Comparing the Information Structure of Spanish and Hungarian from a Translation Point of View

Abstract

In this chapter, I examine the compatibility of information struc­ tures of Hungarian and Spanish: their similarities, differences through a parallel corpus. In the analysis, I compared whether the focus and topic constructions in the source languages kept their roles and whether the topic and focus constructions found in the target language were originally topics and foci. I concluded that in the Hungarian translation, there were more focus constructions than in the original Spanish work, and I also found that when translating into Spanish, focused ele­ments tended to disappear. It seems that Hungarian uses the focus construction more frequently and prefers it in the case of deictic and anaphoric adverbials, in which the meaning is less straightforward (so, there, here). Another finding is that there is a difference in topic shift. It can be explained by the fact that the truth value of a sentence is unaffected by a specific definite NP in topic position. As opposed to focusing, through which the truth value of a sentence is changed. For this reason, translators deviate from the original text in case of a topic shift. One of my aims was to collect translation solutions. These examples illustrate how the differences between the information structure of the two languages can be bridged translation techniques.