Information Structure and the Flow of Translation

Translators are often recommended to highly observe the natural flow of the target language of the translated texts. The use and order of discoursal aspects of texts such as thematic information, topical elements, left-dislocation, and passive voice, among others, which constitute information structure may sometimes conflict with this viewpoint. It is argued that such discoursal elements are determinant in understanding the flow of the texts in the source language and should not, therefore, be frequently switched around in the translated texts to fit the norm of the target language. The order of these linguistic elements should be maximally maintained when translating a text into a target language. It is after all the employment of such information structure units by the writer of the source text which is significant at any given point in discourse both cognitively, when processing the text, and interactionally, when communicating with the reader.