ENGLISH SEMI-MODAL BE ABOUT TO SEEN THROUGH ITS SERBIAN TRANSLATION EQUIVALENTS

Abstract

Given notable merit of translation in accessing meanings of a linguistic form, this study attempts to look into the English semi-modal be about to through the lens of its Serbian equivalents. The overall objective is to approach the construction from a contrastive and translation-descriptive perspective. А methodological framework comprises a contrastive and qualitative analysis, supported by quantitative data. The unilateral contrastive analysis was carried out on the sentential corpus composed of the excerpts from three English novels and their Serbian translations. It revealed as many as 16 various Serbian morphosyntactic, grammatical, and lexical forms which convey meanings of be about to in the present and/or past tense. Accordingly, it confirmed that immediate future time reference did not exhaust the semantics of be about to (Comrie 1985: 95) and had provided an account of its aspectual and modal meanings which are far from being sharply separable and mutually exclusive. In this regard, the meanings of dynamic modality surfacing through translation deserve a specific mention .