Translation Universals.pdf - ymerleksi - home

170 Tiina Puurtinen
conditional: jos, jollei(vät) ‘if’, ‘if not’
concessive: vaikka, vaikkei(vät) ‘although’, ‘although not’
– coordinative conjunctions
– adverbs
adversative: mutta, muttei(vät) ‘but’, ‘but not’, vaan ‘but’
explanative: sillä ‘for’
causal: siksi ‘therefore’
adversative: kuitenkin ‘however’
In addition to the basic forms, the fused forms composed of the conjunction
and the negating word ei, as well as the plural forms with the suffix -vat/vät
were searched for. The following discussion will be restricted to those findings
that seem somehow interesting, not necessarily in terms of frequency
differences as such, but functions and contexts of use.
4. Results
Table 1 shows the frequencies of the connectives per 100 000 words. (Of the 18
different forms of the relative pronoun joka, only the ones with clearly different
frequencies in Finnish originals and translations are presented.)
There seems to be no clear overall tendency of either subcorpus favouring
connectives more than the other. Instead, some connectives are more frequent
in Finnish originals (jo(i)ssa, vaikka, vaan, kuitenkin), others in translations
(jo(t)ka, kun, jos, ennen kuin, jotta), and a few connectives have roughly equal
frequencies in both subcorpora.
An attempt was then made to find potential explanations for the frequency
differences, such as using a particular connective in partly different functions
in translations and originals. An examination of the contexts surrounding
such connectives produced some interesting observations, but in a number
of puzzling cases even a closer look failed to reveal possible reasons for the
discovered differences. For instance, the higher frequencies of ennen kuin and
the nominative singular and plural forms of joka in translations could not be
attributed to contextual or functional aspects. Only those few cases where the
context turned out to be more helpful are discussed in more detail below.