Using Systemic Functional Linguistics as an Aid to Translation between Spanish and English: Maintaining the Thematic Development of the ST

Abstract

As is well known, the typical non-marked choice of theme varies between Spanish and English; in Spanish, the verb is often in thematic position, whereas English typically thematises a subject noun or pronoun. The present paper discusses some of the main issues that arise from this systemic difference between the two languages. Using an electronic corpus of mainly journalistic texts, the paper looks at the different thematic development of similar passages and looks at how far the translator can maintain the ST thematic development in the TT and, indeed, how desirable a goal that is.