- What is paraphrase?
- Mechanical paraphrase
- Constructive paraphrase
- Examples of paraphrases
- How to make a paraphrase?
We explain what paraphrasing or paraphrasing is, how to paraphrase and examples. Also, mechanical and constructive paraphrase.
What is paraphrase?
Paraphrasing (or colloquially "paraphrasing") is the action of explaining the content of a text anyone using their own words, to facilitate the understanding of the text by means of a language different. This procedure is common in teaching, evaluation and verification of the knowledge.
The term "paraphrase" comes from the Greek words for, which means "together", and phrasis, "Diction". It is commonly understood as the act of "translating" a statement or a text from its original language into a more personal, intimate, plain or colloquial one. It's about a method from resume since the paraphrase tends to be shorter, simpler and simpler than its original.
Paraphrasing is a mechanism of extremely daily use in our lives and can be classified into two different types: mechanical paraphrase and constructive paraphrase, depending on the degree of distortion of the original text that is carried out.
Mechanical paraphrase
The mechanical paraphrase is one that is content to replace the words of the original text by simpler or colloquial equivalents. It usually maintains the structure of the original text intact, barely making minimal syntactic changes, since fundamentally what it does is go to synonyms and equivalents.
For example, if the original phrase reads: "Playwrights enter into their own creative dynamics with the confidence of those who enjoy a captive audience," we could mechanically paraphrase it like this: "Theater writers immerse themselves in their methods of literary creation with the confidence that always gives them the same audience ”.
Constructive paraphrase
The constructive paraphrase allows itself many more freedoms with respect to the original text, reconstructing it and intervening in it in a profound way, but always keeping the same intact meaning.
For example, if the original phrase reads "Playwrights enter their own creative dynamics with the confidence of those who enjoy a captive audience," a constructive paraphrase might say: "When creating, the writers of theater They have an advantage that other types of writers do not, and that is that they have a captive audience to give them greater confidence ”.
Examples of paraphrases
Some examples of paraphrases are:
Original: "The purpose ofart it is to embody the secret essence of things, not to copy their appearance ”said Aristotle.
Paraphrase: According to Aristotle, art has the mission of embodying the hidden essence of reality, rather than simply copying its appearance.
Original: “And it is noteworthy that the destruction of these islands and lands began to be lost and destroyed since the death of the most serene Queen Isabel, which was the year of one thousand and five hundred and four ”(from Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Very brief account of the destruction of the Indies).
Paraphrase: The doom of those islands and lands began after the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth was known in 1504.
Original: “Some recent investigations by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which have been communicated to me in a manuscript, lead me to suppose that the element uranium can become a source of Energy new and important in the immediate future ”(Albert Einstein, in letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt)
Paraphrase: Albert Einstein had received the then recent research from E. Fermi and L. Szilard and had concluded that uranium could become an important new energy source in the not too distant future.
How to make a paraphrase?
Elaborating a paraphrase is very simple, but above all it requires an understanding of the original text. Therefore, the first step is your reading and interpretation, in order to fully understand what it says. Then you can extract the main ideas from the text and then the supporting ideas.
Once bliss is achieved information, it will be possible to proceed to explain with the language itself what the original text said, knowing that the main idea must be the same and the secondary ideas must have the same relationship in the text. Tertiary or contextual ideas may be discarded.