Qualitative Analysis of ‘Inanimate Subject+Active Verb’ Structure in Editorials and its Pedagogical Implications in Korean-into-English Translation

A particular syntactic pattern, an inanimate subject with an active verb(IS+AV), is quite common in journal articles with scientific topics in English. Asian students, however, are known to have difficulties in employing this pattern in their English writings and translations. For this reason newspaper editorials with animate and inanimate(including abstract) topics are categorized and compared in detail to investigate the context that the pattern is used and the difference between the two kinds of editorials with a specific regard to the frequency of the ‘IS+AV’ pattern. Based on the analysis of 10 editorials from The New York Times, this paper substantiates previous researches that have claimed the ‘IS+AV’ pattern is particularly popular in texts in scientific genre. Besides, the proportions of this pattern in Korean students’ translations of an editorial with an inanimate topic are analyzed to see how much they can employ this pattern in translating an inanimate topic editorial into English. It is drawn from the analysis that the Korean students participated in the test are not skillful in employing this pattern in translating an editorial with an inanimate topic.