Elements Activated in the Sentence

 

English	Ukrainian
he	він
used, come	приїздив
Past Indef.	минулий час
to	none
to	до
Italy, spring	Італія, весна
each	кожний
none	зазвичай
Common Case	род. відм.
none	род. відм.

 

In simple language a syntagma is a pair of words connected by the master-servant relationship⁵

As an example, consider sentences in English and in Ukrainian: He used to come to Italy each spring and Зазвичай кожної весни він приїздив до Італії.

ШЬ Any language has a particular multi-level organization: its ele­ments are organized in sets (paradigms) at various levels and a lan­guage speaker is using the elements of these sets to generate a mes­sage intended for communication with other speakers of this lan­guage and entirely incomprehensible for those who have no com­mand of this language.

 

P

⁵ This is an approach typical for Immediate Constituents (IC) Grammar.

Б І Б Л і З "і 6КЙ

Луганське! о державного цзгогічного університету мені Тараса Шевченка

7?2№

The latter fact is easy to illustrate by a sentence in a language pre­sumably unfamiliar to the readers of this Manual. Consider Dutch sen­tence: Dat vat ik niet. One will understand it if he knows that:

ik is a Personal Pronoun, first person singular (English I);

vat is the first person singular of the verb vatten (English catch, get);

niet is the negation (English not, no);

dat is a Pronoun (English it, this).

Then being aware of the relevant English words (paradigm ele­ments) one may render this sentence in English as I do not get it.

From the above one may conclude that a language is a code under­stood only by its users (speakers)⁶. Then, may be, translation is a process of decoding a message in one code and encoding it in another which is understood by another group of users using a different code. However, this is the subject of the next lecture.

⁶ This viewpoint is widely accepted by computational linguistics (viz., e.; Grishman R. Computational Linguistics: An Introduction - Cambridge, 1987).

Ј?3 QUESTIONS

1. What are the two main planes of a language? What is the relationship between them?

2. What levels are traditionally distinguished in a language? Give ex­amples of the objects of each level.

3. What is a language paradigm? Give examples of lexico-semantic and grammatical paradigms.

4. -What is a syntagma? Qive a definition.

5. What is the language system? fiive a definition.

(§} EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Give the elements ofthe following lexico-semantic paradigms.

a) furniture, colors, time, times of the day, seasons

b) вибори; судова система; переговори; фінанси

Ех. 2. Compare the grammatical paradigms which enter the following Eng­lish words and their Ukrainian equivalents.

house, man, easy, do-little, easy-going, white

Ex. 3. In the text below, name as many lexico-semantic and grammatical paradigms as you can find.

BOTH SIDES WILL MAKE SURE AMERICAS CULTURE WARS

CONTINUE The Internaitonal Herald Tribune. April 12, 2001. ByNeal Gahler.

The culture wars that so enlivened the 1980s and 1990s in America are said to be over. The savage fights that raged full-scale as recently as two years ago over gay rights, abortion, gun control, environmental pro­tection and general permissiveness, and that culminated in the Antietam of culture battles, Bill Clinton's impeachment and trial, seem to have just petered out.

Pundits say the combatants, exhausted from all the verbal shelling, have accepted compromise rather than press on for total victory, and this has led to a new spirit of accommodation. One observer writes that the «crackle of cultural gunfire is now increasingly distant.»

It makes you wonder what country they're living in.

Ex. 4. Compare the paradigm sets used to form the following English and Ukrainian sentences and paradigm elements activated in the syntagmas of these sentences.

Jack is an early riser. Джек рано встає.

Lecture 3. LANGUAGE AS A MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

This Lecture

• introduces the concepts of:
_• (a) communication;

• (b) components communication consists of (message, message sender, message recipient);

• (c) ways of communicating;

• shows the difference between bilingual communication and translation;

• shows which tools are helpful in coping with ambiguity of messages and
gives their definitions.

Thus, a language may be regarded as a specific code intended for in­formation exchange between its users (language speakers). Indeed, any language resembles a code being a system of interrelated material signs (sounds or letters), various combinations of which stand for various mes­sages. Language grammars and dictionaries may be considered as a kind of Code Books, indicating both the meaningful combinations of signs for a particular language and their meanings.

For example, if one looks up the words (sign combinations) elect and college in a dictionary he will find that they are meaningful for Eng­lish (as opposed, say, to combinations ele or oil), moreover, in an English grammar he will find that, at least, one combination of these words: elect college is also meaningful and forms a message.

Ш* The process of language communication involves sending a mes­sage by a message sender to a message recipient - the sender en­codes his mental message into the code of a particular language and the recipient decodes it using the same code (language).

The communication variety with one common language is called the monolingual communication.

If, however, the communication process involves two languages (codes) this variety is called the bilingual communication.

Bilingual communication is a rather typical occurrence in countries with two languages in use (e. g. in Ukraine or Canada). In Ukraine one may rather often observe a conversation where one speaker speaks Ukrainian and another one speaks Russian. The peculiarity of this com­munication type lies in the fact that decoding and encoding of mental messages is performed simultaneously in two different codes. For exam­ple, in a Ukrainian-Russian pair one speaker encodes his message in Ukrainian and decodes the message he received in Russian.

the Bible, a code,a book, etc. as a noun) but one will easily and without any doubt understand this message:

1. as Book tickets! in a situation involving reservation of tickets or

2. as Give that book! in a situation involving sudden and urgent necessity to be given the book in question

So, one of the means clarifying the meaning of ambiguous messages is the fragment of the real world that surrounds the speaker which is usually called extralinguistic situation.

Another possibility to clarify the meaning of the word book is pro­vided by the context which may be as short as one more word a (a book) or several words (e.g., the book I gave you).

In simple words a context may be defined as a length of speech (text) necessary to clarify the meaning of a given word.

 

•► Translation is a specific type of bilingual communication since (as opposed to bilingual communication proper) it obligatory in­volves a third actor (translator) and for the message sender and re­cipient the communication is, in fact, monolingual.

^ The ambiguity of a language makes it necessary to use situation and context to properly generate and understand a message (i. e. en­code and decode it) Since translation according to communicational approach is decoding and encoding in two languages the significance of situation and context for translation cannot be overestimated.

 

Translation as a specific communication process is treated by the communicational theory of translation discussed in more detail else­where in this Manual⁷.

Thus, a language is a code used by language speakers for communi­cation. However, a language is a specific code unlike any other and its peculiarity as a code lies in its ambiguity - as opposed to a code proper a language produces originally ambiguous messages which are specified against context, situation and background information.

Let us take an example. Let the original message in English be an in­struction or order Book!. It is evidendy ambiguous having at least two grammatical meanings (a noun and a verb) and many lexical ones (e. g.,

⁷ See also: Kade O. Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Probleme der Translation // Grundfragen der Uebersetzungwissenschaft. - Leipzig, 1968.

There is another factor also to be taken into account in communica­tion and, naturally, in translation. This factor is background information, i. e. general awareness of the subject of communication.

To take an example the word combination electoral college will mean nothing unless one is aware of the presidential election system in the USA.

Apart from being a code strongly dependent on the context, situa­tion and background information a language is also a code of codes. There are codes within codes in specific areas of communication (scien­tific, technical, military, etc.) and so called sub-languages (of profes­sional, age groups, etc.). This applies mosdy to specific vocabulary used by these groups though there are differences in grammar rules as well.

As an example of the elements of such in-house languages⁸ one may take words and word combinations from financial sphere (chart of ac­counts, value added, listing), diplomatic practice {credentials, charge d'affaires, framework agreement) or legal language (bail, disbar, plaintiff).

All said above is undoubtedly important for translation and will be discussed in more detail elsewhere during this lecture course, however, it is high time to answer the seemingly simple question «What is transla­tion?». And this is the subject of the next lecture.

(??) QUESTIONS

1. What is language communication? What actors does it involve?

2. What is monolingual communication? What is bilingual communi­cation? Give examples.

3. Describe translation as a special kind of bilingual communication. Why is it called special?

4. What is peculiar about a language as a code? Which factors specify the meaning of a message?

5. What is context, situation and background information? Give defi­nition of context. Give examples of extralinguistic situations and items of background information that would clarify a message.

(§] EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Suggest the elements of the context that clarify the meanings of the italicized words in the following phrases (messages). Translate into Ukrain­ian and English, accordingly.

a) You are doing well\ Water is deep down the well. Top-to-bottom structure. The submarine lies on the sea bottom. College vote. University college. Drugs plague modern society. The drug is to be taken with meals.

b) Він пишався своєю рідною землею, що дала світу так багато видатних людей. У цій частині країни всі землі придатні для вирощування пшениці. На чорній землі біла пшениця родить. На чиїй землі живеш, того й воду п'єш. Колос плідний до землі гнеть­ся, а пустий - вгору дереться. Земля багата - народ багатий.

Ех. 2. Describe situations and/or items of background information that clar­ify the meanings of the italicized words in the following phrases (messages). Translate into Ukrainian.

Bottoms up! Her Majesty man-o'-war 'Invincible'. Bugs in the room. Global net.

¹ The term used by some scholars for sub-languages.

Ex. 3. Describe situations and/or items of background information that clar­ify the meanings of the following Ukrainian words. Suggest English equiva­lents.

презентація, КВН, бомж, зачистка, прем'єріада, ЖЕК.

Ex. 4. Translate the text into Ukrainian. Suggest items of background in­formation necessary for its proper translation.

HAS THIS BEEN A TERM OF ENDEARMENT? The Observer, Sunday April 29, 2001. Andrew Rawnsley, columnist of the year.

Tony Blair's government has made history. What it has yet to demonstrate is the capacity to change the country's destiny.

A week is a long time in politics; 48 months is an eternity. Four years ago this Wednesday, Tony Blair stood before the black door on his sun-dappled first day in office. 'Enough of talking,' said the man of action. 'It is time now to do'. 'Strip off the hype which has gushed from Number 10 ever since; blow away the froth of the daily headlines. How has his gov­ernment actually done? Let us try, as clinically as is possible, to assess the performance of New Labour.

The starter test of any government, I would suggest, is that it is rea­sonably accomplished at governing. This sounds an undemanding hur­dle, but it is a first fence many previous governments have failed to sur­mount. The Blair government has made serious, self-inflicted mistakes -the Millennium Dome blasts them still. The unexpected has come close to blowing them over. Foot and mouth has not been - I am being chari­table - a textbook example of how to handle an emergency. The Gov­ernment teetered on, the lip of the abyss during last autumn's fuel pro­tests. It is natural that we should curse their blunders more than we offer credit for the mistakes they have avoided. But the Blair government has eschewed perpetrating any spectacular errors.

The novices to red boxes who took office four years ago have broadly run a competent government. Its life has been punctuated by crises, which have been invariably generated not by dissident backbench­ers or off-message Ministers, but erupted from the inner core of the re-

gime. There have been gripping soap operas, none more so than the double resignations of Peter Mandelson. But the damage done has been to the actors, not to the country at large. There has not been the eco­nomic calamity or civil crisis which destroys governments and wrecks countries.

The Blair government has not inflicted upon us a Suez, a Three Day week or a Winter of Discontent. There has not been the vicious social conflict of the inner-city riots and the miners' strike in the Eighties. There has not been anything approaching the ruinousness of Thatcher's poll tax or Major's Black Wednesday. Just by being reasonably adept at ruling, the Blair administration is lifted above the average run of postwar governments.

The next test of any government is whether it has been true to its promises. Generally, the so-distant People's Prime Minister has fulfilled the rather low expectations the people had of him. Blair was elected on a paradoxical prospectus. The subtext of his campaign was: everything is appalling; we will change it very slowly. The Conservatives may have left office in May 1997, but their term of power did not properly end until just two years ago, when Gordon Brown finally released the Government from the Tory spending corset. Transformed schools and hospitals await realisation. If not delivered in the second term, the punishment of the electorate may be terrible.

Blair's most reckless pledge was to restore faith in public life. Back on May Day 1997, even the most cynical observer did not anticipate they would have quite so much sleaze in them. In other respects, this gov­ernment has delivered more than it promised. The last manifesto pledged nothing about child benefit - it has actually risen by 25 per cent. They did not claim to be able to create full employment, yet they have achieved that historic goal of Labour.

Any set of rulers with an eye on claiming a large place in posterity must aspire to be more than competent deliverers. The superior rank of government is occupied by those which make changes lasting beyond their lifetime. It is not conceivable that the Conservatives could unravel

devolution to Scotland and Wales, an aspiration of progressive govern­ments dating back to Gladstone.

One of the ironies of Blair is that, for all his relentless emphasis on the modern, his bigger achievements have been based on ambitions set by long-dead predecessors. A settlement in Ireland has eluded every pre­mier since the nineteenth century. The minimum wage was a Labour goal when Keir Hardie founded the party. The Tories have been com­pelled to accept it, just as they have been forced to support independence for the Bank of England. This government could come to a full stop to­day - and would leave enduring legacies.

There are other elements of the Blair record which the Right accepts because they are as amazed as many on the Left are disgusted that they have been enacted by a Labour government.

Which takes us to my next test of a government: has it permanently altered the framework of political choice? The verdict here is mixed. With a little help from the grisly pantomime that is William Hague's Conservative Party, New Labour commands the centre ground and swathes of territory on both flanks. Harold Wilson's unrequited dream of making Labour'the natural party of government' is closer to realisa­tion by Tony Blair than under any previous Labour Prime Minister.

But he has achieved it more by following the consensus than by chal­lenging the status quo. His government has pandered to illiberality more often than it has confronted prejudice. It has become a little less bashful about making the case for the active state and a fairer society, but re­mains coy of full candour.

Since the Third Way was giggled to death, it has become ever clearer that this is a government which moves by inches rather than leaps. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that: small steps, provided there are enough of them, can take you on a long journey.

Baby bonds are an eyecatching device to give the poor an asset stake in society. But this is the safest sort of radicalism. The first beneficiaries of the scheme will not come into possession of their modest endowments until Mr Blair is eligible for his pension. He, Qordon Brown, David

Blunkett and Alistair Darling, along with the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Fabian Society, all claim paternity over baby bonds. When one good notion has to be spread around four Cabinet Ministers and two think tanks, it tells us that New Labour is not bursting with bold and innovatory ideas.

This brings me to the last and most demanding test. The out­standing governments are those which alter the country's destiny. The project to secure the exclusion of the Conservatives from power for a generation has withered as Blair's enthusiasm for changing the Westmin­ster voting system has shrivelled. In terms of the private goals he set for his premiership, the most evident failure has been Europe. Towards Europe as a whole, and towards the single currency especially, public opinion is more aggressively hostile than ever.

The greatest wrangling between the Prime Minister and the Chan­cellor about the next manifesto is not over what it says about tax, but about the warmth of the phraseology towards the single currency. The fiercest struggle about that is within Mr Blair himself. Will he hedge his self-perceived destiny with deadening qualifications or will he articulate the belief that his epochal role is to make Britain a fully engaged partner in Europe?

The Blair government has demonstrated that it can make history. Only in its second term will we discover whether it has the capacity to change the future.

 

Lecture 4. TRANSLATION DEFINITION

In this Lecture the reader will:

• find the definition of translation as an object of linguistic study in terms of process and outcome;

• find the definitions of languages translated from and into. The lecture also describes:

• stages of the translation process;

• the role of verification process.

Usually when people speak about translation or even write about it in special literature they are seldom specific about the meaning. The pre­sumption is quite natural - everybody understands the meaning of the word. However, to describe translation intuitive understanding is not sufficient - what one needs is a definition.

Translation means both a process and a result, and when defining translation we are interested in both its aspects. First of all, we are inter­ested in the process because it is the process we are going to define.

But at the same time we need the result of translation since along­side with the source the translated text is one of the two sets of observed events we have at our disposal if we intend to describe the process. In order to explain translation we need to compare the original (source) text and the resulting (target) one.

However, the formation of the source and target texts is governed by the rules characteristic of the source and target languages. Hence the systems of the two languages are also included in our sphere of interest. These systems consist of grammar units and rules, morphological and word-building elements and rules, stylistical variations, and lexical dis­tribution patterns (lexico-semantic paradigms).

Moreover, when describing a language one should never forget that language itself is a formal model of thinking, i.e. of mental concepts we use when thinking.

In translation we deal with two languages (two codes) and to verify the information they give us about the extralinguistic objects (and con­cepts) we should consider extralinguistic situation, and background in­formation.

Having considered all this, we shall come to understand that as an object of linguistic study translation is a complex entity consisting of the following interrelated components:

-a. elements and structures of the source text;

b. elements and structures of the target language;

c. transformation rules to transform the elements and structures of
the source text into those of the target text; systems of the languages involved
in translation;

e. conceptual content and organization of the source text;

f conceptual content and organization of the target text;

g. interrelation of the conceptual contents of the source and target
texts.

In short, translation is functional interaction of languages⁹ and to

study this process we should study both the interacting elements and the rules of interaction.

Among interacting elements we must distinguish between the ob­servable and those deducible from the observables. The observable ele­ ments in translation are parts of words, words, and word combinations of the source text.

However, translation process involves parts of words, words, and word combinations of the target language (not of the target text, because when we start translating or, to be more exact, when we begin to build a model of future translation, the target text is yet to be generated). These translation components are deducible from observable elements of the source text.

In other words, one may draw the following conclusion:

 

The definition suggested by V.Komissarov. See: Комиссаров В.Н. Линг-вистика перевода. - M., 1981.

Ш* During translation one intuitively fulfills the following opera­tions:

a. deduces the target language elements and rules of equivalent
selection and substitution on the basis of observed source text
elements;

b. builds a model consisting of the target language elements se­
lected for substitution;

c. verifies the model of the target text against context, situation
and background information;

d. generates the target text on the basis of the verified model.

Thus, the process of translation may be represented as consisting of three stages:

1. analysis of the source text, situation and background informa­tion,

2. synthesis of the translation model, and

3. verification of the model against the source and target context (semantic, grammatical, stylistic), situation, and background informa­tion resulting in the generation of the final target text.

Let us illustrate this process using a simple assumption that you re­ceive for translation one sentence at a time (by the way this assumption is a reality of consecutive translation).

For example, if you received:

«At the first stage the chips are put on the conveyer» as the source sentence. Unless you observe or know the situation your model of the target text will be:

«На першому етапі стружку (щебінку) (смажену картоплю) (нарізану сиру картоплю) (чіпи) кладуть на конвеєр».

Having verified this model against the context provided in the next sentence (verification against semantic context):

«Then they are transferred to the frying oven» you will obtain: «На першому етапі нарізану сиру картоплю кладуть на конвеєр».

It looks easy and self-evident, but it is important, indeed, for under-

standing the way translation is done. In the case we have just discussed the translation model is verified against the relevance of the concepts corresponding to the word chips in all its meanings to the concept of the word frying (Is it usually fried? or Is it worth frying?).

Ш* Verification against semantic and grammatical contexts is per­formed either simultaneously (if the grammatical and semantic ref­erences are available within a syntagma) or the verification against semantic context is delayed until the availability of a relevant seman­tic reference which may be available in one of the following rather than in one and the same sentence. Cases when the grammatical, se­mantic or situational references are delayed or missing present serious problems for translation.

The examples of specifying contexts are given in Table below.

 

long stick- long run	grammatical and semantic con­text in one syntagma
The results are shown in the table - Put this book on the table	grammatical and semantic con­text in one sentence
The tanks were positioned in spe­cially built shelters and the tank operation proved successful. The enemy could not detect them from the air.	semantic context in different sen­tences

With these simple examples we want to stress a very important fact for translation: the co-occurring words or the words situated close to each other in a source text have invisible pointers indicating various kinds of grammatical, semantic, and stylistic information. This information is stored in human memory, and the principal task of a translator is to visualize all of this information.

In the examples with chips that were just discussed we used so called deduction modeling, that is we built our translation on the basis of our knowledge about the languages involved in translation and the knowl-

 

edge of «the way things are in life» (e.g. that it is hardly reasonable to fry fried potatoes or fragmented stones). We intuitively formulated hy­potheses about translation of certain words and phrases and then verified them.

So, speaking very generally, when we translate the first thing we do is analyze the source text trying to extract from it all available information necessary for generating the target text (build the intermediate model of the target text), then verify this information against situation and background knowledge and generate the target text.

For example, let the source text be:

Europe's leaders trust that these criticisms will pale into insignificance when the full import of expansion begins to grip the public mind

Then, omitting the grammatical context which seems evident (though, of course, we have already analyzed it intuitively) we may sug­gest the following intermediate model of the target text that takes into account only semantic ambiguities:

Європейські лідери/лідери європейської інтеграції/ вважають/ вірять/, що ця критика вщухне/поступово зійде нанівець/, коли важливість поширення (Євросоюзу) почне завойовувати громадську думку/, коли суспільство почне краще усвідомлювати важливість розширення Євросоюзу/.

On the basis of this model we may already suggest a final target text alternative¹⁰:

Лідери європейської інтеграції вважають, що ця критика поступово зійде нанівець, коли суспільство почне краще усвідомлю­вати важливість розширення Євросоюзу.

It is important to bear in mind that in human translation (unlike automatic) the intermediate representation of the target text will com­prise on the conscious level only the most problematic variations of translation which one cannot resolve immediately.

We seldom notice this mental work of ours but always do it when translating. However, the way we do it is very much dependent on gen­eral approach, i.e. on translation theories which are our next subject.

¹⁰ It goes without saying that this target text alternative is not the only one -many other alternatives are possible.

J??) QUESTIONS

1. What interrelated components does translation include as an object of linguistic study?

2. Give short definition of translation (after Komissarov).

3. What are the interacting elements in translation? What elements are observable? What elements are deducible?

4. What interrelated operations does one fulfill in the process of trans­lation?

5. What three stages does one distinguish in translation?

{§} EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Suggest situation and/or background information necessary to clarify the meanings of the italicized words in the following sentences. Suggest Ukrainian equivalents for the italicized words and explain your choice. Translate the texts into Ukrainian and English, respectively.

1. He stopped for gas at an all-night Texaco with a clerk who seemed uncommonly friendly.

2. Here was the most powerful country on earth in suspended anima­tion: in the age of Internet, the age of instant information, the race be­tween Al Gore and George W. Bush was frozen by a laborious manual recount.

3. All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff.

«Good morningl» said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun is shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandall looked at him from under his long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.

«What do you mean?» he said. «Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

«All of them at once,» said Bilbo. And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. (Tolkien)

4. Як поет, він вперше серйозно заявив про себе під час
«відлиги». Час минає, гласність стала асоціюватися з конкретним
історичним періодом перебудови, на зміну їй прийшов термін про-

зарість. Спілкуючись з іноземцями, дізнаєшся, що для багатьох із них Україна - це Чорнобиль і Шевченко, зробимо паузу... фут­боліст.

Ех. 2. Build an intermediate model of translation and suggest final target text for the source text below.

He could almost feel the campfire glow of the screen, an interna­tional sameness of news that must accompany businessmen everywhere.

Ex. 3. Translate into Ukrainian. Suggest elements of the context that helped you choose the Ukrainian equivalents.

WASHINGTONS NEW SALUTE TO COMPROMISE New York Times September 6, 1998, by Herbert Muschamp

Bad things happen to good architects. James Ingo Freed is the man who designed the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of the most powerful buildings of our time. It gives me no pleasure to re­port that Freed's most recent project, the Ronald Reagan Building, is a disappointing piece of work. The building has intermittent merit. It is an impressive feat of urban planning. It also offers some fine interiors and an excellent outdoor space. Its flaws are mostly the result of the design constraints under which Freed was compelled to operate. He was ex­pected to design a neo-classical edifice of stone, as if in 1998 that concept were still able to fill anything larger than a Bart Simpson frame of values. As someone once said, the scariest sentence in the language is, «Everyone has their reasons.» This building is such an overwhelming monument to compromise that one comes away resenting the talent, intelligence, ma­terials, time and space absorbed by its creation.

Officially called the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, this edifice is second in size only to the Pentagon among federal buildings. It fills in the last empty plot of ground in the Federal Triangle, the 70-acre urban slice that fans out between the Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue. Physically and symbolically, the Triangle both joins and sepa­rates the executive and legislative branches of government.

The area is slightly larger than Vatican City, though its turn-of-the-century image did not occupy high moral ground. A century ago, the Triangle was called the Hooker District for the many brothels there. Now

it houses the National Archives, the Departments of State and Com­merce, and the Internal Revenue Service. The grand neo-classical faces of these huge, foursquare buildings hark back to a time before federal bu­reaucracy became a term of contempt.

The project began with an idealistic vision. The concept was to pull together beneath one roof a cultural center and agencies for international trade. What a wonderful idea: a government building dedicated to the historical and continuing interaction between global trade and cultural exchange. Sadly, the cultural components, mainly performance spaces, were largely eliminated from the project in 1992. As realized, the Reagan Building houses some small government agencies, private business of­fices, shops, restaurants and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Essentially, it is a speculative real estate venture built on public land. The major disap­pointment is that the building itself makes no cultural contribution.

The site is a vast irregular space, just south of the Post Office Build­ing, left vacant when work on the Triangle was halted in the late 1930s. For decades, the lot was used for parking. In plan, it looks something like a guitar after a mad rock star has smashed off part of the handle. Like the Holocaust Museum, this building has a dual personality. Its neo-classical limestone exterior belies the modern spaces within. At the Holocaust Museum, however, Freed subverted the classical vocabulary to create a gaunt, hauntingly sinister facade, an image that evokes the official face of a totalitarian regime.

Here, he gives us neo-classicism straight, without even a whiff of postmodern irony. There are rusticated stone bases, ionic columns, arches both round and square, two little round tempietti, windows with triple-layered stone reveals. This overwrought classicism is the kind that Louis Sullivan, in 1893, predicted would set American architecture back by 50 years. Do I hear 100? Inside the building, Freed has attempted to realize the modernist ideals of structure and clarity that have guided most of his work. Beyond the main entrance, on 14th Street, is the build­ing's main public space, a vast atrium with an exposed metal framework that rises toward a glass roof in the form of a half-cone.

The arrangement is similar to Cesar Pelli's Winter Garden at Battery Park City: glazed atrium; palatial staircase; a ring of shops and restau­rants; art gallery. But instead of looking out toward the Hudson River,

this atrium faces an imposing mezzanine adorned with a brilliant neon sculpture by Keith Sonnier.

Freed's other major departure from beaux arts precedent is the inte­rior circulation. Instead of axial symmetry, the organization of halls and corridors reflects the site's irregular shape. Imagine the diagonal criss­cross of an airports runways and you gain some impression of the effect. The plan is mildly disorienting but never boring. This is not a bureau­cratic Kafkaland. What remains of the buildings initial program of per­forming arts is a small but exquisite auditorium, its walls festooned with swags of copper-colored fabric, acoustically functional and visually rav­ishing. A large illuminated grid of white opaque glass - an Adolf Loos marquee - rises two stories in the hall outside the theater.

Behind the building is a large plaza, the most successful element of the design. Fronting upon the grand hemicycle of the Post Office Build­ing, the design counters this curve with a long diagonal wall to create a dynamic public space. The Reagan Building reaches out toward the hemicycle with a pavilion that will house the Woodrow Wilson Center. The pavilion's attentuated curve is balanced in the center of the plaza by a two-story tempietto designed for an upscale restaurant. The space of­fers a grand procession toward a Metro stop and is adorned by a per­fectly scaled sculpture by Martin Puryear.

The work resembles at once an exclamation point and a punching bag: a fine symbol of the emotions evoked by a government of, by, for and against the people. Best of all is a long arcade facing out on the courtyard, and stretching its full length. It is divided into shallow bays, each outfitted with a lamp of exaggerated length. The spatial proportions may remind visitors of a first childhood trip to Washington. Recently, I listened to the recording of Maria Callas Juilliard master class in which she says good-bye to her students. Callas tells them that it makes no dif­ference whether she keeps on singing or not. They are the younger gen­eration, they must keep on going in the proper way, with courage, phras­ing and diction: not with fireworks, or for easy applause, but with the expression of the words, and with feeling.

If I hear her correctly, what she is saying works to take the measure of this building. External authority - a musical score, an urban context, the classical tradition - can be properly grasped only by an artists coura­geous acceptance of her internal authority. This building lacks that ac-

ceptance. The city has been denied the knowledge Freed has gained in a lifetime of distinguished work, integrity and intellect. As a former dean of the Illinois Institute of Technology, once headed by Mies van der Rohe, Freed needs no architecture critic to remind him that Mies was the heir to neo-classicism in this century, and that the Reagan Building was an opportunity to rethink neo-classicism in the light of that history. All those pilasters and cornices are just so much fireworks, easy applause.

This should have been a glass building, a literal and metaphoric reflection on Classicism and the City Beautiful movement. It would have taken courage to insist on a modern building - or maybe just a serious phone call to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose influence on public works is potent. What is most deplorable about this building is that it pitches Classicism back into exhausted debates over Traditional vs. Mod­ern, Conservative vs. Progressive, debates that debased esthetic currency in the 19th century and have certainly not created architectural value in the comic post-modern mimicry of historical styles.

As Freed must know, his design for the lavits Center in New York is more authentically classical, in the principles it conveys of structure, clar­ity, detail and proportions, in its relationship to context and urban his­tory, in its expression of personal conviction. Or if Moynihan was other­wise indisposed and a masonry building had to be the order of the day, Freed might have modeled this structure on the radical Classicism of Boullee and Ledoux, and thus enriched the Federal Triangle with an ar­chitectural reminder of our country's roots in the Enlightenment. Those abstracted, 18th-century designs are also among the historical sources of Freed's architecture.

In the Holocaust Museum, Freed, who was born in Nazi Germany, rose to the great creative challenge of drawing upon his intense personal experience of history's greatest evil. With greater fidelity to his own sense of architectural diction, phrasing and feeling, Freed might have created a building that assured modern democracy's capital city of its own place in time.

Lecture 5. BASIC TRANSLATION THEORIES

The lecture discusses:

• transformational approach;

• denotative approach:

• communicational approach;