Transsemantisation of the Present and Future Verb Forms in Georgian Translating

Abstract

The represented article concerns the issues of semantics of the verb tense forms and the tools of transferring their peculiarities when translating into the Georgian language. Special attention is paid to transsemantisation of the present and future forms, when the verb form and its content are separated. Such forms are called historical or narrative present (or future). Historical present or future make narrative more expressive and show rapid change of the events; sometimes this can be regarded as specific feature of the author’s individual writing style aiming to add more variety. The Georgian translations of the literary works of Nobel prize laureate writer Olga Tokarczuk are discussed here as the illustrative material. The tense forms of the original works are preserved in the translations in order to retain the proper stylistic peculiarities of the original texts. Though the similar verb forms are rare in the Georgian language, nevertheless they exist in some original literary works and this fact confirms their naturalness.