some of the strategies that may be routinely used in one area may prove to be unnecessary in another area. The End

9 References Concise Oxford English Dictionary Oxford. Oxford University Press. Cook, Vivian Second Language Learning And Language Teaching. Edward Arnold. UK. Crystal, David A Dictionary of Linguistics And Phonetics. 3 rd edn. Blackwell. UK. Frank, Marcella Modern English: Exercise for Non-Native Speakers. Part 2 (2 nd edn). Prentice Hall,Inc. USA. Gramley, Stephan and Kurt-Michael Pätzold A Survey of Modern English. Routledge. London. Hatim, Basil & Munday, Jeremy Translation: An advanced Resource Book. Routledge Applied Linguistics, Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York Hartwell, Patrick Grammar, Grammars and the Teaching of Grammar. College of English Larson, Mildred L ing-based Translation: A Guide to Cross-language Equivalence. 2 nd edition Lanham, New York and Oxford. University Press of America. Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics Nida. E. A (Cited in Hatim, Basil & Munday, Jeremy. 2004) Shuttleworth, M. and M. Cowie Dictionary of Translation Studies. Manchester: St Jerome. Smith Tytler, A. F Essay on the Principles of Translation. (Cited in Translation Journal and the Author 2004) Ur, Penny A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory. Cambridge University Press. Great Britain. Venuti, Lawrence Adaptation, Translation, Critique. Journal of visual Culture. Also published by Sage Publications Websites Abdellah, Antar Solhy What Every Novice Translator Should Know. Translation Journal and the Author 2004 ( 98. htm) ( sagepublications. com GOLIATH: