The Degree of Preservation of Meaning

SEMANTIC CORRESPONDENCES

I. Types of meaning

1. Referential meaning

2. Linguistic meaning

3. Emotive meaning

II. The Degree of Preservation of Meaning

1. Complete correspondence

2. Partial correspondence

3. Absence of correspondence

The term “meaning” should be considered as widely as possible, thus the task of a translator is to render completely all types of meaning:

1) referential meaning – the denotative ‘dictionary’ meaning (референциальное значение). This type of meaning has direct reference to things or phenomena of objective reality. Ex: Гомер - Homer, mammal – млекопитающее.

Ex:

2) interlinguistic meaning reflects the relationship between the language sign and the participant of the process of speech.

Ex: Куй железо, пока горячо. - Strike while the iron is hot. (полное совпадение)

Birds of a feather flock together. - Рыбак рыбака видит издалекалное несовпадение)

3) pragmatic meaning reflects the subjective relations, that is emotional, expressive and stylistic.

Ex: пьянству - бой! - drunkenness won't be tolerated!

policeman – 1) полисмен, полицейский

The policeman caught the thief. - Полицейский задержал вора.

2) полицай (recruited by Nazi authorities from among collaborating locals in occupied territories during World War Two)

The degree of preservation of meaning in the process of translation is different; it mostly depends on the type of meaning.

The highest degree of preservation of meaning is that of referential meanings, because they are better translatable, the reason is easily explained as the objective reality of the language communities has more common features than differences and so referential meanings coincide more often than not in different languages.

Ex: graduation - 1) окончание (высшего) учебного заведения; 2) церемония вручения дипломов, присвоения степеней; 3) градуировка (на сосудах); деления (на измерительных линейках)

Pragmatic meanings have a lower degree and the difference lies in the fact that the relation of different communities to the given things, notions and situations will be different, so the attitude will be different, too. It especially concerns metaphorical meanings and complex cultural idioms, where the sense of the phrase is always diverges from the sum of the individual elements.

Ex: большевик - Bolshevik

(from Russian Bol'shevik majority, from bol'shoi - great; from the fact that this group formed a majority of the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1903); the derivative is bolshie - реакционер, бунтарь; ярый фанатик; несговорчивый приверженец своих взглядов

A minimum degree of preservation is in interlinguistic meaning. In this case a translator can resort to functional replacement.

Ex: to take counsel of one's pillow / the night brings counsel (the night brings counsel (night is the mother of counsel)) ≈ утро вечера мудренее

All types of semantic correspondences between the lexical units of two languages can be presented in 3 main types:

1) complete correspondence;

2) partial correspondence;

3) absence of correspondence (non-equivalent lexis).

Дата добавления: 2014-01-07