Equivalence and Adequacy in Translation

Перевод связных словосочетаний

Многочленные атрибутивные группы

2.1. Трехкомпонентные словосочетания

Трехкомпонентные словосочетания могут иметь следующую структуру:

а) третий и второй компоненты являются определением для первого компонента:

empty fuel tanks = empty tanks for fuel - пустые баки для топлива, пустые топливные баки

empty - определение

fuel - определение

tanks – опорное слово

б) второй компонент является определением к первому, а третий ко второму:

high temperature measurement = measurement of high temperature, т.е. измерение высокой температуры.

high

temperature – определение к первому компоненту

measurement - определение ко второму компоненту

Часто правильное толкование многокомпонентных словосочетаний зависит от контекста. Так, например, словосочетание the forward car wheels может переводиться либо как передние колеса а/м либо как колеса переднего а/м.

2.2. Многочленные словосочетания, состоящие из четырех и более элементов

Опорные элементы – это всегда существительные, а остальные могут принадлежать к различным частям речи. Подобные словосочетания могут иметь следующую структуру:

а) все члены непосредственно соединены с опорным компонентом, являясь его определениями:

new important safety regulations = new important regulations of safety, что может быть переведено как новые важные правила безопасности;

б) каждый компонент является определением к стоящему справа от него элементу:

a wall paper production machine = a machine for production of the paper for the walls, что переводится как оборудование для изготовления обоев.

Как правило, связные словосочетания представлены фразеологическими единицами, характерной особенностью которых является преобладание значения целого над значением компонентов.

С переводческой точки зрения английские фразеологи­ческие единицы делятся на две группы:

1) фразеологические единицы, имеющие эквиваленты в русском языке:

Н: from mouth to mouth - из уст в уста

the iron heel железная пята

2) безэквивалентные фразеологические единицы:

Н: over the hills and far away ≈ за тридевять земель, за горами, за долами; на край света

LECTURE 2

Lexico-Semantic Problems of Translation

Translation equivalence is defined as a measure of semantic similarity between ST and TT.

According to Komissarov there are five types of equivalence in translation.

The first type consists of preserving only the part of the original's content constituting the aim of the communication.

Ex: 1. Maybe there is some chemistry between us that doesn't mix. = Character clashes are frequent.

Ex 2: That's a pretty thing to say. = You should be ashamed!

The second type of equivalence is represented by translations whose proximity to the sense in the original is not based, not even in this case, on the shared meanings of the linguistic means employed.

Ex:1. He answered the telephone. = He lifted the receiver.

Ex: 2. You are not fit to be in a boat. = You are not to be allowed to get on a boat.

In the third type, there is no lexical or syntactic parallelism, the two structures are not amenable to a simple syntactic transformation, communication aim and situation are unvaried and situation are preserved, while general concepts through which the description of the original's situation is realized are preserved, i.e. the "means of description of the situation" is preserved (62).

Ex: 1. Scrubbing makes me bad-tempered. = My mood grows bad due to floor washing.

Ex: 2. London saw a cold winter last year. = Last year winter in London was cold.

Ex: 3. That will not be good for you. = This business might end badly for you.

On the fourth level (which is called TRANSFORMATIONAL EQUIVALENCE), the target and the source language sentences manifest grammar transformations: the passive predicate can be translated by the active: The port can be entered by big ships only in tide. – Большие корабли могут заходить в порт только во время прилива. Likewise, part of speech can be changed in translation: We had a long walk. – Шли мы долго. Or the structure of the sentence can be modified: Jane was heard playing the piano. – Было слышно, как Джейн играла на пианино, where the sentence is translated by a complex one). Any other change of the grammar meaning within the sentence testifies to the equivalence on the transformational level, which is called by V. Komissarov the level of the invariant meaning of the syntactic structure.

This level of equivalence presupposes retention of the utterance function, the description of the same situation, the same meaning of the source and target sentences, and a very close (but variable) grammatical meaning.

On the fifth level (which implies lexical and grammatical equivalence), the most possible semantic semilarity between the source and target sentences is found: Every mother loves her children. – Каждая мать любит своих детей. I will write you every week. – Я буду писать тебе каждую неделю. As a matter of fact, this is a word for word translation where each word and the whole structure retains its lexical and grammatical meaning, the situation designated by the sentences is identical, and the communicative function of the utterances is the same. Every form of the target sentence is equal, with no variations, to that of the source language sentence. Therefore, this level might be called the level of formal equivalence.

Mona Baker distinguishes between:

• Equivalence that can appear at word level and above word level, when translating from one language into another.
• Grammatical equivalence, when referring to the diversity of grammatical categories across languages (e.g. number, tense and aspects, voice, person and gender).

• Textual equivalence, when referring to the equivalence between a SL text and a TL text in terms of information and cohesion. In this case the translator should take into account three main factors, that is, the target audience, the purpose of the translation and the text type.

• Pragmatic equivalence, when referring to implicatures and strategies of avoidance during the translation process. The role of the translator is to recreate the author's intention in another culture in such a way that enables the TC reader to understand it clearly.

Vinay and Darbelnet use this term to refer to cases where languages describe the same situation by different stylistic or structural means. Equivalence is particularly useful in translating idioms and proverbs.

There are some other approaches to defining equivalence in translation, but even the brief outline of the issue given above indicates its importance within the framework of the theoretical reflection on translation.

So, translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and statement in one language by the same message and statement in another language.

Each exercise involves some kind of loss of meaning due to a number of factors.

The basic loss can result from overtranslation (increased detail - детализация) or undertranslation (increased generalization - обобщение).

Firstly, if the text describes a situation, which has elements peculiar to the natural environment, institutions and culture of its language area, there is an inevitable loss of meaning unless there is already recognized translation equivalent in the target language.

Secondly, as the two languages have different lexical, grammatical and sound systems, they determine many physical objects and intellectual concepts differently. Usually the closer the language and the culture the closer the translation and the origin.

Thirdly, very often the individual usage (словоупотребление) of the language of the text by the writer and the translator don’t coincide. Everybody has lexical, if not grammatical idiosyncrasies, or peculiarities (индивидуальная или групповая отличительная особенность (характера, стиля)) and attaches “private” meaning to some words. The translator usually writes in a style that comes naturally to him unless the text prevents it.

Fourthly, the translator and the writer of the text have different theories of meaning and different values. The translator’s theory colors his interpretation of the text. He may set greater value than the writer of the text on connotation (коннотация (дополнительное, сопутствующее значение языковой единицы или категории)) and correspondingly less on denotation (значение; смысл).

Thus, the translator requires knowledge of literary and nonliterary text criticism (критика (анализ, истолкование и оценка литературных и художественных произведений)) since he has to estimate and assess the quality of the text before he desides how to interpret it and then translate it.

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