Wer sagt das? Der Kellner,der Gast oder der Text?

a) Ein Glas Wein,bitte.

b) Einen Apfelsatt,bitte

c) Herr Ober,wir möchten bestellen

d) Die Gäste bestellen die Getränke

e) Und Sie,was bekommen Sie?

f) Einen Schweinebraten mit Pommes frites.Geht das?

g) Bitte,was bekommen Sie?

h) Er nimmt eine Zwiebelsuppe und einen Rinderbraten

i) Der Kellner bringt die Getränke

j) Ja,natürlich. Und was möchten Sie trinken?

k) Der zweite Gast nimmt den Schweinebraten und den Apfelsaft

l) Ich nehme eine Zwiebelsuppe und einen Rinderbraten

m) Und was möchten Sie trinken?

 

№	Kelner	Gast	Text
a		!
b
c
d			!
e
f
g

 

h
i
j
k
l
m

 

 

Ihre Grammatik.Ergänzen Sie.

	antworten
ich		fahre
du
Sie
er/es/sie			mag
wir
ihr Sie		fahren
sie	antworten

 

Ergänzen Sie.

trinken

sein

schmecken

nehmen

 

 

a) Was nimmst du den?

b) Ich _______ einen Fisch

c) Fisch? Der _______ aber nicht billig

d) Na ja,aber er _______ gut

e) Was _______ du den?

f) Ich _______ ein Hahnchen

g) Hähnchen?Das_______ du doch nicht

h) _______ doch lieber ein Kotelett!

i) Das _______ Schweinefleisch,und

j) Schweinefleisch _______ ich nie

k) Und was _______ du?

l) Ich _______ ein Bier

m) Und ich _______ einen Orangensaft.

 

ÜBUNGEN

Gebrauchen Sie dativ mit der Praposition.

Die Mutter,mit-mit der Mutter

Die Arbeit,nach;die Schule,aus;mein Freund,zu,ihr Bruder,von;

Die Geschwister,bei;dieses Jahr,seit,er,ausser.du,mit,Jenes Gebäude,gegenüber,derBruder,entgegen,die Eltern,bei,die Hand,mit,das Fußballspiel,nach.

 

2. Übersetzen Sie ins Ukrainische.

 

1.Ab ersten Juni haben die Studenten Ferien.

2.Ab heute gilt der neue Studenplan.

3.Sie nahm den Brief ausder Schublade

4.Wir ubersetzen den Text aus dem Deutschen ins Ukrainische.

5.Ihre Familie stammt aus Griechland

6.Die Eheringe sind moistens aus Gold.

7.Außer Milch und Honig aß der Kranke nichts.

8.Die Kinder und die Eltern waren jetzt ausser Haus.

9.Lelekiwka liegt bei Kirowograd.

10.Die Großmutter war heute beim Arzt.

11.Bei seinem Charakter ist das ganz verständlich.

12.Beim Kochen hat sie sich verbrannt.

13.Wir sind erst nach Ende August wieder in die Stadt zurückgehert.

14.Er ist vor Spanien zuruckgehert.

15.Vom 10.06 bis 8.07 hat mein Onkel Urlaub.

16.Von der Brucke ab sind noch drei Kilometer bis zum nächsten Dorf.

17.Der Polizist wurde von einer Kugel getroffen

18.Ein Kind von 10 Jahren spielte Ball.

 

3. Übersetzen Sie ins Ukrainische.

 

1.Ich fahre zu meiner Freundin.

2.Mein Fater geht zur Arbeit.

3.Mein Bruder studiert mit meiner Freundin.

4.Fährst du zur Schule mit der Straßenbahn?

5.Zu Weihnachten bleiben die Eltern zu Hause.

6.Er fährt nach Kyjiw.

7.Zu dieser Zeit mussen sie schon zurückkehren.

8.Nach dem Feierlichen Teil beginnt das Kulturprogramm.

9.Das Mädchen spielt nach Noten.

10.Ich habe Deutsch nach diesem Buch studiert.

11.Der Junge Maler zeichnete nach Natur.

12.Ich become Briefe von meiner Freundin.

 

4. Bilden Sie die Sätze.

1.Der Lehre spricht mit…(der Schüler,die Schülerin,der Student,die Studentin,die Gäste,die Dolmetscher).

2.Der Lehrer erklärt die vokabeln mit….(ein Satz,ein Beispiel,ein Bild).

3.Die Studentin übt den Text mit …(eine Schallplatte,ein Tonband,ein Lehrbuch).

4.Der Junge übersetzen den Text mit…(das Wörterbuch,der Freund,die Lehrerin,die Freundin).

5.Meine Schwester fährt am Sonnabend zu…(die Eltern,der Freund,der Opa,die Freundin,der Lehrer,die Oma).

6. Ich habe mich bei…(die Verwandten,die Freunde,der Freund,die Tante,der Onkel,die Großeltern) erholt.

7.Meine Universität befindet sich …(der Park,das Denkmal,die Gemäldegalerie,die Bibliothek,mein Haus)gegenüber.

8.Diese schöne Wiese liegt hinter …(das Haus,das Dorf,der Flusse,der See).

9.Alle kommen ins Konzert außer…(ich,er,mein Freund,sein Bruder,ihre Schwester,eine Studentin).

10.Er bekommt oft Briefe von…(sein Freund,seine Eeltern,seine Großeltern,sein Lehrer).

 

Англомовні навчальні матеріали для набору та редагування

 

CHAPTER

 

THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATING

 

Introduction

My description of translating procedure is operational. It begins with choosing a method of approach. Secondly, when we are translating, we translate with four levels more or less consciously in mind (1) the SL text level,the level of language, where we begin and which we continually (but not consciously) go back to; (2) the referential level, he level of objects and events,real or imaginary, which we progressively have to visualize and build up, and which is an essential part, first of the comprehension, then of the reproduction process; (3) the cohesive level, which is more general,and grammatical,which traces the train of though, the feeling tone (positive or negative) and the various presuppositions of the SL text. This level encompasses both comprehension and reproduction: it presents an overall picture, to which we may have to adjust the language level; (4) the level of naturalness, of common language appropriate to the writer or the speaker in a certain situation. Again, this is a generalized level,which constitutes a band within which the translator works, unless he is translating an authoritative text, in which case he sees the level of naturalness as a point of reference to determine the deviation – if any – between the author’s level he is pursuing and the natural level. This level of naturalness is concerned only with reproduction. Finally, there is the revision procedure, which may be concentrated or staggered according to the situation. This procedure constitutes at least half of the complete process.

 

 

THE RELATION OF TRANSLATING TO TRANSLATION THEORY

The purpose of this theory of translating is to be of service to the translator. It is designed to be a continuous link between translation theory and practice; it derives from a translation theory framework which proposes that when the main purpose of the text is to convey information and convince the reader, a method of translation must be «natural», if,on the other hand,the text is an expression of the peculiar innovative (or clichéd) and authoritative style of an author (whether it be a lyric, a prime minister’s speech or a legal document), the translator’s own version has to reflect any deviation from a «natural» style. The nature of naturalness is discussed in detail in my exposition of the theory of translating below, «naturalness» is both grammatical and lexical, and is a touchstone at every level of a text, from paragraph to word, from title to punctuation.

The level of naturalness binds translation, translation theory to translating theory, and translating theory to practice. The remainder of my translating theory is in essence psychological – the relationship between language and «reality» (though all we know of «reality» is mental images and mental verbalizing of thinking) – but it has practical applications.

If one accepts this theory of translating, there is no gap between translation theory and practice. The theory of translating is based, via the level of naturalness, on a theory of translation. Therefore one arrives at the scheme shown in Figure 2.

 

Three language functions

Expressive

Infinitive

Vocative

Translation theory

Semantic

Communicative

Translation theory frame of reference

Problem

Contextual factors

Translation procedures

Theory of translating

Textual

Referential

Cohesive

Natural

 

THE APPROACH

A translation is something that has to be discussed. In too many schools and universities, it is still being imposed as an as an exercise in felicitous English style, where the warts of the original are ignored. The teacher more or less imposes a fair copy which is a model of his own English rather than proposing a version for discussion and criticism by students, some of whom will be brighter than he is.

Translation is for discussion. Both in its pragmatic aspect, it has an invariant factor, but this factor cannot be precisely defined since it depends on the requirements and constraints exercised by one original on one translation. All one can do is to produce an argument with argument with translation examples to support it. Nothing is purely objective or subjective, there are no cast-iron rules. Everything is more or less. There is an assumption of «normally» or «usually» or «commonly» behind each well-established principle, as I have stated earlier, qualifications such as «always», «never», «must», do not exist-there are no absolutes.

Given these caveats, I am nevertheless going to take you through my tentative translating process.

There are two approaches to translating (and many compromises between them): (1) you start translating sentence by sentence, for say the first paragraph or chapter, to get the feel and the feeling tone of the text, and then you deliberately sit back, review the position, and read the rest of the SL text; (2) you read the rest of the SL text; (2) you read the whole text two or three times, and find the intention, register, tone, mark the difficult words and passages and start translating only when you have taken your bearings.

Which of the two methods you choose may depend on your temperament, or on whether you trust your intuition (for the first method) or your powers of analysis (for the second). Alternatively, you may think the first method more suitable for a literary and the second for a technical or an institutional text. The danger of the first method is that it may leave you with too much revision to do on the early part, and is therefore time-wasting. The second method (usually preferable) can be mechanical; a translation text analysis is useful as a point of reference, but it should not inhibit the free play of your intuition. Alternatively, you may prefer the first approach for a relatively easy text, the second for a harder one.

From the point of view of the translator, any scientific investigation, both statistical and diagrammatic (some linguists and translation theorists make a fetish of diagrams, schemas and models), of what goes on in the brain (mind? nerves? сells?) during the process of translating is remote and at present speculative. The contribution of psycholinguistics to translation is limited: the positive, neutral or negative pragmatic effect of a word (e.g. affecter, affect, brutal, pretentious). Work on semantic differentials is helpful, since the difference between positive and negative (i.e. between the writer’s approval and his disapproval) is always critical to the interpretation of a text. The heart of translation theory is translation problems (admitting that what is a problem to one translator may not be to another) translation theory broadly consists of, and can be defined as a large number of generalizations of translation problems. A theoretical discussion of the philosophy and the psychology of translation is remote from the translator’s problems. Whether you produce a statistical survey through questionnaires of what a hundred translator think they think when they translate, or whether you follow what one translator goes through, mental stage by mental stage. I do not see what use it is going to be to anyone else, except perhaps as a corrective of freak methods - or ideas such as relying entirely on bilingual dictionaries, substituting encyclopedia descriptions for dictionary definitions, using the best-sounding synonyms for literary translation, transferring all Greco-Latin words, continuous paraphrasing, etc.

 

THE TEXTUAL LEVEL

Working on the text level, you intuitively and automatically make certain 'conversions'; you transpose the SL grammar (clauses and groups) into their 'ready' TL equivalents and you translate the lexical units into the sense that appears immediately appropriate in the context of the sentence.

Your base level when you translate is the text. This is the level of the literal translation of the source language into the target language, the level of the translation you have to eliminate, but it also acts as a corrective of paraphrase and the pare-down of synonyms. So a part of your mind may be on the text level whilst another is elsewhere. Translation is pre-eminently the occupation in which you have to be thinking of several things at the same time.

 

THE REFERENTIAL LEVEL

You should not read a sentence without seeing it on the referential level. Whether a text is technical or literary or institutional, you have to make up your mind, summarily and continuously, what it is about, what it is in aid of. What the writer's peculiar slant on it is: say, L'albumine et ses interactions medicamenteuses (It.: Ualhumina e le sue interazioni medicamentose) - it may be the action of drugs on blood, the need to detect toxic effects, the benefits of blood transfusion. Say, La pression quantitative - the large number of pupils in schools, the demand for better-quality education, they need for suitable education for all. Say, Recherches sur unfacteur diureuque d'origine lymphatique - the attempt to find a substance in the body fluid that promotes urine production, the disorders that inhibit the formation of the substance, the attempts to isolate the substance. Always, you have to be able to summarize in crude Jay terms, to simplify at the risk of over-simplification, to pierce the jargon, to penetrate the fog of words. You get an abstraction like Ce phenomene s'avere; ce phenomene_r exact pour cellules et fibres - referring to a becoming so large that it compresses the parenchyma next to it. Usually, a more specific reference is desirable in the translation: the tumour's swelling, deterioration, etc. Thus your translation is some hint of a compromise between the text and the facts.

For each sentence, when it is not clear, when there is an ambiguity, when the writing is abstract or figurative, you have to ask yourself: What is actually happening here? and why? For what reason, on what grounds, for what purpose? Can you see it in your mind? Can you visualise it? If you cannot, you have to 'supplement¹ the linguistic level, the text level with the referential level, the factual level with the necessary additional information (no more) from this level of reality, the facts of the matter. In real life what is the setting or scene, who are the actors or agents, what is the purpose? This may or may not take you away temporarily from the words in the text. And certainly it is all so easy to immerse your self in language and to detach yourself from the reality, real or imaginary, that is being described. Far more acutely than writers wrestling with only one language, you become aware of the awful gap between words and objects, sentences and actions (or ‘processes'., grammar and moods (or attitudes). You have to gain perspective {distacco, recul'Aa stand back from the language and have an image of the reality behind the text, a reality for which you, and not the author (unless it is an expressive or an authoritative text), are responsible and liable.

The referential goes hand in hand with the textual level. All languages have words and structures which can be finally solved only on the referential level, beginning with a few multi-purpose, overloaded prepositions and conjunctions, through dangling participles ('reading the paper, the dog barked loudly') to general words. The referential level, where you mentally sort out the text, is built up out of, based on, the clarification of all linguistic difficulties and, where appropriate, supplementary information from the 'encyclopedia' - my symbol for any work of reference or textbook. (Thus in pour le passage de Flore, you find that Flore/Flora was an Italic goddess of flowers and gardens. As it is in Claudel you translate: 'for the goddess Flora to pass' and leave the rest to the reader.) You build up the referential picture in your mind when you transform the SL into the TL text; and, being a professional, you are responsible for the truth of this picture. Seleskovitch claims, that 'the (SL) words disappear' or that you verbalize the concepts'? Not at all, you are working continuously on two levels, the real and the linguistic, life and language, reference and sense, but you write, you 'compose¹, on the linguistic level, where your job is to achieve the greatest possible correspondence, referentially and pragmatically, with the words and sentences of the SI- text. However tempting it is to remain on that simpler, usually simplified layman's level of reality (the message and its function* you have to force yourself back.

 

THE COHESIVE LEVEL

Beyond the second factual level of translating, there is a third, generalized, level linking the first and the second level, which you have to bear in mind. This is the 'cohesive' level; it follows both the structure and the moods of the text: the structure through the connective words (conjunctions, enumerations, reiterations, definite article, general words, referential synonyms, punctuation marks) linking the sentences, usually proceeding from known information (theme) to new infor­mation (rhyme; proposition, opposition, continuation, reiteration, opposition, conclusion - for instance - or thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Thus the structure follows the train of thought- determines, say, the 'direction¹ ('besides¹, 'further¹, 'anyway') in a text ensures that a colon has a sequel, that has a later reference; that there is a sequence of time space and logic in the text.

The second factor in the cohesive level is mood. Again, this can be shown as a dialectical factor moving between positive and negative, emotive and neutral. It means tracing the thread of a text through its value-laden and value-free passages which may be expressed by objects or nouns (Margaret Masterman (1982) has shown how a text alternates between 'help and 'disaster'), as well as adjectives or qualities. You have to spot the difference between positive and neutral in, say, 'appreciate' and 'evaluate'; "awesome¹ and 'amazing; 'tidy and 'ordered'; passed away (indicating the value of the person) and *died\ Similarly you have to spot differences between negative and neutral in say 'potentate' and 'ruler¹, These differences are often delicate, particularly near the centre where most languages have words like 'fair', 'moderate, whose value cannot always be determined in the context.

My third level, this attempt to follow the thought through the connectives and the feeling tone, and the emotion through value-laden or value-free expressions, is, admittedly only tentative, but it may determine the difference between a humdrum or misleading translation and a good one. This cohesive level is a regulator, it secures coherence, it adjusts emphasis. At this level, you reconsider the lengths of paragraphs and sentences, the formulation of the title; the tone of the conclusion (e.g. the appropriateness of a tout prendre en definitive (often tricky), en fin de compte, enfinij), a la fin, en somme_y en tout etat de cause to summarize an argument at the beginning of a final sentence). This is where the findings of discourse analysis are pertinent.

 

COMBINING THE FOUR LEVELS

Summarizing the process of translating, I am suggesting that you keep in parallel the four levels – the textual, the referential, the cohesive, the natural: they are distinct from but frequently impinge on and may be in conflict with each other. You first and last level is the text; then you have to continually bear in mind the level of reality (which may be simulated, i.e., imagined, as well as real), but you let it filter into the text only when this is necessary to complete or secure the readership’s understanding of the text, and then normally only within informative and vocative texts. As regard the level of naturalness, you translate informative and vocative texts on this level irrespective of the naturalness of the original, bearing in mind that naturalness in, say, formal texts is quite different from naturalness in colloquial texts. For expressive and authoritative texts, however, you keep to a natural level only if the original is written in ordinary language; if the original is linguistically or stylistically innovative, you should aim at a corresponding degree of innovation, representing the degree of deviation from naturalness, in your translation – ironically, even when translating these innovative texts, their natural level remains as a point of reference. For explosive, impassioned, enthusiastic, intense or violet, sincerity may be natural, but explosive is what the text, a serious novel, says, so explosive sincerity is what you have to write, whether you like it or not (you will get accustomed) of course, you maintain (I disagree) that the figurative sense of explosive has a wider currency than the figurative sense of explosive when you are justified in translating explosive by another word you claim comes within its semantic range.

Paradoxically, it is at the ‘naturalness’ rather than the ‘reality’ stage of translating that accuracy becomes most important – therefore at the final stage. When you (reluctantly!) realize that a literal translation will not do that it is cither unnatural or out of place, there is a great temptation to produce an elegant variation simply because it sounds right or nice; say, you translate: so deprived of flesh that you really can’t blame his spiteful little friends at the local primary school who have nicknamed him ‘Stick’ here the main trouble is spiteful simply isn’t in the word ‘feroce’ it will not stretch that far and it is unnecessary. The pragmatic (not the referential) component is missed. I would suggest: So thin, so fleshless that you have to show understanding for his fierce little friends at the local primary school, who have nicknamed him ‘Stick’.

This is a stab at accuracy as well as naturalness, and in the case of the, it is not at the colloquial level of the first translation, but one could maintain that the French is not racy or colloquial either. Admittedly, except for technical terms and for well-used words for culturally overlapping familiar objects and actions, accuracy in translation lies normally within certain narrow ranges of words and structures, certain linguistic limits. It is not so precise as precise, it is not ‘this word and no another’. It is not an absolute (there are no absolutes in translation). It represents the maximum degree of correspondence, referentially and pragmatically, between, on the one than, the text as a whole and its various units of translation (ranging usually from word to sentence) and, on the other, the extralinguistic ‘reality’ which may be the world of reality or of the mind. Admittedly it is harder to say what is accurate that what is inaccurate – translation is like love, I do not know what it is but I think I know – what it is not – but there is always the usually to bring you back to a close translation, and at least to show you there is a point beyond which you can’t go.

 

THE UNIT OF TRANSLATING

 

Normally you translate sentence by sentence (not breath-group by breath-group), running the risk of not paying enough attention to the sentence-joins. If the translation of a sentence has no problems, it is based firmly on literal translation of comprehensive is understanding plus virtually automatic and spontaneous transposition and shifts, changes in word order etc. Thus:

The first sign of a translation problem is where these automatic procedures from language to language, apparently without intercession of though are not adequate. Then comes the struggle between the words in the SL – it may be one word like ‘sleazy’, it may be a collocation like ‘a dark horse’, it may be a structure like ‘the country’s government’, it may be a referential, cultural or problem – in any event, the mental between the SL words and the TL though then begins how do you conduct this struggle? Maybe if you are an interpreter, a natural communicator (I write half-heartedly), you try to forget the SL words, you verbalize, you produce independent though, you take the message first, and then perhaps bring the SL words in, If you are like me, you never forget the SL words, they are always the point of departure, you create, you interpret on the basis of these words.

You abandon the SL text – literal translation If you like (which, for the purpose of this argument, I couple with mandatory or virtually mandatory shifts and word-order changes) only when its use makes the translation referentially and pragmatically inaccurate, when it is unnatural, when it will not work. By rule of thumb you know literal translation is likely to work best and most with written, prosy, semi-formal, non-literary language, and also with innovative language, worst and least with ordinary spoken idiomatic language. Further, it is more often effectively used than most writers on translation, from Cicero to Nida and Neubert, (but not Wills) lead you to believe.

Since the sentence is the basic unit of though, presenting an object and what it does, is, or is affected by, so the sentence is, in the first instance, your unit of translation, even though you may later find many SL and TL correspondences within that sentence. Primarily, you translate by the sentence, and in each sentence, it is the object and what happens to it that you sort out first. Further, if the object has been previously mentioned, or it is the main theme, you put it in the early part of the sentence, whilst you put the new information at the end, where it normally gets most stress: The vignette was designed by Thorwarldsen in 1805 in Rome.

Your problem is normally how to make sense of a difficult sentence. Usually you only have trouble with grammar in a long complicated sentence, often weighed down by a series of word-groups depending on verb-nouns. Grammar being more versatile than lexis, you can ender a sentence like the following in many versions. You can either plough through this sentence, keeping roughly to the French grammar and keeping the easer guessing, or you can make compromises, or, at the other end of the spectrum, in order to clarify the sentence as far as possible, you can try:

The following measures have profoundly shaken French institutions in a way that has not been known in local government for a century: what has remained of government supervision has been abolished, control of procedural legality has been created: powers of economic intervention have been extended to regional and local authorities powers previously exercised by the State have been transferred in complete stages to the various: specific local characteristics have ben introduced into legislation, a territorial civil service has been created and previous devolution regulations have been adapted to the new relations between the State and the local authorities.

The above translation has converted a dozen verb-nouns into verb, which goes against the noun-forming tendency of most languages but perhaps clarifies the sentence.

Below the sentence, you go to clauses, both finite and non-finite, which, if yopu are experienced, you tend to recast intuitively as in the previous long sentence, unless you are faced with an obscure or ambiguous sentence. Within the clause, you may take next the two obviously cohesive types of collocations, adjective-plus-noun or verb-plus-object, or the various groups that are less can text-bound,(I think Masterman’s breath-group units may be more applicable to interpreters than to translators)

Other difficulties with grammar are usually due to the use of archaic, little used, ambiguously placed or faulty structures. You should bear in mind however, that if long sentences and complicated structures are an essential part of the text, and are characteristic of the author rather than of the norms of the source language, you should reproduce a corresponding deviation from the target language norms in your own version.

 

THE TRANSLATION OF LEXIS

However, the chief difficulties in translating are lexical, not grammatical – i.e. words, collocations and fixed phrases or idioms, these include neologism and un findable words, which I deal with separately. Difficulties with words are of two kind: you do not understand them hard to translate.

If you cannot understand a word, because all its possible meanings are not known to you, or because its meaning is determined by its by its unusual collocation or a reference elsewhere in the text.

We have to bear in mind that many common nouns have four types of meaning:

v Physical or material

v Figurative

v Technical

v Colloquial

The first thing to say about this diagram is that it is schematic and that the colloquial meanings are tied to collocations or fixed phrases. Secondly, the technical meanings are often the worst translation traps since you expect technical terms to be monosemous, i.e., have one meanings only a widespread illusion, (Admittedly, some of the technical terms mentioned are familiar alternatives, and other are often compounded with their classifies).

My next point is that most nouns, verbs or adjectives can be used figuratively and therefore can have figurative meanings – the more common word, the more contagious and accessible he figurative meanings. If we are desperate, we have to test any sentence for a figurative meaning e.g., ‘The man loved his garden’. The garden may symbolize privacy, beauty, fertility, simple hard work, sexual bliss, etc. Other possible solutions to the word problem are that the word may have an archaic or a regional sense (consult appropriate dictionaries), may be used ironically, or in a sense peculiar or private to the writer (idiolect), or it may be misprinted.

But be assured of one thing: the writer must have known what he wanted to say: he would never have written a drop of nonsense in he middle of a sea of sense and somehow you have to find that sense, by any kind of literal thinking: misprint, miscopying, author’s linguistic or technical ignorance. Skull, head, top? You have to force your word (usually it is a word) into sense, you have to at least satisfy yourself at last there are no other reasonable alternatives, and you have to write a footnote this to be a light, actually a grovel because there is no other light, a reduction to absurdity, and so not found.

So far I have been assuming that the word is more or less context-free and I do think that far more words are more or less context-free than most people imagine. However, the meaning of many words is determined by their collocations, whether they appear in compounded nouns, in idioms or as an item in a lexical set. Very rarely, they can only be clarified by a reference to the adjoining paragraphs or beyond: any mysterious object by the may take you far outside your sentence.

Another general point about translating is that in principle, since corresponding SL and TL words do not usually have precisely the same semantic range (though many do in cognate languages), you are or under translating most of the time, usually the latter. In fact, since in the majority of texts you are more concerned with the message (function) than with the richness of description, and since the meanings of all but technical words are narrowed down in their context, translation correspondence is usually close. However, we must remember that a great number of words in one language include and overlap in varying degrees of meaning the words they appear most obviously to translate into their language. Thus French words like assure are much more common and have a wider semantic range than their cognates in English, and therefore more often than not they are translated by several different more specific words. This illustrates one of the main problems in translation, the enforced shift from generic to specific units or vice versa, sometimes due to overlapping or included meaning, sometimes to lexical gaps in one of the languages, which may be lacking in a generic word for objects or processes or in common specific terms for common parts of the body. There are surprising lexical gaps and virtual duplications in languages group objects differently English, apparently the richest language in the world cannot do better than ‘bank, funny’ for denoting very different referents. However, as long as you are sensitized to these lexical facts, you will not find them a problem unless they are used.

One little item – say the precise meaning of a what is a ‘panorama’? Is it the same in German. What is the difference between an ethnic and an in graving. Between this if you have no informant accessible, can take you longer the 10-15 pages of the text which follow, and you have to be prepared to give all that time to it (but not in an exam). In real life, you have to be ready to take more time over checking one figure, chasing one acronym, or tracing one un findable word than over translating the whole of the relatively easy and boring piece you find it in.