УДК 81’255.2 SHEDDING SOME LIGHT ON MODULATION ACROSS NONLITERARY AND LITERARY TRANSLATION* Klaudia Bednбrovб-Gibovб Institute of British and American Studies ul. 17 novembra, 1, Prešov, Slovak Republic, 080 01 klaudia.gibova@gmail.com Modulation is well-known in translation studies as an oblique translation technique that commonly entails a variation of the form of the message, obtained by a change in the point of view. <...> Being looked upon as a touchstone of an apt translator, both by practitioners as well as ‘Ivory Tower’ scholars, the paper looks at this semantic-pragmatic procedure resting on a shift of cognitive categories between English and Slovak in translation. <...> The nature of modulation will be put to the test on the samples of an EU institutionallegal text (non-literary text) and a novel excerpt from William P. Young’s best-selling novel The Shack (literary counterpart). <...> The author will both compare and classify the incidence of modulation in the selected text types and draw relevant conclusions. <...> The analysis outcomes will contribute to solving partial translation problems encountered in a wide range of non-literary and literary texts. <...> INTRODUCTION Drawing on Vinay and Darbelnet’s widely proliferated and to this day, highly influential model of translation techniques1 † (1958/1995), modulation has since gone on to become a staple of oblique translation technique repertoire. <...> This implies that this semantic-pragmatic translation technique rests on a shift of cognitive categories between two languages for it alters the category of thought, the focus, the point of view and the whole conceptualization of a described phenomenon. <...> It should be highlighted, though, that considerable terminological disagreement looms large among translation studies scholars regarding the proper label to be used in this connection. <...> Семантика, 2015, № 2 Of all translation techniques, modulation appears to be the most thoroughgoing: whereas e.g. transposition puts the translator’s, first and foremost, grammatical abilities to the test, modulation is said to be a real touchstone for a competent translator. <...> While transposition affects grammatical function of TL units only, modulation, on the other hand, involves alteration of semantic categories or the processes by which thoughts are conveyed. <...> For illustration consider the following examples from the assembled English-Slovak text corpus: (1) third-party insurance policy činnosti, legal challenge najmladšн prнrastok v rodine, a unified sigh from the nearby <...>