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Contact effects of translation: Distinguishing two kinds of influence in Old English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2008

Ann Taylor
Ann Taylor
Affiliation:
University of York
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Abstract

Many of our surviving Old English (OE) texts are translations from Latin originals. Given that the syntax of Latin and OE differ in a number of ways, the possibility of transference in the process of translation is an important issue for studies of OE syntax. This article examines one syntactic structure where the syntax of the languages differ: the prepositional phrase (PP) with pronominal complement. In Latin, PPs with pronominal complements are essentially head-initial, while in OE they vary between head-initial and head-final. I show that two distinct translation effects can be distinguished, one direct and one indirect, and that these effects apply differentially to two different types of translation, biblical and nonbiblical. I relate these different translation effects to the different strategies of OE translators when faced with biblical and nonbiblical texts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , July 2008 , pp. 341 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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