Verbs of Probability in English and Lithuanian: In Search of Equivalents

The paper looks at the qualitative & quantitative parameters of equivalence between English verbs of probability SEEM, APPEAR (LGSWE 1999: 708, 977) & their Lithuanian translation equivalents. The focus of the pilot study is on the following types of structures: English (BNC): JYO 1825 And they seemed to be old friends. CGE 887 She appeared a quick learner. Lithuanian (CCLL): Man atrodo, tebesu paaugle. & Kol avizos auga, laukas atrodo zalias. The data for the translation corpus have been compiled from fiction (Rowling 2000), the British National Corpus ([URL:http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/]), the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language & the Parallel English-Lithuanian corpus (http://donelaitis.vdu.lt), monolingual/bilingual dictionaries & grammar books. The purpose of the analysis is to compare the syntactic & semantic potential of the given verbs in the two languages to mark stance & to express speaker's uncertainty. The paper aims to see what alternatives/decisions are preferred by translators & how much they are influenced by the source language, which might contribute to the discussion of the notion of equivalence in translation. References. Adapted from the source document