CLASSIFICATION OF TRANSLATION TRANSFORMATIONS AS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TOPICS IN MODERN TRANSLATION STUDIES

The article analyzes the formation stages of the transformational theory in translation. It is based on the theoretical foundations of N. Chomsky's generative grammar and emphasizes the inevitability of changes that the source text undergoes during translation in order to adequately and equivalently reproduce the meaning, which is especially important for works of fiction. According to this theory, it is believed that a literal translation distorts the text because it does not evoke the same emotions and motivations in the target language reader as in the native speaker of the source language. The emergence of the transformational theory in translation in scientific circulation coincided with the phenomenon known in Western translation studies as the "cultural turn," i.e., the shift in emphasis in the study of translation to its function of mediation between cultures. The article summarizes the main conceptual interpretations of the "translation transformations" and approaches to their classification, namely by the nature of the units of the source language, by formal features, and by the direct or indirect methods of translation. By the method of continuous sampling, the infinitive and gerundial constructions of English were selected from Agatha Christie's novels "Ordeal by Innocence" and "A Caribbean Mystery" and correlated with the corresponding Ukrainian translations of N. Khaietska published in 2017-2018 using the comprehensive classification of translation transformations proposed by Z. I. Kucher, M. O. Orlova and T. V. Redchyts. Based on this, the study claims that lexical and semantic transformations are mainly used in the translation of infinitive constructions, and grammatical transformations are mainly used in the translation of gerundial constructions. This suggests that the presence or absence of formal correspondence between certain grammatical units of the source and target languages influences the choice of strategy by modern translators.