Foregrounding of the Plural Form

The plural form is foregrounded when it is used with uncountable nouns or with “noun phrases”. The plural moves an uncountable noun into a new category, thus stressing it.

He was bursting with new ideas and new enthusiasms. (I.Shaw).

В нем бурлили новые идеи и новые увлечения.

We spent a long day together, with a great many “Do you remembers?”

(Desmond Young).

Мы провели весь день вместе, без конца повторяя: «А ты помнишь?»

As conversion is used in Russian on a limited scale it can hardly ever preserved.

Foregrounding of Word-building

New words are coined by affixation, word-compounding and conversion. All these means of word-building are frequently foregrounded. Their expressiveness is due to their individual character and is often a feature of the writer’s style.

As word-building possesses a national character the rendering of such coinages constitutes a complicated problem of translation.

Foregrounding of Suffixes

Suffixes present great variety and have different productivity in the S and T languages. The English language is particularly rich in suffixes and their productivity is prodigious. The case with which new words are formed is amazing. Individual coinages speedily become neologisms and enter the vocabulary. Some suffixes are exceptionally productive and offer great possibilities for foregrounding. Such coinages often baffle the translator and their rendering requires considerable ingenuity on his part, usually at the cost of compactness.

This is well illustrated by the word “hackdom” in the following example:

… no one who knows his long, dreary record in the House, 25 years of plodding through hackdom would ever accuse him of being a leader.

…никому из тех, кто знаком с длительным и унылым пребыванием этого человека в Конгрессе, не пришло бы в голову назвать лидером этого посредственного конгрессмена, который 25 лет корпел над самой повседневной работой.

The suffix –ful is also foregrounded.

After the pattern of “handful” and “mouthful” the adjective “faceful” is formed for vividness of expression.

A new ward syster, fat and forceful with a huge untroubled faceful of flesh and brisk legs, was installed. (M.Spark).

В палате водворилась новая сестра, энергичная толстуха с огромной невозмутимой мясистой физиономией и с быстрой походкой.

The stylistic effect is lost because a very usual attribute “мясистый” does not stylistically correspond to the correlated nonce-word “faceful”.

Perhaps the most productive of all suffixes is the suffix –er used both for nominalization and for stylistic purposes. The frequency of its partial grammaticalization, in other words, this suffix often functions as a noun indicator.

She is a leaner, leans on me, breathes on me, too, but her breath is sweet like a cow’s breath. She’s a thoucher, too. (J.Stainbeck).

Моя дочка любит прислоняться, прислоняется ко мне и дышит на меня. Но от нее приятно пахнет молоком, как от теленка. Она также любит и трогать меня.

Despite its universal character this suffix is easily foregrounded. It is used by writers for forming nonce-words sometimes parallel with existing ones built from the verb but having a different meaning, e.g. “a waiter”: 1. a man who takes and executes orders (The Concise Oxford Dictionary); 2. a man who can wait. (John Stainbeck).

She is a waiter – I can see that now and I guess she had at lengthy last grown weary of waiting.

Она привыкла ждать, теперь я это понимаю. Но мне сдается, что ей в конце концов надоело ждать.

Sometimes the suffix –er indicating the doer is contrasted with the suffix –ee indicating the patient – the object of the action.

In business you sometimes were the pusher and sometimes the pushee.

(I.Shaw).

когда ведешь дело, иногда приходится его проталкивать, а иногда ты сам бываешь объектом такого проталкивания.

No, he could imagine Marta a murderee but not a murderer. (J.Tey).

Нет, он мог представить себе Марту жертвой убийства, но не убийцей.

The suffix –able, another most productive suffix, is also frequently foregrounded. It is often used in advertising as its lexical meaning has not disappeared, e.g. a hummable record – a record that can be hummed; a filmable novel – a novel that can be filmed.

He was waiting for the last bath of the purified uranium with unfillable time on his hands. (C.P.Snow).

Он ждал последней партии очищенного урана и поэтому у него было много свободного времени, которое он не знал чем заполнить.

The lanes were not passable, complained a villager, not even jackassable.

Тропинки еще непроходимы, сетовал один крестьянин, по ним не только человеку, но даже ослу не пройти.

These coinages are also translated by extension and are equivalent only semantically, not stylistically.