Abstract
The present article focuses on the identification and description of a number of phenomena occurring at the borderline between semantics and pragmatics in the case of presuppositions, in particular those triggered by cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions. Although the study will be by no means exhaustive, it aims at distinguishing between instances of transformation as an inherent phenomenon in translation on the one hand, and malformation as an extreme case of transformation resulting in the (more or less) severe distortion of the message in the target language. On a practical level, this approach may serve to identify a number of translation techniques meant to avoid malformation and compensate for some instances of meaning transformation.

Keywords: presupposition transfer, meaning transformation, meaning malformation, cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences, compensation, explicitation

BACK