A Study of Translation of Relative Clauses from English into Thai

Authors

Nattharath Leenakitti
Nattama Pongpairoj

Publication Date

2019-01-01

Abstract

This research investigated translation strategies used in translating English relative clauses with the relativizers ‗who,' ‗which,' and ‗that' into Thai. The data comprised 348 sentence pairs from two English novels and their Thai translations. It was hypothesized that the adopted translation strategies could be divided into two groups: literal translation with a relativizer and translation adjustment. To analyze the data, a framework for the analysis was constructed based on Chesterman's (1997) translation strategies, supported by Nida's (1964) and Saibua's (2007) translation adjustment techniques. The findings confirmed that the two main strategies used in translating the English relative clauses into Thai are literal translation and translation adjustment. Regarding literal translation, four Thai relativizers were found: /tʰ /, /s ŋ/, /pʰ /, and /pʰ s ŋ/. While literal translation suggested parallel syntactic structures between the English and Thai relative clauses, translation adjustment underscored distinctions between the two languages. The findings indicated three types of translation adjustment, i.e. Adjustments 1, 2, and 3, according to the degree of adjustment. The findings confirm the hypothesis and have implications for the study of the relative clause structure and its translation strategies.

DOI

10.58837/CHULA.PASAA.58.1.5

First Page

95

Last Page

130

Recommended Citation

Leenakitti, Nattharath and Pongpairoj, Nattama (2019) "A Study of Translation of Relative Clauses from English into Thai," PASAA: Vol. 58: Iss. 1, Article 5.
DOI: 10.58837/CHULA.PASAA.58.1.5
Available at: https://digital.car.chula.ac.th/pasaa/vol58/iss1/5