Grammatical Equivalence in Translation: Principles and Strategies

1. Grammatical vs. Lexical Categories

Grammar is the set of rules that determine how units such as words and phrases are combined in a language and the type of information that must be made regularly explicit in utterances.

• Grammatical choices: Closed systems (e.g., number or pronoun systems). These are largely obligatory and rule out other choices from the same system by default.
• Lexical choices: Open-ended sets of items.

2. Grammatical Categories Across Languages

Differences in the grammatical structures of the source language (SL) and target language (TL) can lead to changes in the information content of the message during translation:

• If the TL has a grammatical category that the SL lacks, you must add information to the target text (TT).
• If the TL lacks a grammatical category present in the SL, you may need to omit that information.

Number

While the concept of countability is universal, not all languages possess a grammatical category of number. For instance, English and Spanish distinguish between one and more than one (singular and plural).

Voice

Voice defines the relationship between a verb and its subject:

• Active clauses: The subject is the agent responsible for performing the action.
• Passive clauses: The subject is the affected entity.

Passive voice is used frequently in English, particularly in discourse characterized by an impersonal tone, such as scientific and technical writing, to provide objectivity and distance the writer from the text.

Translation Strategies for Passive Voice

1. English to Spanish: Translate using a se-passive, impersonal construction, or an active voice construction.
2. Spanish to English: Convert these structures into the passive voice.

To prevent syntactic calques, translators should consider:

• The frequency of passive construction use in both languages.
• The existence of equivalent structures in both languages.
• The pragmatic function of the text.