Translation_Tsolin

What is translation?

•           Translation is a rendering from one language into another; also : the product of such a rendering (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary)

•           Translation may be defined as a means of interlingual communication which renders meaning across cultures (А. Л. Бурак, 2002).

•           Translation is the process and result of creating a text in a target, or translating, language (TL); this text has approximately the same communicative value as the corresponding text in the source language (SL). Ibid.

•           Translation as a communicative act deals with codes – a system of signs and rules of their combination which is designed for rendering a message.

•           Linguistic units (sounds, letters, syllables, words, phrases) make a communicative channel between a speaker and a recipient.

•           Language is a code of verbal exchanging of information.

Different languages = different codes

In the process of interlingual communication people used different codes. Translation is the process of decoding of the signs of SL and recoding them into the signs of TL

 Particular theories:

special rules for specific

•           Genres (prose, poetry, journalistic texts, etc.)

•           Types (oral, writing, simultaneous, etc.) Languages (from Spanish into Ukrainian, from Arabic into French, etc.)

To be successful in both interpreting and writing translation the translator must:

•           have sufficient word stock in SL as well as in TL

•           know the grammar of TL

•           use the syntax of TL properly

•           be skilled in the translation technique and use dictionaries efficiently

• be aware of the material which he / she translates (have a notion about the field of knowledge)

A translator needs to have two kinds of knowledge

Factual knowledge:     Procedural knowledge:          

            •           Methodology   of       

•           Special terminology                                       

                                   translation                  

•           Resources available                                       

                        •           Special approaches                

•           Foreign languages                                          

Theory of translation is closely connected with:

•           Contrastive linguistics

•           Sociolinguistics

•           Psycholinguistics

•           Textual linguistics

•           Semiotics

Translation and contrastive linguistics

•           Contrastive linguistics is a practice-oriented linguistic approach that seeks to describe the differences and similarities between a pair of languages (hence it is occasionally called "differential linguistics"). Introduced by Robert Lado (1915-1995).

•           Contrastive linguistics, which investigates correlations between functional elements of SL and TL, creates foundation for the theory of translation, but cannot be identified with it.

Translation and sociolinguistics

• Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of society (including cultural norms, expectations, and context) on the way languages used, and the effects of language use on society. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language: the focus of sociology of language is the effect of the society on the language, while the sociolinguistics focuses on language's effect on the society.

•           Introduced by Luis Gauchat (1866-1942) and Thomas Callan Hodson (1871-1953)

 Sociolinguistics consider translation as:

•           reflection of the social world

•           communicative process which is determined by society

•           social norms for translation

Translations from other languages have an influence on the norms of TL (for example, vocabulary and phraseology of the biblical translations).

 Psycholinguistics and translation

• Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Introduced by Jacob Robert Kantor (1888-1984).

•           Eugene Nida suggested two schemes of translation:

1.           Formal translation (finding equivalent elements in vocabulary, grammar, syntax and phraseology).

2.           Conscious / intelligent translation which consists of three stages: analysis of the material, transfer of the material from SL to TL; reconstruction of the material.

The first type is used in interpreting and simultaneous translation, which are based on the probabilistic prediction of the massage content and the anticipatory synthesis of its equivalent in TL (Г.В. Чернов).

Another important psychological component of translation is the competency of a translator (R. Stolze, W. Wills), which includes his acquaintance with the subject of translation, cultural background, professional terminology both SL and TL.

• There is one important advantage for a translator in the case of oral translation: he / she can see and hear both the speaker and the audience; the translator can also perceive paralinguistic elements of the speaker’s speech (changings in tones, gesticulation, facial expression, ironic connotations of voice, specificity of communicative situation).

•           In the case of writing translation the translator must reconstruct the historical background and communicative situation in his / her imagination. Moreover, it is necessary to adapt the material of translation to the needs of the target (modern) audience.

Text linguistics is a branch of linguistics that deals with texts as communication systems; it includes the following aspects:

• Cohesion

• Coherence

• Intentionality

• Acceptability

• Informativity

•           Situationality

• Intertextuality

One of the most famous scholar – Robert Alan de Beaugrande (1946-2008)

Translation and semiotics

Semiotics is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication. This includes the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

Three branches of semiotics:

           Semantics: relation between signs and the things to which they refer.

           Syntactics: relations among or between signs in formal structures.

         Pragmatics: relation between signs and sign-using agents or interpreters.

Roman Jacobson’s Theory of

translation

Roman Jacobson (1896-1982) was a Russian-American linguist and literary theorist; the pioneer of the structural analysis of language.

The most important essay is “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959).

Interlingual translation

Likewise, on the level of interlingual translation, there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units, while messages may serve as adequate interpretations of alien code-units or messages.

Bruno Osimo (born in 1958)

Bruno Osimo is a follower of Roman Jacobson’s theory of translation whose approach integrates translation activities as a mental process, not only between languages (interlingual translation) but also within the same language (intralinguistic translation) and between verbal and non verbal systems of signs (intersemiotic translation).

"Translation is the creation of a language of mediation between various cultures. The historic analysis of translation presupposes the readiness of the researcher to interpret the languages of the translators belonging to different ages, and also to interpret their ability to

A central concept of translation studies described by Bruno Osimo is code-switching, key characteristic of multilingual individuals.

Yuri Lotman (1922-1993)

He developed R. Jacobson concept of language as a code system: the language cannot be considered as only a code, that is an artificial and contractual system which has appeared recently, but Y. Lotman suggests the formula

Language = code + history.

In accordance with R. Jacobson, the aim of intercourse is adequacy of communication.

Peeter Torop (born in 1950)

He expanded the scope of the semiotic study of translation to include metatextual, intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual translation and stressing the productivity of the notion of translation in general semiotics.

Torop’s concept of textual translation

•           “Textual translation“ is a process by which a text is transformed into another text. This term does not make a distinction between interlingual and intralingual translation.

•           “Metatextual translation“ is a process transferring a text not into another text, but into a culture: in other words.

Sometimes, as P. Torop stresses, textual and metatextual translations are simultaneous, contextual operations: they go together:

“When the translator or the publisher himself prepares the preface, commentary, illustrations, glossaries, and so on to a translated text, it is possible a translation being textual and metatextual at the same time”.

 Intertextual translation

In our world, no text rises in autonomy, outside a context. Consequently, when an author writes a text, a part of what he writes is a product of outer influences, while another part is a product of her own personal contemplation.

When an author assimilates material - in an explicit or implicit, conscious or unconscious way -coming from others' texts, he makes an intertextual translation, and the assimilated material is called intertext.

P. Torop makes an important point here: «The author and the translator and the reader all have a textual memory».

If, for example, an author "quotes" a passage by someone else without using quotation marks or other graphic devices to indicate the beginning and end points of the quotations, it is very important for the translator to catch the citation and convey it to the reader of the metatext.

Extratextual translation

Extratextual translation concerns the intersemiotic translation described by R. Jakobson. In it, the original material - prototext - is generally verbal text, while metatext is made, for example, of visual images, still, or moving as in film. It can also work the other way round, with a prototext made of music, images and so on, and a verbal metatext. P. Torop writes:

“Every art's language has its own articulation; its composing elements can be completely different. At the same time, however, natural language can be used as a language to describe all of them (metalanguage). Art criticism is actually a description of visual and linguistic art works by means of the natural language”.

The first division concerns recoding and transposition, which distinguishes the transfer of the expression plane (recoding) and the transfer of the content plane (transposition).

1.           macro-stylistic translation. In this type of translation, the dominant is the expression plane of the prototext. In the metatext, we observe a compliant preservation of the meter, of the rhymes, of the strophes (if it is a poem), and of every other formal structure.

2.           exact translation. Unlike the preceding type, the prototext expression plane dominates to the point that nothing else is left in the metatext.

3.           micro-stylistic translation. The main purpose of this type of translation is to recreate the individual expressive devices of the author.

4.         quotation translation. In this type of translation, the aim to formally reproduce the expression plane is considered so important that only formal limitations (grammar and syntax) prevent the translator to

"copy" the original: lexical precision is the absolute dominant.

5.           thematic translation. The expression plane in this case is subject to the content plane. Form is sacrificed in the name of comprehensive content.

6.           descriptive translation. Like all autonomous translation types, the prevalence of the dominant is pushed to the extreme, and the possibility of translating the entire text is rationally refused.

7.           expressive (or receptive) translation. This type of translation is realized when, in the translator's intentions, the metatext dominant coincides with the metatext expressiveness.

8.         free translation and, among those examined in Torop's model, is that which produces a text that differs most from the prototext. It is not a real "translation" as we commonly use the word; we could call it a remake, as are those that are commonly described as "liberally drawn from'", or "liberally inspired to'".

In this course the following topics will be considered:

• Equivalence in translation

• Different types of translation

• Importance of communicative context

• Lexical aspects of translation

• Grammar aspects of translation

• Syntactic aspects of translation

•           Stages of translation

•              W. Humboldt (1767-1835) translation is unachievable, languages stand two different  believed that adequate since behind two different world pictures (archetypes),different cultural connotations of meaning (Letter to K. Schlegel, 1796).

•              L. Weisgerber (1899-1985) asserted that each language creates its own “intermediate world” (Zwischenwelt), and a human perceives the world through his / her mother tong; so, translation is an encounter of two worldviews, not only two code-systems.

•              W. Koller (born in 1942): if each language states its own “intermediate world”, and translation only transposed content of one language into another language, untranslatability becomes the universal axiom.

Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941) thought language is not so much a tool through which it is possible to express notions belonging to a culture, as it is a sort of cataloguing system, a systematization of otherwise disorderly knowledge; if two peoples or two persons speak different languages, they often have different world views, not simply different formulations for the same conceptions.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939) was a mentor of Benjamin Whorf at Yale University; in his early writings Sapir held views of the relation between thought and language stemming from the Humboldtian tradition.Whorf‟s concept of linguistic relativity was subjected to severe criticism from scholars of language, culture and psychology.

•              Eric Lennenberg, Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker have criticized Whorf for failing to be sufficiently clear in his formulation of how language influences thought, and for failing to provide real evidence to support his assumptions. Generally Whorf's arguments took the form of examples that were anecdotal or speculative, and functioned as attempts to show how "exotic" grammatical traits were connected to what were considered equally exotic worlds of thought.

Noam Chomsky’s

In Chomsky's view, every phrase, before being formulated, is conceived as a deep structure in our mind.

His theory, therefore, postulates the existence of elementary, universal conceptual constructions, common to all mankind. Interlingual translation (and intralingual translation, too) is always possible, according to Chomsky, because logical patterns underlying the natural languages are uniform constants. If a speaker actualizes a deep structure in some way, it can also be

expressed in another language.

•              P.V. Chesnokov (П.В. Чесноков) criticized the concept of linguistic relativity as “based on failure to distinguish between logic forms (logic system of thought) and semantic forms (logic system)… logic system is the same in all people, because it comes from the nature of human cognition” (1977, 56).

Semantic differences between languages do not create insurmountable barrier for interlingual communication and for translation (A. Schweizer).

If in each language everything what is implied may be expressed, so, everything what is expressed in one language may be translated into another language (W. Koller).

Peeter Torop proposes to take advantage of the opportunities offered by a book. Since a translated text, in its practical life, takes on the form of a publication, the parts that are untranslatable within the text "can be 'translated' in the commentary, in the glossary, in the preface, in the illustrations (maps, drawings, photographs) and so on“ (2000, 129).

•              Torop sais, that one of “translation activities is to support (ideally) the struggle against cultural neutralization, leveling neutralization, the cause, in many societies, on one hand, of indifference toward cultural "clues" of the author or the text (above all in multiethnic nations) and, on the other hand, to stimulate the search for national identity or cultural roots” (2000, 129-130).

Neutralization of the linguistic context is another side of translatability

•              Among contemporary translators, for instance, there would seem to be a marked tendency towards modernization and naturalization of the linguistic context, paired with a similar but less clear tendency towards in the same direction in regard to the literary intertext, but an opposing tendency towards historicizing and exoticizing in the socio-cultural situation (J.S. Holmes 1988, 49).

Which elements of the text are untranslatable (or almost untranslatable)?

•              Dialecticisms

•              Play on words

•              Meaning of names

•              Metalinguistic elements

•              Anecdotal plots with implicit variants of meaning

All these cases are deviations from the standard language.

Dialecticisms

•              They are used for characteristics of some groups of people.

How to translate dialecticisms?

1.        To replace the dialect elements of TL with the dialect of SL (if their literary functions coincide). For

example, in some English translations of Aristophan‟s comedies the Dorian dialect of Greek (in contrast to the “high” Attic dialect) is substituted with the Scottish dialect of English.

2.      To use the substandard speech or vocabulary in TT instead of the dialecticisms of ST. In the Russian

translation of Aristophan (by A. Piotrovsky) just the substandard vocabulary is used for the Dorian dialect.

Finn”:

“In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri Negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary? "Pike-County" dialect; and four modified varieties of the last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guess-work, but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech”.

•              In the Ukrainian translation of the novel (by Iryna Steshenko, 1898-1987) just substandard vocabulary is used for rendering of these dialectical elements.

Play on words (pun)

In the novel of William Thackeray “Vanity Fair” the phrase of Rebecca “It is a false note!” has double meaning: she was playing a piano (a false note in melody) and stopped to throw out a note from Rawdon Crawley to a fireplace (a false note in relationships).

In both Ukrainian (by O. Senyuk) and Russian (by M. Diakonov) this phrase is translated as

«Фальшива нота» / «Фальшивая нота», what does not render the word play and associative meaning.

Proposed translation: «Фальшива нота-нотатка» (Ukrainian bothe «нота» and «нотатка» coincide with English “note”)

About translation of “speaking” names S.

Valakhov and S. Florin suggest to distinguish between:

1.                    Names which should not be translated, since it is not necessary for rendering of the content.

2.                    Names which should be translated, since in some context their meaning “will be lighten”.

3.                    Names which demand a special approach: in some cases they must be nominative, in other cases they must have semantic perception.

Untranslatable vocabulary

An example of J. Catford with the Japanese word yukata – literally means bath(ing) clothes, although their use is not limited to after-bath wear. Yukata are a common sight in Japan during the hot summer months.

“After  his  bath  he  enveloped  his still-glowing  body  in  the  simple hotel  bath-robe  and  went  out  to join his friends in the cafe down the street.”

·         Correspondence between the words of SL and TL is not full, i.e. the word in TL covers the meaning of its counterpart in SL only partly.

·         parts of body (hand, foot, head, breast, etc.)

·         calendar terms (names of days of a week, months)

·         ties of relationship (son, daughter, father, etc.)

·         items in general use (plough, spade, rake, knife, etc.)

·         some names of animals (which are known in both SL and TL cultures).

·        The first (base) meaning of these words is clear and recognizable. Even they are used in metaphorical sense (in idioms, for example), this meaning is secondary, and may be easily cleared from thecontext:

·         the right hand of fellowship

·         to move mountains

·         fount of wisdom

·         mine of information

·         big heart, etc.

·         Non-equivalent words name ideas and items which are absent in other culture and language;

·         these ideas and items are characteristic for the culture A, but not present in the culture B;

·         it means, that a word from the language A cannot be rendered with only one word in the language B;

·         in general, these words are not so numerous.

·        The non-equivalent vocabulary concerns the following fields:

·         technical terms

·         specific items

·         political, philosophical and scientific terms

·        some for emotions and psychological conditions

·        Difficulties with appearance of new concepts (which were named with foreign words) may be illustrated by attempts of Vasiliy Trediakovsky (1703-1769) to create the Russian counterparts for theses terms:

·         «безместие» absurd (French absurdité)

·         «бездействие» inertia (< inertie)

·         «назнаменование» emblem (< emblème)

·         «всенародный» epidemic (< épidémique)

·         «внезапный» panic (< panique)

·         «предверженная вещь» object (< objet)

·         «жар исступления» enthusiasm (< enthousiasme)

Mark Twain in his Introduction to “Adventures of Huckleberry

·         There is not an equivalent for the word in TL (at all, or in a certain meaning)

·         Different meanings of a polysemantic word of SL may be rendered with different words in TL.

·         natural objects (rivers, mountains, celestial bodies, etc.)

·        As usual, just these simple words (which are the most archaic in each language) are used very often figuratively.

·        False equivalent is a word in TL which coincides fully or partly in phonetic or graphic form with its counterpart in SL, but differs from it in meaning (in spite of having the common etymology).

·         Almost each word has several meanings which are reflected in dictionaries

·         However, in some cases, none of these meanings can be used in translation: a translator should choose a different word or create a new phrase.

·         Transliteration or partial transcription

·         Periphrasis: to create a new word / compound word / phrase using morphological elements of TL

·         Similarity: to use the word which means something similar but not identical (approximate meaning)

·        Similarity:

·        Full idioms

·        An idiom AB (that is, composed of the elements A ‗A‘ and B ‗B‘) is a full idiom if its meaning does not include the meaning of any of its lexical components: ‗AB‘ ⊅ ‗A‘ and ‗AB‘ ⊅ ‗B‘.

·        Put something through its paces – ‗to test something thoroughly‘

·        Bone of contention – ‗reason for quarrels or fights‘

o   Semi-idioms

·        An idiom AB is a semi-idiom if its meaning

·        includes an additional meaning ‗C‘ as its semantic pivot: ‗AB‘ ⊃ ‗A‘, and ‗AB‘ ⊅ ‗B‘, and ‗AB‘ ⊃ ‗C‘.

·        Private eye – private detective

·        Equivalent translation:

·        A friend in need is a friend indeed – «У біді пізнай

·        приятеля»

·        No losers, no winners – «Як боїшся — не роби, а

·        зробивши — не бійся»

·        Literal translation:

·        Rolling stone gathers no moss – «Камінь, що котиться, не обростає мохом» (Людина, що часто переїжджає, немає приятелів).

·         Hiponymy: a specific word of SL is translated with a more general term (generalization).

·        does not include the meaning of the other component and

§  Quasi-idiom or weak idiom

·        An idiom AB is a quasi-idiom, or weak idiom if its meaning

·        In some rare cases grammatical forms of ST and TL coincide; but in most of cases they do not.

·        It is difficult to uniform the main patterns of translation and create some ‗standards‘ for the most typical cases: the same grammatical form of SL may be translated in different ways in TL.

·         A grammatical element in SL does not have its equivalent in TL (for example, an article, or the difference between a definite and indefinite articles – they are absent in Ukrainian).

·         Grammatical elements both in SL and TL coincide formally, but they have different functions.

·         If the name contains anthroponym, it may be translated into two ways:

·         including the word «імені»: William Jewell College

o     коледж iм. Вільяма Джуелла, John Gopkins University – університет ім. Джона Гопкінса;

·         If the name consists of only common words, it may be translated : 

·        includes the meaning of its lexical components, neither as the semantic pivot, and

·        includes an additional meaning ‗C‘ as its semantic pivot: ‗AB‘ ⊃ ‗A‘, and ‗AB‘ ⊃ ‗B‘, and ‗AB‘ ⊃ ‗C‘.

·         A grammatical element of TL does not have its counterpart in SL (developed system of verbal inflexions in Ukrainian – they are absent in English).

·         Names of organizations, universities, institutions and projects are translated, if they do not contain proper names:

·         using genitive or nominative (in brackets): John Brown University – університет Джона Брауна, (університет "Джон Браун").