ARTICLE

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF PREDICATED THEMATIC STRUCTURES IN THE ENGLISH NOVEL AND ITS URDU TRANSLATION

  1. HOME
  2. ARTICLE

14 Pages : 144-160

http://dx.doi.org/10.31703/gssr.2021(VI-IV).14      10.31703/gssr.2021(VI-IV).14      Published : Dec 2021

A Contrastive Analysis of Predicated Thematic Structures in the English Novel and its Urdu Translation

Abstract

    The study investigates the predicated thematic structures in the English text and its Urdu translation. The first objective is to define the variations in the Urdu translation of English predicated thematic structures. The second objective is to define how the variations in Urdu translation affect the thematic progression. The data has been collected from the English novel Things Fall Apart by Achebe (1958) and its Urdu translation Bikharti Duniya by Ullah (1991). The UAM Corpus Tool has been used to annotate the data and to find predicated thematic structures and their thematic progression.The findings show that the Urdu translation of English predicated themes is ambiguous and misleading. The English predicated themes have been translated as Urdu unmarked and marked ideational themes. Such unmotivated displacement of themes affects thematic progression. There occur some variations in the thematic progression of translated Urdu themes.

    (1) Humaira Yaqub
    PhD Candidate, Government College University Faisalabad and Lecturer, GIFT University Gujranwala, Punjab, Pakistan.
    (2) Ansa Ahsan
    Lecturer, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Punjab, Pakistan
    (3) Mubashir Iqbal
    Lecturer, University of Gujrat, Narrowal, Punjab, Pakistan.
Fulltext PDF

References

  • Achebe, C. (1958). Things fall apart. London: Heinemann.
  • Baker, M. (1992). In other words: A coursebook on translation. London: Routledge.
  • Butt, D. et al. (2000). Using functional grammar: An explorer's guide. Sydney: Macquarie University
  • Butt, M., & King, T. H. (2005). The status of case. In Veneeta Dayal & Anoop Mahajan (eds.), Clause structure in South Asian languages, 153-198. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
  • Butt, M., & King, T. H. (2007). Urdu in a parallel grammar development environment. Language Resources and Evaluation 41(2). 191-207.
  • Collins, P. (1991). Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in English. London: Routledge.
  • Danes, F. (1974). Functional sentence perspective and the organization of the text. In Frantisek Danes (ed.), Papers on functional sentence perspective. 106-128. Prague: Academia /The Hague: Mouton.
  • Downing, A. (2001). The theme-topic interface: Evidence from English. Amsterdam:Lohnnswert.
  • Eggins, S. (2004). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics. New York: Continuum
  • Erdmann, P. (1990). Discourse and grammar: Focussing and defocussing in English. Tiibingen: Newmeyer.
  • Grabe, W., & Kaplan, R. B. (1996). Theory of practice of writing: An appliedlinguistic perspective. Harlow: Pearson Education.
  • Halliday, M. (1967). Notes on transitivity and theme in English. Journal of Linguistics 3.199-244.
  • Halliday, M. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold
  • Halliday, M. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold
  • Halliday, M., & Matthiessen, C. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar. London:Hodder Arnold.
  • Hasan, R. (1984). Ways of saying, ways of meaning. In Robin P. Fawcett, Michael Halliday, Sydney Lamb & Adam Makkai (eds.), The semiotics of language andculture volume1: Language as social semiotic. London: Francis Pinter
  • Huddleston, R. (1984). Introduction to the grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Johansson, M. (2002). Clefts in contrast: A contrastive study of it clefts and wh clefts in English and Swedish texts and translations. Linguistics 39(3), 547-582.
  • Katz, S. (2000). A functional approach to the teaching of the French c'est-cleft. French Review 74, 248-262.
  • Kuswoyo, H. (2016). Thematic structure in Barack Obama's press conference: A systemic functional grammar study. Advances in Language and Literary Studies 7(2). Australian International Academic Centre, Australia.
  • Lavid, J. (2010). Contrasting choices in clause- initial position in English and Spanish: Acorpus-based analysis. In Elizabeth Swain (ed.), Thresholds and potentialities ofsystemic functional linguistics: Multilingual, multimodal and other specializeddis courses. 49-68. Trieste: EUT
  • Lavid, J., Arús, J., & Moratón, L. (2010a). Annotating thematic features in English and Spanish. In Maite Taboada, Susana Doval Suárez & Elsa González Álvarez (eds.),Contrastive discourse analysis. London, England: Equinox. 22, 94, 134.
  • Lavid, J., Arús, J., & Moratón, L. (2012). Genre realized in theme: The case of news reports and commentaries. Discourse: Special Issue on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Signaling Text Organisation 10. 3, 26, 40, 69, 78, 134, 378, 386.
  • McCabe, A. (1999). Theme and thematic patterns in Spanish and English history text. England: Aston University PhD dissertation
  • McCabe, A. & Alonso Belmonte, I. (2001). Theme, transitivity and cognitive representation in Spanish and English written texts. CLAC. 3(21), 377, 386.
  • Munday, J. (1998). Problems of applying thematic analysis to translation between Spanish and English. Cadernos de tradução 1(3), 183-213.
  • Munday, J. (2000). Using systemic functional linguistics as an aid to translation between Spanish and English: Maintaining the thematic development of the ST. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 40, 37-58.
  • O'Donnell, M. (2008). Demonstration of the UAM Corpus Tool for text and image annotation. Proceedings of the ACL-08: HLT Demo Session (Companion Volume), 13-16.Association for Computational Linguistics.
  • Péry-Woodley, M. P. (1989). Textual designs: Signalling coherence in First and Second language academic writing. Doctoral thesis. University of Lancaster.
  • Prince, E. (1978). A comparison of wh-clefts and it-clefts in discourse. Language 54. 883-906.
  • Raza, G., & Ahmed, T. (2011). Argument scrambling within Urdu NPs. In Miriam Butt & Tracy Holloway King (eds.), Proceedings of the LFG 11 conference. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. 461-481.
  • Riaz, S. (2018). A stylistic analysis of Manto's Urdu short stories and their English translations. England: The University of Leeds dissertation.
  • Sade, O. C. (2007). Thematic progression in Christian written discourse in Nigeria. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences 4(1), 64- 68.
  • Sari, P. (2009). Theme in the English declarative clause. Unpublished dissertation. Bandung: Universitas Padjadjaran.
  • Schmidt, R. L. (1999). Urdu: An essential grammar. London: Routledge.
  • Sujatna, E. T. S. (2013). Thematic progression of the Sundanese female writers. International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World 4(4), 382-389
  • Taboada, M. (1995). Theme markedness in English and Spanish: A systemic functional approach. MA thesis. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
  • Tahir, S. (2019). Exploring syntactic variations in Urdu and English languages by using systemic functional grammar. Bahawalpur: The Islamia University of Bahawalpur M. Phil. thesis.
  • Thompson, G. (1996). Introducing functional grammar. London: Arnold.
  • Ullah, I. (1991). Bikharti duniya [Things fall apart]. Lahore: Nigarshat Publications.
  • Van Huffel, J. (2007). The Hallidayan notion of theme in original and translated fiction texts in English and Dutch. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Universiteit Gent
  • Yaqub, H., Azhar, M., & Kakepoto, I. (2017). The material clause system in English and Urdu texts: A corpus-based analysis of ideational metafunction. ELF Annual Research Journal 19, 97-118.
  • Yaqub, H., & Shakir, A. (2019). A corpus-based study of hypotactic and paratactic thematicrelations in English and Urdu clause complexes. International Journal of English Linguistics 9(5). 430-448.
  • Young, D. (1980). The structure of English clauses. London: Hutchinson.
  • Young, D. (2014a). Urdu grammar. CreateSpace: Charleston, USA

Cite this article

APA

    APA : Yaqub, H., Ahsan, A., & Iqbal, M. (2021). A Contrastive Analysis of Predicated Thematic Structures in the English Novel and its Urdu Translation. Global Social Sciences Review, VI(IV), 144-160. https://doi.org/10.31703/gssr.2021(VI-IV).14

CHICAGO

    CHICAGO : Yaqub, Humaira, Ansa Ahsan, and Mubashir Iqbal. 2021. "A Contrastive Analysis of Predicated Thematic Structures in the English Novel and its Urdu Translation." Global Social Sciences Review, VI (IV): 144-160 doi: 10.31703/gssr.2021(VI-IV).14

HARVARD

    HARVARD : YAQUB, H., AHSAN, A. & IQBAL, M. 2021. A Contrastive Analysis of Predicated Thematic Structures in the English Novel and its Urdu Translation. Global Social Sciences Review, VI, 144-160.

MHRA

    MHRA : Yaqub, Humaira, Ansa Ahsan, and Mubashir Iqbal. 2021. "A Contrastive Analysis of Predicated Thematic Structures in the English Novel and its Urdu Translation." Global Social Sciences Review, VI: 144-160

MLA

    MLA : Yaqub, Humaira, Ansa Ahsan, and Mubashir Iqbal. "A Contrastive Analysis of Predicated Thematic Structures in the English Novel and its Urdu Translation." Global Social Sciences Review, VI.IV (2021): 144-160 Print.

OXFORD

    OXFORD : Yaqub, Humaira, Ahsan, Ansa, and Iqbal, Mubashir (2021), "A Contrastive Analysis of Predicated Thematic Structures in the English Novel and its Urdu Translation", Global Social Sciences Review, VI (IV), 144-160

TURABIAN

    TURABIAN : Yaqub, Humaira, Ansa Ahsan, and Mubashir Iqbal. "A Contrastive Analysis of Predicated Thematic Structures in the English Novel and its Urdu Translation." Global Social Sciences Review VI, no. IV (2021): 144-160. https://doi.org/10.31703/gssr.2021(VI-IV).14