Factors of Source Text

Analysis
Intratextual factors
1. Subject Matter
1. If the analysis proves that the subject dominates the text then the whole text
can be considered as coherent.
2. The subject matter can be embedded in a cultural context and can present
some of the readers presuppositions.
3. The subject matter can provide us hints about the content and terminology .
4. With the subject matter analysis, we can gain information about the function
of the headline and sub-headlines which is different in every culture.
5. The elicitation of the subject matter occasionally yields some information
about certain extratextual factors (e.g., sender, time, text function), where these
have not already been ascertained by external analysis” (Nord, 1991, p. 86).
Content
• Nord defines content as “the reference of the text to objects and phenomena
in an extralinguistic reality” (Nord, 1991, p. 90).
• Such reference is generally expressed by the semantics of the lexical and
grammatical structures.
• These structures work well together, complement each other and significantly
contribute to the coherence of the text.
• So, how to determine the precise content of a text? It depends mostly on the
level of lexical items.
(linking devices such as substitution, recurrence or paraphrase. Or other logical
connections, words and phrases, sentence patterns, tense, mood, in the text)
• The denotative vs. connotative meaning of a word and the “internal
situation” of a text.
• The translator should read and understand a source text and then
create the target text accordingly.
• The information contained in a text can be either “factual” (based on
reality) or “fictional” (referring to a fictional world invented by the
author).
Presuppositions
• Pragmatic presuppositions are those “implicitly assumed by the
speaker, who takes it for granted that this will also be the case with
the listener” (Nord, 1991, p. 95); such presuppositions usually refer to
objects and phenomena of the source culture (p. 96).
• The translator may want to “adjust the level of explicitness to the
general background knowledge of the intended TT recipient” (Nord,
1991, p. 98).
Text Composition
• The structuring of a text; whether it consists of several shorter texts
or whether it is a part of a bigger text.
• The text has an informational macrostructure (i.e. composition and
order of information units) consisting of a number of microstructures”
(Nord, 1991, p. 100); where the macrostructure is marked by chapters
and paragraphs, and the microstructure by syntactic structures, lexical
devices, or suprasegmental features.
Non-verbal Elements
• Various signs which do not belong to any linguistic code and which are
used as supplements to them.
• The author aims to illustrate, disambiguate, or even intensify the
message contained i
• Photos, illustrations, emblems, special types of print, in a text or a
discourse.
• The translator’s task is not only to find such signs, but also to reveal
their specific function within a particular text. d, 1991, p. 108).
Lexis
It may refer to the affiliation of a word to
• stylistic levels and registers,
• word formation,
• connotations,
• rhetorical figures (metaphors, repetition of lexical element, metonymy, metaphor),
• parts of speech,
• morphological aspects (suffixes, prefixes, compositions, acronyms, abbreviations, etc.),
• collocations, idioms,
• addressing, selection of words (with respect to the sender‟s intention, time, place, medium,
occasion...),
• degree of originality (words invented by the author, phrases coined by him, intentional violation
of norms), etc.
Sentence Structure
• Are the sentences simple or complex?
• Are there any deviations from functional sentence perspective?
• Does the text flow with syntactic figures of speech such as rhetorical
question, parenthesis, ellipsis, etc. (Nord, 1991, p. 118-120)?
• What is their function in the text?
Suprasegmental Features
• Suprasegmental features “serve to highlight or focus certain parts of
the text and to push others to background” (Nord, 1991, p. 80), and
they possess both an informative (i.e. denotative) and a stylistics (i.e.
connotative) function.
• In writing, they are signalled by e.g. italics, spaced or bold type,
quotation marks, dashes, parentheses, underlining, affirmative words
(actually, in fact), emphatic evaluations (fantastic, great), clefts (It was
John who...), ellipsis, etc. (Nord, 1991, p. 120-124).