Г. Е. Мірам, В. В. Дайнеко, Л. А. Тарануха, М. В. Грищенко, О. М. Гон

 

BASIC TRANSLATION

A course of lectures on translation theory

and practice for institutes and departments

of international relations

ОСНОВИ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ

Курс лекцій з теорії та практики перекладу

для факультетів та інститутів

міжнародних відносин

Редактор англійського тексту Н. Брешко

 

English text editor: Nina Breshko

Рекомендовано Міністерством освіти і науки України

як навчальний посібник для студентів факультетів

та інститутів міжнародних відносин

Ж32

ю Мірам

ш Основи перекладу

Kyiv

Elga

Nika-Center

Київ

Ельга

Ніка-Центр

УДК 81(075.8) ББК81я73

Рецензенти:

Доктор філологічних наук, професор В.І.Карабан (Київський національний університет ім. Тараса Шевченка)

Кандидат філологічних наук, доцент К.С.Серажим (Київський національний університет ім. Тараса Шевченка)

Навчальний посібник «Основи перекладу» є першою частиною курсу лекцій з теорії та практики перекладу, призначеного для стедентської аудиторії відповідних факультетів вищих навчальних закладів, враховує мовну та комунікативну специфіку підготовки спеціалістів широкого гуманітарного профілю, зокрема, міжнародних відносин, міжнародного права, міжнародної інформації, міжнародних економічних відносин.

Посібник підготовлено кафедрою іноземних мов Інституту міжнародних відносин Київського національного університету імені Тараса Шевченка. Колектив авторів: д.ф.н., проф. Мірам Г.Е., к.ф.н. доц. Дайнеко В.В., викл. Тарануха Л.А., викл. Грищенко М.В., к.ф.н., доц. Гон О.М.

БІБЛІОТЕКА

Луганського державного

Гриф надаШШГШтЄ§Є*вЧ!й»?й6№Я"Щауки України. Лист № 14ІЛЖЇЙ1^і]

© Г.Е.Мірам, В.В. Дайнеко, Л.А.Тарануха,
ISBN 966-521 -160-9 М.В.Грищенко, О.М.Гон, 2002

© Оригінал-макет. Видавництво "Ніка-Центр", 2002

PREFACE

When a language is taught to students of non-linguistic specialities -so-called Language for Special Purpose (LSP) - this fact is usually taken into account by the authors of language manuals and results in special manuals either intended for a particular profession (for example, English for Law Students) or covering a range of similar occupations (e. g., Technical English, Financial English, etc.). As a rule, LSP Manuals focus students' attention on peculiar professional vocabulary and phrasing, comprise training text materials pertaining to particular profession and explain grammar rules and stylistic patterns conspicuous for certain pro­fessional speech variety. Also, LSP Manuals include numerous transla­tion exercises involving texts of specific professional orientation.

Although translation is part and parcel of any LSP Manual, however, with several rare exceptions (e. g., Military Translation Manual by L. Ne-lyubin et al.) there are no translation manuals specifically intended for students of non-linguistic specialties and this Manual is an attempt to fill the gap. We think that there are several reasons that might justify our venture. First and most of all, translation is an effective tool that assists in matching language communication patterns of the speakers of different languages in a specific professional field, especially such communication-dependent one as international relations. This aspect of translation teaching becomes even more important under the language development situation typical of New Independent States such as Ukraine. Besides, general linguistic subjects related to translation are not in the curriculum of the international relations students and we included in our Manual several lectures that would improve general linguistic awareness of the students, moreover that we consider this information a necessary pre­requisite for proper understanding of translation. Last, but not the least the Manual comprises in its training part (exercises after each lecture and the Appendix) English vocabulary and speech patterns with their Ukrainian equivalents which are in standard circulation in diplomatic practice, international law and international finance areas.

The theoretical approaches to translation that we use in our Manual are based on the most widely accepted modern translation theories, both Western and of the former Soviet Union. An attempt was made, how­ever, to present them to the readers in a concise and simplified form, which in our opinion is justified by the purpose and target audience of the Manual. Special accent is made, however, on communicational the­ory since it highlights those aspects of translation process which are of vital significance for translation teaching. The Manual discusses both translation and interpretation since both skills are desired from interna­tional relations specialists.

The Manual is targeted to the audience of translation teachers and students of non-linguistic higher educational establishments and inter­national relations institutes and faculties, in particular.

* * x-

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Foreign Languages Chair of the Institute of International Relations (Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University) for discussions and valuable comments on the Manual. We are thankful to Mr. A. Kobzarenko for style-editing of Ukrainian transla­tions.

We would like to thank Prof. V. Karaban and Ass. Prof. K. Serazhim for reading and suggesting valuable comments on the Manual.

We highly appreciate and gratefully acknowledge the support of the Administration of the Institute of Inter­national Relations.

Authors

Lecture 1. LANGUAGE AND EXTRALINGUISTIC

WORLD

This Lecture:

• _ introduces the notions of a linguistic sign, a concept and a denotatum;

• establishes relations between the above sets of elements;

• shows the difference between the denotative and connotative meanings of a linguistic sign;

• describes the mental concept of a linguistic sign;

• describes the relations of polysemy and synonymy, and

• explains some causes of ambiguity of translation equivalents.

It is worthwhile to begin lectures on translation with a short intro­duction to the phenomenon of language, since not knowing the relation­ship between language and extralinguistic world one can hardly properly understand translation.

•* The relation of language to the extralinguistic world involves three basic sets of elements: language signs, mental concepts and parts of the extralinguistic world (not necessarily material or physically really existing) which are usually called denotata (Sin­gular: denotatum).

The language sign is a sequence of sounds (in spoken language) or symbols (in written language) which is associated with a single concept in the minds of speakers of that or another language.

It should be noted that sequences smaller than a word (i.e. mor­phemes) and those bigger than a word (i.e. word combinations) are also language signs rather than only words. Word combinations are regarded as individual language signs if they are related to a single mental concept

 

which is different from the concepts of its individual components (e. g. best man).¹

The signs of language are associated with particular mental concepts only in the minds of the speakers of this language. Thus, vrouw, Frau, femeie, and kobieta are the language signs related to the concept of a woman in Dutch, German, Romanian and Polish, respectively. It is im­portant to note that one can relate these signs to the concept of a woman if and only if he or she is a speaker of the relevant language or knows these words otherwise, say, from a dictionary.

One may say that language signs are a kind of construction elements (bricks) of which a language is built. To prove the necessity of knowing the language sign system in order to understand a language it is sufficient to run the following test: read with a dictionary a text in a completely unknown language with complex declination system and rich inflexions (say, Hungarian or Turkish). Most probably your venture will end in failure because not knowing the word-changing morphemes (language signs) of this language you won't find many of the words in a dictionary.

The mental concept is an array of mental images and associations related to a particular part of the extralinguistic world (both really exist­ing and imaginary), on the one hand, and connected with a particular language sign, on the other.

The relationship between a language sign and a concept is ambigu­ous: it is often different even in the minds of different people, speaking the same language, though it has much in common and, hence, is recog­nizable by all the members of the language speakers community. As an example of such ambiguity consider possible variations of the concepts (mental images and associations) corresponding to the English word en­gineer in the minds of English-speaking people when this word is used, say, in a simple introductory phrase Meet Mr. X. He is an engineer.

' In this as well as in many other instances we make use of definitions which seem the most suitable for the explanation of translation but might be considered oversimplified should they be kept to in a comprehensive semantic analysis.

The relationship between similar concepts and their relevant lan­guage signs may be different also in different languages. For example, among the words of different languages corresponding to the concept of a women mentioned above: vrouw, Frau, femei, and kobieta, the first two will include in the concept of a woman that of a wife whereas the last two will not.

The differences in the relationship between language signs and concepts (i.e*. similar concepts appearing different to the speakers of different lan­guages and even to different speakers of the same language) may explain many of the translation difficulties.

ШЬ The mental concept of a word (and word combination) usu­ally consists of lexical meanings, connotations, associations and grammatical meanings. The lexical meanings, connotations, and associations relate a word to the extralinguistic world, whereas the grammatical meanings relate it to the system of the language.

For example, the German word haben possesses the lexical meaning of to have with similar connotations and associations and in its gram­matical meaning it belongs as an element to the German grammatical system of the Perfect Tense. One may note similar division of the mean­ings in the English verb to have or in the French verb avoir.

Thus, a lexical meaning is the general mental concept corresponding to a word or a combination of words.² To get a better idea of lexical meanings lets take a look at some definitions in a dictionary³. For practical pur-

² It is, of course, a simplified definition but we think it serves the purpose of
this Manual. In order to read more on this complex subject you may refer to:
Salomon L.B. Semantics and Common Sense. - New-York, 1966; Chafe W.L.
Meaning and the Structure of Language. - Chicago; London, 1971.

³ Hornby A. S. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current English. -
Oxford, 1982.

poses they may be regarded as descriptions of the lexical meanings of the words shown below:

mercy - 1. (capacity for) holding oneself back from punishing, or from causing suffering to, somebody whom one has the right or power to punish; 2. piece of good fortune, something to be thankful for, relief; 3. exclamation of surprise or (often pretended) terror.

noodle - 1. type of paste of flour and water or flour and eggs pre­pared in long, narrow strips and used in soups, with a sauce, etc.; 2. fool.

blinkers (US = blinders) - leather squares to prevent a horse from seeing sideways.

A connotation is an additional, contrastive value of the basic usually designative function of the lexical meaning. As an example, let us compare the words to die and to peg out. It is easy to note that the former has no connotation, whereas the latter has a definite connotation of vulgarity.

An association is a more or less regular connection established between the given and other mental concepts in the minds of the language speakers. As an evident example, one may choose red which is usually associated with revolution, communism and the like. A rather regular association is established between green and fresh {young) and (mostly in the last dec­ade) between green and environment protection.

Naturally, the number of regular, well-established associations ac­cepted by the entire language speakers' community is rather limited - the majority of them are rather individual, but what is more important for translation is that the relatively regular set of associations is sometimes dif­ferent in different languages. The latter fact might affect the choice of trans­lation equivalents.

Ш* The most important fact, however, to be always born in mind in translation is that the relation between words (language signs) and parts of the extralinguistic world (denotata) is only indirect and going through the mental concepts⁴.

The concepts being strongly subjective and largely different in dif­ferent languages for similar denotata give rise to one of the most difficult problems of translation, the problem of ambiguity of translation equivalents.

Ш* Another source of translation ambiguity is the polysemantic nature of the language signs: the relationship between the signs and concepts is very seldom one-to-one, most frequently it is one-to-many or many-to-one, i.e. one word has several meanings or several words have similar meanings.

These relations are called polysemy (homonymy) and synonymy,

accordingly. For example, one and the same language sign bay corre­sponds to the concepts of a tree or shrub, a part of the sea, a compartment in a building, room, etc., deep barking of dogs, and reddish-brown color of a horse and one and the same concept of high speed corresponds to several language signs: rapid, quick, fast.

The peculiarities of conceptual fragmentation of the world by the language speakers are manifested by the range of application of the lexi­cal meanings (reflected in limitations in the combination of words and stylistic peculiarities). This is yet another problem having direct relation to translation - a translator is to observe the compatibility rules of the lan­guage signs (e. g. make mistakes, but do business).

The relationship of language signs with the well-organized material world and mostly logically arranged mental images suggests that a lan­guage is an orderly system rather than a disarray of random objects. The language system and its basic rules are the subject of the next lecture.

 

For more information see, for example, a classical work of Ogden C.K., Ivor A. Richards. The Meaning of Meaning. - London, 1949.

03 QUESTIONS

1. What are the basic elements of the relationship between a language and extralinguistic world?

2. What is a language sign, a concept and a denotatum? Give defini­tions. Show the relation between them?

3. What is a lexical meaning, a connotation and an association? Give definitions and examples.

4. What is the range of application of a word? Give examples.

5. What are the main sources of translation ambiguity stemming from the sign-concept relationship?

(§J EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Using a dictionary define the lexical meanings of the following words and word combinations. Find Ukrainian or English equivalents. Compare the lexical meanings of the English words and their Ukrainian equivalents and vice versa.

a) anticlimax; arms; bottom; bout; concert; concoct; date; detail; end; engineer; fulcrum; fun; the gist; give and take; world; worldly; peer pressure; peer-bonded; rapport; task force; track record; power broker; odds; home; war.

b) аматор - любитель - дилетант; аналізувати - розглядати -розбирати; банкір - фінансист; засновник - основоположник -фундатор - батько; малий - невеликий - нечисленний - обмежений

 

- мізерний - нікчемний; неймовірний - неправдоподібний - дикий

- парадоксальний - анекдотичний; простий - щирий - простодуш­ний - грубий - звичайний.

Ех. 2. Describe connotations of the following words and word combinations. Suggest Ukrainian translations with similar connotations.

malady - disease - illness; unusual - off-beat; efforts - travails; work

- toil, gun - piece; corpse - stiff; rich - well-to-do; quit - buzz off; liqui­
date - iron out.

Ex. 3. Consider regular associations between English words (concepts) in the word combinations given below, suggest Ukrainian equivalents of the latter. Observe similarity or difference of the associations in the Ukrainian equiva­lents.

white knight; white heat; yellow press; common sense; die hard; soft (hard) figures; pipe dream; red tape

Ex. 4. Suggest the missing parts of the expressions below; say where the associations are similar in English and Ukrainian.

".... Tom,... Tom;... Rouges,... Rouge;... sky,.... sky;.... apple;... Apple, apple..., apple...., Apple..., Apple, apple..., apple...

Ex. 5. Take three homonyms and synonyms in Ukrainian, translate them into English, point to the cases of similar and different use.

 

Lecture 2. LANGUAGE SYSTEM: PARADIGMS AND SYNTAGMAS

•* In any language system two general planes are usually distin­guished: the formal plane, comprising spoken or written language signs (words and word combinations as well as minor elements, morphemes) and the semantic, comprising mental concepts (mean­ings) the language signs stand for.

 

This Lecture:

• introduces the concepts of a system;

• introduces the notion of language as a system existing in formal and se­mantic planes;

• attributes linguistic signs to morphological, lexical or syntactic levels;

• depending on meaning or function, defines what paradigm a unit be­longs;

• analyzes syntactic and semantic valence;

• shows how different syntagmas are activated in English and Ukrainian in the course of translation;

• gives a definition of translation as a specific coding-encoding process.

So, there is a system underlying seemingly random signs of a lan­guage. One may note, for instance, that not all the words are compatible with each other, their range of application has certain limitations, and through their lexical meanings and associations they may be united into individual groups.

For example, to take an extreme case, in English speech one will never find two articles in a row or in an official obituary an English speaker will never say that the minister pegged out. An evident example of grouping by meaning and association gives the group of colors in which even a little child will easily include black, red, blue, etc.

Thus, one may conclude that there is some order organizing hun­dreds of thousands of words making it easier to memorize and properly use them in speech. This order is called the system of a language. Any sys­tem is an organized set of objects and relations between them, but before discussing objects and relations in the system of a language it is worth­while to describe the traditional approach to language system descrip­tions.

- As a simplified example one may again take words from a dictionary {formalplane) and their definitions (semanticplane):

corps - 1. one of the technical branches of an army; 2. - military force made up of two or more divisions

correct - 1. true, right; 2. - proper, in accord with good taste and conventions.

This example is, of course, simplified since the real semantic content corresponding to a word is much more complex and not that easy to de­fine. The general relationship between these planes has been described in the previous lecture.

•► A language system is traditionally divided into three basic levels: morphological (including morphs and morphemes as objects), lexi­cal (including words as objects) and syntactic (comprising such ob­jects as elements of the sentence syntax such as Subject, Predicate, etc.)

For example, -tion, -sion are the English word-building morphemes and belong to objects of the morphological level, book, student, desk as well as any other word belong to objects of the lexical level, and the same words (nouns) book, student, desk in a sentence may become Subjects or Objects and thus belong to the set of syntactic level objects of the lan­guage.

 

•► At each language level its objects may be grouped according to their meaning or function. Such groups are called paradigms.

The following paradigms were used to form these sentences and the following paradigm elements were activated in syntagmas during their formation (viz. Table below)

 

Comparing the paradigm sets used to form the above English and Ukrainian sentences and paradigm elements activated in the syntagmas of these sentences one may easily note that both the sets used and the set elements activated are often different. They are different because English and Ukrainian possess different language systems. It goes without saying, that this fact is very important for translation and explains many translation problems.

For example, the English morphemes s and es enter the paradigm of Number (Plural). Words spring, summer, autumn, and winter enter the lexico-semantic paradigm of seasons. All verbs may be grouped into the syntactic (functional) paradigm of Predicates.

One may note that one and the same word may belong to different levels and different paradigms, i.e. the language paradigms are fuzzy sets with common elements. As an example, consider the lexico-semantic paradigm of colors the elements of which {black, white, etc.) also belong to the syntactic paradigms of Attributes and Nouns.

It is important to note that the elements of language paradigms are united and organized according to their potential roles in speech (text) for­mation. These roles are called valences. Thus, words black, white, red, etc. have a potential to define colors of the objects (semantic valence) and a potential capacity to serve as Attributes in a sentence (syntactic valence).

•► The paradigms of the language brought together form the sys­tem of the language which may be regarded as a kind of construction material to build sentences and texts. Language paradigms are vir­tual elements of the language which are activated in syntactically in­terdependent groups of sentence elements called syntagmas.