Typical syntactic constructions of European standards and their translation into Ukrainian

Mykhajlo Ginzburg

The article develops the previous author’s studies of syntactic constructions in special texts. Based on definitions in the latest International Standard ISO 5127:2017, peculiarities of language for special purposes in comparison with language for general purposes and the related distinction of criteria applied for assessing linguistic phenomena are shown. Ukrainian equivalents of the typical syntactic constructions expressing requirement, prohibition, recommendation, permission, possibility and capability in English- and German-language standards are proposed.

Ukrainian language

English language

German language

syntactic construction

The article develops the author’s previous studies of syntactic constructions in special texts and consists of two independent parts.

In the first part, based on definitions in the latest International Standard ISO 5127:2017 and International Technical Specification ISO/TS 24620-1:2015, peculiarities of language for special purposes in comparison with language for general purposes and the related distinction of criteria applied for assessing linguistic phenomena are investigated.

It’s shown that

– for the Ukrainian language for general purposes, which is quite a natural language, its rules are deduced from usage by the most competent speakers. Therefore, when analyzing appropriate texts, linguists properly use the concepts of “typical”, “rarely-used”, “predominantly”, “to be more organic”, “to be on the periphery” etc;

– for the Ukrainian language for special purposes, which is partially an artificial language, i.e. a natural language with elements of artificial languages, its rules are explicitly established prior to its use. Therefore, when analyzing professional texts, the criterion “correctly”/“incorrectly” shall be used;

– the language of standards is a separate functional layer of the language for special purposes, which is brought as closely as possible to the controlled natural language, i.e. the language, whose grammar and dictionary have been restricted in order to reduce or eliminate both ambiguity and complexity of texts.

In the second part of the article, Ukrainian equivalents of the typical syntactic constructions in English- and German-language standards expressing requirement, prohibition, recommendation, permission, possibility and capability are investigated.

The main form of the predicate in the English-language international and European standards is the modal verb + be + form ending in -ed, where the modal verb explicitly determines the standard provision type. Constructions with such a predicate can be both passive and resultative (stative). Since the passive and resultative constructions reflect extralinguistic situations essentially different from the aspectual viewpoint and grammatically differ, they shall be definitively and consistently differentiated and translated into the Ukrainian language accordingly.

In many cases, the English resultative constructions of a standard can be distinguished from passive ones on a contextual basis, and in complex cases it is advisable to use the German-language version of a standard (if any), because the German language differentiates between the passive (Ger. – Passiv) and resultative (Ger. – Zustandspassiv) constructions in the form of an auxiliary verb (werden or sein).

It has been concluded that

– English- and German-language agentless passive in all standard provision types shall be translated into the Ukrainian construction with a compound principal member of one-member sentence constructed from a predicative with the appropriate modality and an infinitive;

– the English- and German-language resultative constructions expressing requirement, possibility and capability shall be translated into the Ukrainian construction with compound (three-component) nominal predicate that contains the predicative adjective povynen (in the appropriate generic singular or plural form) or the modal verb mogty (in the appropriate personal form), the infinitive of the copula buty and the passive perfective dieprykmetnyk;

– the English- and German-language resultative constructions expressing prohibition, recommendation or permission shall be translated into a Ukrainian complex sentence, in which the main clause is a one-member sentence with the predicatives zaboroneno, recomendovano or dozvoleno, and a subordinate complementary two-member sentence is combined with the main clause of the conjunction shchob.

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