The present master's thesis deals with a contrastive analysis of the German modal verbs sollen and müssen and their translated equivalents in Russian. In the theoretical part, we focus on the category of modality, the typology of modality, the properties of modal categories and modal markers in Slavic languages. In the empirical part, we focus on the analysis of cases from the parallel Russian-German corpus. The translation solutions are analysed in terms of morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties, and the translation challenges that arise when transferring modal meanings from one language to another are highlighted. The aim of the analysis is to investigate how the modal meanings of necessity, possibility and intention are expressed in the two languages and to examine the similarities and differences between them. The co-occurrence analysis leads to the conclusion that translators seek a balance between preserving meaning and adapting to the structures of the target language. This shows the importance of taking the linguistic and cultural context into account when choosing translation solutions. The corpus analysis revealed that modal verbs are closely related to the context in which they occur. It is crucial to take into account not only the modal meaning of the verb itself, but also other linguistic features such as grammatical categories of verbs etc. A contrastive analysis of modal verbs contributes to a better understanding of these linguistic categories and allows for more efficient translation and more appropriate translation solutions by highlighting the complexity of translation between languages, as well as the role of linguistic and cultural background in the expression of modal meanings. The research makes an interesting contribution to the field of contrastive analysis and language transfer between German and Russian. The results will be useful for linguists, translators and teachers working on the topic of modal verbs and their transfer between German and Russian.
|