The transfer of expressive meaning in the translation of English intesifiers in to Thai

Abstract

This research explores how the three English intensifiers very, so, and really are translated into Thai through the use of parallel corpus. It aims to study the linguistic realizations used in the translations, the translation strategies, and lastly, how the contextual factors play the role in the translation. A parallel corpus was constructed consisting of 12 English fictions and the Thai translations. In the selection of these fictions, stratified sampling method was used with an aim to test whether the context within the story, i.e. the temporal context (dated vs. contemporary), the participants (upper vs. lower classes), and the types of discourse (narration vs. dialogue), play a role in the translators’ choice of linguistic forms. Interviews were also carried out with three professional translators to compare to the quantitative study of the relationship between forms and contexts. It is found that three linguistic processes were used in translating the intensifiers: the lexical processes which include intensifiers, metaphorical expressions, and deictics; the morpho-syntactico-phonological processes which comprise formal and semantic repetition, negative constructions, and combinatory structures; and lastly the phonological processes in the final particles. The translation strategy most opted for was sense-oriented translation. The findings from the statistic quantitative analyses and the interviews supported the hypothesis that the temporal context, the context of participants, and the types of discourse were the governing factors in the translators’ choices of linguistic forms.