Fronting in English with reference to translation

Abstract EN

Recent studies have focused attention on language according to use.

The basic element of such a language is not the sentence but the text.

Many linguists have dealt with texts from different aspects, among them is the study of text according to the theme–rheme notion which is speaker-oriented and given- new notion which is hearer-oriented.

Most of linguists agree that theme often stands for given whereas rheme for new.

In English, when there is some departure from the norm, the departure is called markedness by the linguists.

Consequently, fronting is realized when there is a marked theme not an unmarked one.

The term 'theme' that the researcher will adopt in this paper has an entirely different meaning in formal grammars, which has nothing to do with the long tradition of work on theme in Prague School linguistics and other functional traditions.

The research will adopt the theme-rheme notion according to Halliday (1976), where the clause in all languages has the character of a message: it has some form of organization giving it the status of a communicative event.

But there are different ways in which this may be achieved.

In English, as in many other languages, the clause is organized as a message by having a special status assigned to one part of it.

One element in the clause is enunciated as the theme, this then combines with the remainder so that the two parts together constitute a message (Halliday, 1976:37).

The translation of fronting is not an easy task due to the linguistic differences between the SL and TL, which may hinder the process of translation.

Thus, the translator has to do his best to convey, as far as he could, this salient feature to the TL in order to achieve the optimal equivalence, i.e.

the functional equivalence which seeks the writer'/speaker's intention(s) and hence fidelity to the ST can be realized .