THE IMPACT OF L2 AND LEXICAL AND LEXICAL-SYNTACTIC CALQUES IN TRANSLATION. A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Although translators are expected to be competent in at least two languages and to have no problems when using their L1, it often happens that certain words, phrases or constructions of L2 are calqued in the process of translation into L1. In order to study the impact of English (L2) on Serbian (L1), we used a corpus of student translations from English into Serbian. The corpus comprises translations of an excerpt from Don DeLillo's novel White Noise. The translations were done by fourth-year students of English at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. Their levels of English proficiency are C1+ or C2 and are expected to be competent dictionary users. All of them are native speakers of Serbian. Regardless of this, they still have problems when translating complicated syntactic structures or certain lexemes, whose meaning is simply translated word-for-word. The authors will offer a number of remedial strategies that can be used in the education of future translators.