Literary and poetic methods of translation

The notion of equivalence. Types of equivalents

Equivalence - the same linguistic content between 2 lexical units into 2 languages. There are three main types of equivalents: permanent/complete/linguistic/formal, regular/ incomplete/textual/semantic, and occasional/contextual/situational.

Two words are called permanent equivalents if their meanings exactly correspond and they may reciprocally substitute each other in any context. Therefore this is a rare case. Full equivalents, which are mostly monosemantic words, can be found among antroponyms (Тяпкин-Ляпкин - Slap-Dash, Humpty-Dumpty - Шалтай-Болтай, Brown - Браун), geographic names (the Cape of Good Hope - Мыс Доброй Надежды, the English Channel -Ла-Манш), names of institutions, organisations, periodicals (General Motors - Дженерал Моторс, The Red Lion - гостиница "Красный Лев"), scientific and technological terms (sodium - натрий, potassium - калий).

Dealing with permanent equivalents a translator may rely on

-transliteration (Michigan - Мичиган),

-transcription (Wall Street Journal - Уолл Стрит Джорнал),

-word for word translation (the Republican party - Республиканская партия), and

-loan translation (magnetic field - магнитное поле).

ь -Regular equivalents, polysemantic words, are of several types: a SL word may cover the meanings of several TL words (deer - олень, лань), a TL word is broader in meaning than SL word (бухта, залив, железнодорожная платформа, тупик, стойло - bay), the meanings of the corresponding words overlap (layer - слой; слой - stratum, couch, coat; layer - напластование, уровень), a SL word is a lacuna (сутки - 24 hours), a SL word is a culture-bound unit (самовар - Russian samovar).

Dealing with regular equivalents a translator may apply different kinds of semantic modifications:

-concretization (Не is a man of taste - Он человек со вкусом),

-generalization (Лечение оказалось успешным, и она полностью выздоровела - The treatment turned to be successful and she recovered completely),

-functional substitution (the relaxation of the well-earned rest - наслаждаясь заслуженным отдыхом),

-emphatization (pompous - помпезный),

-neutralization (политикан - politician),

description (кружало - kruzhalo (ring-shaped base of the cupola of the wooden church)),

-commentary (старец - starets, pl. startsi. A monk distinguished by his great piety, long experience of the spiritual life, and gift for guiding other souls. Lay folk frequently resort to startsi for spiritual council; in a monastery a new member of the community is attached to a starets, who trains and teaches him).

Occasional equivalents are words that acquire similar meanings in a context (понедельник день тяжелый - Mondays are a crapper).

Lecture 9. Factors influencing the process of translation

Translation is a means that enables interlingual communication. That's why the specifics of a communicative situation are of such importance for a translator.

The process of translation is influenced by many factors:

1) the motive and the purpose of the communication, motive- is why we start communication.

Purpose- is what we want to achieve at the eng of communication.

2) the communicative intention of the speech act- the means we use t achieve the purpose (polite request, flattery, a claim, an order, pay a compliment, etc.)

3) linguistic function of the text

informative- the continent of the text

expressive- the form of the text

imperative- the style of the author.

4) the mode of discourse used in the source text,

-Description- is a static picture of events or objects.

-Narration- dynamic picture, the text is divided into parts preterminated by the chronological order.

-exposition (explanation) the listener or reader doesn't have any idea of the notion. The division of the text into parts is preterminated by the statement and several frames.

(e.g. cause- effect frame, the purpose- result frame) Within one frame certain ideas are discussed and the coherence of the text is ashored by the frame itself. And by certain connective.

Argumentation- here the recipient knows something about the notion but the purpose is to ruin his point of viewpoint of view to find fault with it and then to give a new idea instead it. The validity of a new idea should be supported by facts. The structure is similar to exposition but instead of giving a single statement. You give a thesis and an antithesis.

5) the qualities of the participants, status, goal, the point of the topic of the communication, negative or positive attitude, interest, knowledge, education, age, motivation, etc.

6) the conditions of the communication: environment, circumstances (official meeting), atmosphere, time.

The principle of (un)translatability.

Some scholars say that than does not exist at all. We can not translate.

1. No 2 languages having the same phonology it is impossible to re-create the sound of a work composed in one language in another language.

2. No 2 languages having the same syntactic structure. It is impossible to re-create the syntax of a word composed in one language in another

3. No 2 languages having the same vocabulary, it is impossible to re-create the vocabulary of a work composed in one language in another language.

4. No 2 languages having the same literary history, it is impossible to re-create the literary forms of a work composed in one language in another language.

5. No 2 languages having the same prosody, it is impossible to re-create the prosody of a literary work composed in one language in another language.

But other scholars believe that the translation exists.

We use translation every day. People translate to communicate. The key- word is experience. On this respect we may speak about general experience (this experience that we all possess) and individual experience. The mentality of people is different. That is why poem very often do not understand what we mean, we have to explain what we mean, we have to paraphrase what we mean, we have to define what we mean within the frame work of one and the same language, of one and the same culture. And is this case we may say that we use interlinguistic translation and we use intralinguistic translation. So, translation exists and we use it every day.

Reference

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