TRANSLATION AND MEANING: A CULTURAL- COGNITIVE ...

texts should not overlook such norms if they want their stretch of language
to be acceptable in a given socio-cultural or professional context. This claim
is well supported by Baker’s observation that, in English travel brochures,
for example, the theme position is usually occupied by an adverbial of place,
because “in the context of travel, location provides a natural point of
orientation around which the text as a whole can be organized” (1992: 126).
2. Themes and rhemes in the EU texts
A very general characteristic of the EU documents in my corpus –
both as original texts and as translations – is that they present a neutral type
of thematization, which means that the text producer relays some
propositional content in unmarked syntactic patterns (cf. Superceanu, 2000:
135). In other words, themes in these texts usually coincide with the
grammatical Subjects of the sentences and the clauses analyzed, a feature
which suggests that the communicative purpose of these texts is sufficiently
well served by a normal word order.
The reference of the Subject noun phrases in theme position can be
basically subsumed under one of these three different, but, however, interrelated,
spheres. Firstly, there are thematized Subjects which refer to various
EU institutions and organizations, denoting either the institution itself:
e.g. ST: “The Commission shall be assisted by the committee set up pursuant to
Article 12(1) of Council Directive 93/75/EEC.”
TT: “Comisia este asistată de un comitet înfiinţat în temeiul art. 12 alin. (1) din
Directiva Consiliului 93/75/CE.”
(32002L0006)
or some attribute or activity of such an institution:
e.g. ST: “The conclusions of the Helsinki European Council in December 1999
encourage the implementation within the General Secretariat of the Council of
the possibility of exchanges with national administrations.”
TT: “Concluziile Consiliului European de la Helsinki din decembrie 1999
încurajează implementarea în cadrul Secretariatului General al Consiliului a
sistemului de schimburi cu administraţiile naţionale.”
(32001D0041)
Secondly, the Subject noun phrases in this position sometimes make
reference to the legal document in which they occur: