Rendering the Tense Forms of the Verb

Rendering the tense forms of the verb presents no serious problems because tense forms are usually "backed up" by adverbs, pronouns and other deictic markers of time and person, which ensure high level of temporal redundancy in oral discourse. Thus, even ungrammatical utterances Yesterday I * come home and I * see that my wife * is not in (recorded by the author of this book in Birmingham), or Financial activities of tobacco control * has not been discussed internationally are easily interpreted in the given contexts.

However, interpreters should always be alert when the speaker uses the Perfect group of the English tenses. Thus, the Past Perfect often requires lexical addition (expansion), e.g. His wife had been beautiful – Його дружина колись була красунею.

Practical observations show that typical mistakes of interpreters in rendering of the Ukrainian tense forms of the verb into English result from the following:

1. Failure to use the Present Perfect Tense in utterances like: Я живу в Києві вже шість років – І have lived ( not *lived. *live, *am living) in Kyiv for six years;

2. The use of the Future Indefinite Tense in English in the adverbial clauses of condition and time after if, when, till, until, before, after, etc, e.g. Якщо ви цього не зробите, то наслідки буде важко передбачити – If you don’t do (not * will not do) that, it will be difficult to predict the consequences.

3. Inability to apply the rules of the sequence of tenses, e.g. Вони сказали, що прийматимуть участь у роботі семінару – They said that they would participate (not * will participate) in the workshop.