Antonymic (antonymous) translation

Antonymic (antonymous) translation is substitutionof an affirmative in sense and structure source language unit for a semantically corresponding negative in structure sense unit of the TL and vice versa (Korunets’).

E.g.: mind your own business – не втручайся не в свої справи;

not infrequently – часто;

stay away from me – не підходь до мене.

(It represents a way of rendering when an affirmative in structure language unit (word, word-combination, sentence) is conveyed via a negative in sense or structure but identical in content language unit or vice versa

Antonymic translation describes the situation, as it were, from the opposite point of view and renders an affirmative source language structure by a negative target language one or vice versa (Komissarov, Koralova).

The device is resorted to in the following cases:

· when there is no other way of expressing the sense of the source language sense unit:

E.g.: take it easy – не хвилюйся/ не переживай;

Mind your own business – Не суй носа не в свої справи.

At close quarters – недалеко один від одного, на невеликій відстані.

Do you mind this? – Ви не заперечуєте?

· when there are two negations in the SL sense units:

E.g.: not uncommon – звичайний;

not infrequently – часто;

Я не нездужую нівроку (Шевченко) – I feel/ am perfectly well.

· to achieve a fuller expressiveness:

E.g.: “ I hope you’ll stay ”, he said in a tired voice.

Сподіваюсь, ви не втечете.

· when stylistically required:

E.g.: keep your head – не падай духом;

The transformation in this case may be sometimes avoided. It may have another version: Вище голову! The choice of the form of expression/ transformation rests with the translator only.

· it may be conditioned by differences in the lexical valency:

E.g.: snowdrifts three feet deep – cнігові замети заввишки в один метр (висотою 1м).

Examples to illustrate antonymic translation

1. Don’t move I beg you Watson! (C.Doyle)

Дуже вас прошу, Вотсоне, залиштеся тут.

2. I don’t thinkI’ll find them (Hemingway)

Гадаю, я їх не знайду.

3. I’ll stay with you until I am dead (Hemingway).

Поки я живий, я тебе не покину.

4. She would show him that she did not care (Galsworthy).

Вона йому покаже, що їй до нього байдужісінько.

5. I am a strange old man (Hemingway).

Я не звичайний старий.

6. “ Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish…” (Hemingway)

П’ять років, і тебе ледь не вбило, коли я втягнув до човна ще дужчу рибину…

7. “ You can’t be sick,” said Mildred (R.Bradbury)

Невже ти захворів? – запитала Мілдред.

8. I didn’t say anything (Hemingway).

Я слухав мовчки.

9. Keep out of trouble, Ettore (Hemingway).

Не вскочте в якусь халепу, Етторе.

10. I watched her face (Hemingway).

Я неспускав з неї очей.

11. You must know, Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

Не може бути, щоб ви не знали, Гетсбі.

12. I wonder if Michael remembered to have sent tea along to the queues (Maugham)

Чи не забув Майкл подбати про те, щоб людям у чергах до кас роздавали чай?

13. I want to be out before it is light (Hemingway).

Хочу вийти з бухти, поки не розвидніє.

14. Helen’s finding it hard to get work these days…

Зараз Гелен нелегко знайти роботу…

15. But still the apprehension that filled her was not unpleasant (Maugham).

І все ж хвилювання, що охопило її, було приємним.

Antonymic translation is employed for the sake of achieving faithfulness in conveying content or the necessary expressiveness of sense units.

COMPENSATION TECHNIQUE

One more specific transformation which may come handy to the translator when he is baffled by an apparently unsolvable translation is called the compensation technique.

Compensation technique is a deliberate introduction of some additional elements in translation to make up for the loss of similar elements at the same or an earlier stage.

It’s resorted to when a translator deals with equivalent lacking elements.

What are the elements having no precise equivalent in the TL and which can’t be rendered by the same means? They are:

1). The speech of foreigners and dialects;

2). Individual peculiarities of speech;

3). Diminutive and augmentative usages;

4). Equivalent-lacking grammatical categories;

5). Different stylistic figures (play upon words, metaphors, periphrases, irony etc.).

A translator must be ready to render the speech of foreigners,dialect forms and illiterate speech in the TL forms. It goes without saying that one can hardly render, say, cockney dialect using the Western Ukrainian dialect forms. There is no universal recipe for this translation problem and each such case requires an individual approach.

In some cases contaminated forms (the distortions in the target grammar and phonetics) are used to imitate the speech of foreigners. Sometimes both SL and TL have developed accepted forms of representing the contaminated speech by persons of foreign origin. For example, the speech of a Chinese can be represented in English and in Ukrainian in a conventional way, which facilitates the translator's task:

E.g.: Me blingee beer. Now you pay.

– Моя плинесла пиво. Твоя типель платити.

If no such tradition exists, the translator has to select some possible contaminated Ukrainian forms to produce the desired effect:

E.g.: When you see him quid’ then you quick see him ‘perm whale’ – (the speech of a Kanaka)

Коли твоя бачив спрут, тоді твоя скоро-скоро бачив кашалот.

It is not always necessary to give the contaminated forms of each word in a TL utterance. It may be sufficient to indicate the speech of a foreigner with the help of a few deliberate distortions of grammatical or phonetic norms. Much depends here on the pragmatic intent of the original utterance.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11