The problem of misinterpreting idiomatic expressions.

There are two cases in which an idiom can be easily misinterpreted if one is not already familiar with it:

(a) Some idioms are ‘misleading’; they seem transparent because they offer a reasonable literal interpretation and their idiomatic meanings are not necessarily signalled in the surrounding text. A large number of idioms in English, and probably all languages, have both a literal and an idiomatic meaning, for example go out with = have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone (Ср.: русское выражение гулять с кем-либо) and take someone for a ride = deceive or cheat someone in some way (Ср.: русское выражение вешать лапшу на уши). Such idioms lend themselves easily to manipulation by speakers and writers who will sometimes play on both their literal and idiomatic meanings. In this case, a translator who is not familiar with the idiom in question may easily accept the literal interpretation and miss the play on idiom.

(b) An idiom in the source language may have a very close counterpart in the target language, which looks similar on the surface but has a totally or partially different meaning. For example, the idiomatic question Has the cat had / got your tongue? is used in English to urge someone to answer a question or contribute to a conversation, particularly when their failure to do so becomes annoying. A similar expression is used in French with a totally different meaning: to give one’s tongue to the cat (back translation), meaning to give up, for example when asked a riddle. Instances of superficially identical or similar idioms, which have different meanings in the source and target languages, lay easy traps for the unwary translator who is not familiar with the source-language idiom and who may be tempted simply to impose a target-language interpretation on it.

Apart from being alert to the way speakers and writers manipulate certain features of idioms and to the possible confusion, which could arise from similarities in form between source and target expressions, a translator must also consider the collocational environment which surrounds any expression whose meaning is not readily accessible. Idiomatic and fixed expressions have individual collocational patterns. They form collocations with other items in the text as single units and enter into lexical sets, which are different from those of their individual words.

The ability to distinguish senses by collocation is an invaluable asset to a translator working from a foreign language. It is often subsumed under the general umbrella of ‘relying on the context to disambiguate meanings’, which, among other things, means using our knowledge of collocational patterns to decode the meaning of a word or a stretch of language. Using our knowledge of collocational patterns may not always tell us what an idiom means, but it could easily help us in many cases to recognize an idiom, particularly one, which has a literal as well as a non-literal meaning.

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Major distinctions between collocation and idiom.

Generally speaking, collocations are fairly flexible patterns of language which allow several variations in form. In addition, although the meaning of a word often depends on what other words it occurs with, we can still say that the word in question has an individual meaning in a given collocation.

Idioms and fixed expressions are at the extreme end of the scale from collocations in one or both of these areas: flexibility of patterning and transparency of meaning. They are frozen patterns of language, which allow little or no variation in form and, in the case of idioms, often carry meanings, which cannot be deduced from their indi­vidual components.

An idiom such as bury the hatchet (to become friendly again after a disagreement or a quarrel) or the long and the short of it (the basic facts of the situation) allows no variation in form under normal circumstances. Unless he or she is consciously making a joke or attempting a play on words, a speaker or writer cannot normally do any of the following with an idiom:

1) change the order of the words in it

2) delete a word from it

3) add a word to it

4) replace a word with another

5) change its grammatical structure

Collocational patterning.

Collocational patterning among languages are not just a question of using, say, a different verb with a given noun; they can involve totally different ways of portraying an event. Patterns of collo­cation reflect the preferences of specific language communities for certain modes of expression and certain linguistic configurations; they rarely reflect any inherent order in the world around us. There are many ways of saying things, many choices within language, that have little or nothing to do with the world outside. This is not to say that collocations do not often reflect the cultural setting in which they are embedded. Some collocations are in fact a direct reflection of the material, social or moral environment in which they occur. This explains why bread collocates with butter in English but not in Arabic. Buy a house is a frequent collocation in English, but in German it is rare because the practice of house-buying is very different in the two cultures.

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Recognition and interpretation of idioms.

As far as idioms are concerned, the first difficulty that a translator comes across is being able to recognize that he or she is dealing with an idiomatic expression. This is not always so obvious. There are various types of idiom, some more easily recog­nizable than others. Those, which are easily recognizable, include expressions that violate truth conditions, such as It’s raining cats and dogs. They also include expressions which seem ill-formed because they do not follow the grammatical rules of the language. Expressions which start with like (simile-like structures) also tend to suggest that they should not be interpreted literally. The more difficult an expression is to understand and the less sense it makes in a given context, the more likely that a translator will recognize it as an idiom. Because they do not make sense if interpreted literally, the highlighted expressions in the following text are easy to recognize as idioms. Provided a translator has access to good reference works and monolingual dictionaries of idioms, or, better still, is able to consult native speakers of the language.

The very fact that he or she cannot make sense of an expression in a particular context will alert the translator to the presence of an idiom of some sort.

There are two cases in which an idiom can be easily misinterpreted if one is not already familiar with it:

· Some idioms are ‘misleading’; they seem transparent because they offer a reasonable literal interpretation and their idiomatic meanings are not necessarily signalled in the surrounding text.

· An idiom in the source language may have a very close counterpart in the target language, which looks similar on the surface but has a totally or partially different meaning.

 

The translation of idioms: strategies

The way in which an idiom or a fixed expression can be translated into another language depends on many factors. The acceptability or non-acceptability of using any of the strategies described below will therefore depend on the context in which a given idiom is translated. The first strategy described, that of finding an idiom of similar meaning and similar form in the target language, may seem to offer the ideal solution, but that is not necessarily always the case. Ques­tions of style, register and rhetorical effect must also be taken into consideration.

· Using an idiom of similar meaning and form

· Using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form

· Borrowing the source language idiom

· Translation by paraphrase

· Translation by omission(опущение) of a play on idiom

· Translation by omission of entire(весь) idiom

 

Translation problems arising from non-equivalence: the source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning; the target language lacks(недостатки) a superordinate; the target language lacks hyponym.

· The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning

The target language may make more or fewer distinctions in meaning than the source language. What one language regards as an important distinction in meaning another language may not perceive as rele­vant. For example, Indonesian makes a distinction between going out in the rain without the knowledge that it is raining (kehujanan) and going out in the rain with the knowledge that it is raining (hujan-hujanan). English does not make this distinction, with the result that if an English text referred to going out in the rain, the Indonesian translator may find it difficult to choose the right equivalent, unless the context makes it clear whether or not the person in question knew that it was raining.

· The target language lacks a superordinate

The target language may have specific words (hyponyms) but no general word (superordinate) to head the semantic field. Russian has no ready equivalent for facilities, meaning ‘ any equipment, building, services, etc. that are provided for a particular activity or purpose ’. It does, however, have several specific words and expressions which can be thought of as types of facilities, for example средства передвижения (‘ means of transport ’).

· The target language lacks a specific term (hyponym)

More commonly, languages tend to have general words (superordinates) but lack specific ones (hyponyms), since each language makes only those distinctions in meaning which seem relevant to its particu­lar environment. Under house, English has a variety of hyponyms, which have no equivalents in many languages, for example bungalow, cottage, croft, chalet, lodge, hut, mansion, manor, villa, and hall.

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