Specific features of intralingual diachronic translation (on the analysis of samples from G. Chaucer’s literary works)

Abstract

The article raises the issue whether one can apply to intralingual translation the transformation classification provided by V.N. Komissarov for interlingual translation. Thus the similarity between the two types of translation is underlined and yet peculiarities are pointed out for the intralingual type. An analysis of the way A.S. Kline translated the selected samples of G. Chaucer’s vision poems into modern English proves contextual substitutes, modulation and syntactic assimilation to be the most widely used transformations. Such techniques as addition and omission are equally employed to follow the syllable pattern in the translated poems. Transcription, transliteration appear to be unnecessary in intralingual diachronic translation. The debatable moment is obsolete vocabulary updating which can be treated as calque.