A discussion on the phases, semantics and syntax of aspect in the translation of ‘’Transformation structurelle, Intégration régionale et Mobilisation des Ressources’’

Abstract

This paper analyses the notion of aspect in the translation of a brief economic report publicised by a labour organisation called ITUC-Africa. Indeed, aspect plays an important role in translation. For example, it dictates the choice of tense(s) in the target language. In other words, the choice of a tense in a target language depends on the aspect described by the verb in the source language. Several examples are given to illustrate this finding. The paper also notes that aspect is not simply a grammatical notion because in Slavic languages like Russian, it is marked by mere prefixes. In addition, aspect involves not only the verb but also the action described by it. Action plays an important role in the study of aspect. Aspect structures the action described by the verb in phases. Indeed, the paper gives several examples of phases including the inceptive phase, the progressive phase, the phase of completion, the durative phase. Furthermore, aspect is presented as a category which has syntactic and semantic constituents. The view of aspect presented in this paper is broad and sheds light on the importance and scope of this notion in translation studies.