A STUDY ON STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY TRANSLATORS WHEN TRANSLATING RELATIVE CLAUSES FROM ENGLISH TO SINHALA

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the strategies adopted in translating relative clauses from English to Sinhala. Data were gathered from ‘The Village in the Jungle’, ‘Grass for my feet’, ‘The Road from Elephant Pass’ and their Sinhala translations based on three types: sentences with relative clauses introduced by relative pronouns, relative adverbs and reduced relative clauses. The data organised as a parallel corpus with 95 sentence pairs were analysed using the qualitative, content analysis. The common issue in translating relative clauses from English to Sinhala was structural complexity. The translation of relative clauses occurs in two ways: structure-based and non-structure-based. Structure-based translations have been formed converting the relative clause into an adjectival clause, an adjectival phrase or an adjective. Two strategies have been adopted in translating relative clauses by converting them into adjectival clauses: literal translation and translation adjustment. Splitting, omission, alteration and several other methods have been employed in non-structure-based translations.