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D
EBRECENI
E
GYETEM
F
INNUGOR
N
YELVTUDOMÁNYI
T
ANSZÉK
F
OLIA
U
RALICA
D
EBRECENIENSIA
20.
D
EBRECEN
, 2013
235
Emphatic Phrases in Finnish Literary Texts
and their Hungarian Translations
Eliisa P
ITKÄSALO
This paper examines the translation of the emphatic phrases that are used
primarily in spoken language and that are embedded in a sentence as an af-
fective commentary. More specifically, this study focuses on the jussive
mood phrases in a literary context. These jussive phrases (such as
hitto
vieköön
) comment on the content of the sentence in which they are embed-
ded. However, the question remains whether the position of these phrases af-
fects the overall message of the sentence, and whether the phrases maintain
their original tone and affective index in the Hungarian translation of Finnish
literature. To illustrate this, an analysis of the phrases
piru vieköön, hitto
vieköön
and
jumala paratkoon
in three novels is presented. The main finding
of this study is that even if the same grammatical structure is used in Hun-
garian, the emphatic phrases are not necessarily translated by using it. As an
example, there are seven alternative translations in Hungarian of the phrase
jumala paratkoon
in the same novel. Each of these has a different message,
and the position of the phrase can affect the interpretation of the sentence.
1. Introduction
Emphatic and swearing phrases in literary context are an excellent re-
search topic when studying languages such as Finnish and Hungarian, as
both have numerous swearing phrases in frequent use. The usage of affective
swearing phrases is decidedly more frequent in spoken than written lan-
guage, with the exception of the hybrid forms of written and spoken lan-
guage such as blog texts. In fiction, emphatic and swearing phrases likewise
appear to occur most frequently in dialogues and monologues that depict
spoken language and in the voice of the first-person narrator.
This article will present an analysis of one specific form of swearing
phrases, crystallised emphatic phrase (in Finnish
kiteytynyt päivittely
cf.