Translating English non-human subjects in agentive contexts: A closer look at Dutch

Abstract

While subjects of transitive action verbs in English and Dutch are typically realized as human agents (see Comrie 1989), both languages also feature instances of nonhuman agents in subject position. However, Vandepitte and Hartsuiker (2011) have shown that there are fewer options in Dutch and that translation issues present themselves in cases where both languages do not overlap. This paper wants to document overlap and differences in terms of non-prototypical subject realization by focussing on the strategies that are used in Dutch translations of six actions verbs (give, demonstrate, show, suggest, offer and tell) in combination with non-human subjects. Results reveal that a fair share of non-human subjects are also translated as such in the target language. Other strategies include occasional humanization of the non-human source text subjects, reduction of valency patterns with reduced agentivity vis-à-vis the English source-text sentences and shifts in the mapping of semantic roles onto syntactic functions.

‘Fifty pounds will buy me a pair of horses for my carriage’: the history of permissive subjects in English

“… As for the brand new, this year saw collections from big names such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Ha Jin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, James Lasdun, and this parish's own AL Kennedy. Bindslev cottage sleeps four in two bedrooms and has fireplaces, rugs and cool hanging lights in its warm pine surrounds. (, accessed 12 October 2017) The subjects (in bold) in (1) and (2) do not constitute prototypical agentive subjects, but nevertheless they occur with verbs (underlined) that normally have animate agents: seeing and sleeping are actions performed by humans and animals, not by objects or concepts. These subjects have been discussed in different places in the literature: in contrastive studies of German and English (Rohdenburg 1974; Hawkins 1986), in overviews of argument structure (Levin 1993), in language acquisition studies (Callies 2006), in translation studies (Doms & De Clerck 2015) and, finally, in the context of academic writing (Low 1999; Dorgeloh & Wanner 2009). Despite this attention from a range of perspectives, there is no single definition and no definitive understanding of the subjects and verbs involved in this pattern.…”