Some aspects of English computer terminology translation

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Some aspects of English computer terminology translation

Rohach L.V.

Uzhhorod National University

Резюме

Статтю присвячено перекладу англійських комп'ютерних текстів засобами української мови. Особлива увага надається аналізу граматичних перекладацьких трансформацій. У статті розглянуті такі граматичні трансформації як субституція, транспозиція, еліпсис та додавання. Найбільш поширеною граматичною трансформацією у досліджуваному матеріалі виявилася субституція. Було встановлено, що між технічними комп'ютерними текстами англійської і української мовами існують значні граматичні відмінності, зумовлені особливостями граматичної будови, нормами і традиціями письмового наукового

english translation ukrainian language

Among different problems that modern linguistics deals with studying of linguistic aspects of cross-language speaking activity that is called translation or translating activity occupies an important role. Translation is an ancient human's activity. From its very beginning translation played a significant social function allowing people of different languages to communicate. Spreading of written translations gave people access to cultural achievements of other people and it made interacting and intersaturation of literatures and cultures feasible [2, p. 562].

Translation of scientific and technical materials has a most important role to play in the age of technical progress. There is hardly a translator or an interpreter today who has not to deal with technical matters. Even the "purely" literary translator often comes across highly technical stuff in works of fiction or even in poetry. An in-depth theoretical study of the specific features of technical translation is an urgent task of translation linguistics while training of technical translators is a major practical problem. In technical translation the main goal is to identify the situation described in the original. The predominance of the referential function is a great challenge for the translator who must have a good command of technical terms and a sufficient understanding of the subject matter to be able to give an adequate description of the situation even if this is not fully achieved in the original. The technical translator is also expected to observe the stylistic requirements of scientific and technical materials to make the text acceptable for the specialist.

Translation is the process of transformation of the speech product in one language into the speech product in the other language by keeping the constant plan of the contents that is the meanings. About “the keeping of the constant plan of the contents” it is possible to speak only in relative, but not in absolute sense. During the inter language transformation some losses are inevitable, that is the incomplete transference of meanings, expressed by the text of the original, is taking place.

Many researchers consider that the equivalence of the original and the translation is not based on the identity of expressed meanings. The English theorist of translation J.Catford states: “The opinion that the text in SL and the text in TL “have the same meaning" or that there is “a transfer of meaning" while translating are groundless” [3, p. 120]. In our point of view, the meaning is the property of a certain language. For example, a Ukrainian text has the Ukrainian meaning, and an English text, that is the equivalent of it, has the English meaning.

Translation transformations, i.e. the changes that occur between units in a particular source text - target text pair, are of a particular concern in translation studies. The largest contribution towards this field is considered to be made by J. C. Catford, who might be called the author of the term `translation shift'. The scholar defines the shifts as: “departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from SL to the TL”. There are two types of translation shifts: level and category shifts. Level shifts appear when elements of SL, which belong to one level, in translation process are transformed into TL elements belonging to a different level. The only probable translation shifts are the shifts from grammar to lexis and vice versa that are rather common in translation practice. Category shifts may occur in structure, class, unit (or rank) and system. According to the author, most frequent are structure-shifts, which mostly involve shifts in grammatical structure [3, p. 73].

Grammatical differences between two languages can be of various types, depending on the languages, their relationship and distance. The major differences between two languages are related to different gender, number, derivational systems, tenses etc. A comparative and contrastive analysis of the grammatical systems of two languages is essential before translators venture to take up the job of translating. Some English grammatical forms and structures have no corresponding counterparts in Ukrainian, others have only partial equivalents. Very often these grammatical changes are mixed so that they have lexico-grammatical character.

When comparing the grammatical categories and forms of the English and Ukrainian languages we identify the following differences: a) the absence of the categories in one of the compared languages; b) partial correspondence and c) complete correspondence. The necessity of grammatical transformations arises only in the two first cases. When comparing English with Ukrainian we should mention that Ukrainian does not have such grammatical phenomena as article, gerund and absolute nominative constructions. Partial conformity and unconformity in meaning and usage of corresponding forms and constructions also demand grammatical transformations. We can refer to this case the partial unconformity of the category of number, partial unconformity in the forms of passive constructions, partial unconformity of the form of infinitive and gerund and some other differences in expressing the modality of the clause and so on.

The following types of grammatical transformations are distinguished: substitution, transposition, omission (ellipsis) and supplementation. Substitution is considered to be the most popular type of grammatical translation transformations in computer texts. In the process of translation the translator may change grammatical and lexical units. However, lexical and grammatical substitution usually is interdependent.

The substitution of parts of speech is a common and most important type of replacements. Every word functions in the language as a member of a certain grammatical clause, that is, as a distinct part of speech. But the SL and TL do not necessarily have correlated words belonging to the same grammatical class. In such cases substitutions are necessary. Substitution is one of the grammatical relations among the parts of the sentences. In substitution, an item (or items) is replaced by another item (or items) [6, p. 47]. We make use of substitution while translating a sentence because of several reasons: absence of similar construction in the Ukrainian language, unconformity in usage of corresponding forms and constructions and some lexical reasons, which include different word usage and different norms of combinability in English and Ukrainian and the absence of the part of speech with corresponding meaning.

There is no gerund in the Ukrainian language and the English gerund is rendered in Ukrainian in different ways. The gerund modified by a proper noun is translated by a subordinate clause. This phenomenon can be observed in the following example: If the wall, the ceiling, the floor and the door are substantial, the floor has no hatches adjoining to other rooms, the windows and the door are supplied with a signaling system, then the stability of security will depend on the performance specification of a signaling system in the user's absence in the off time. Якщо стіни, стеля, підлога та двері міцні, підлога не має жодних люків, що прилягають до інших приміщень, а вікна і двері забезпечені сигналізацією, то стабільність системи безпеки буде залежати від роботи сигналізації під час відсутності користувача.

In the majority of cases gerund is rendered into Ukrainian by a noun. For example: The engineering information security with restricted access in the automated systems and means of computer engineering meant for forming, transferring, accepting, transforming, displaying and keeping some information is provided with a complex of designer, organizational programme and engineering measures at all stages of their creation and their work. Технічна інформаційна безпека з обмеженим доступом в автоматизованих системах і засобах розробки, призначена для формування, передачі, прийняття, перетворення, відображення і збереження деякої інформації, забезпечена проектувальником, організаційною програмою та технічними заходами на всіх стадіях їх створення і розробки.

The substitution of a pronoun by a noun can be illustrated by the following example: It belongs to an Internet messaging company. Адресa стосується пошти Інтернету. Such kind of substitution can be explained as the translator's attempt to indicate the agent, which might not be clear from the context.

Transposition, being the change of the sentence structure, may be caused by several reasons. But the main of them is the difference in the structure of the English and Ukrainian languages. P. Newmark [4, p. 85], considering J. C. Catford's `translation shift', defines transposition as: “a translation procedure involving a change in the grammar from SL to TL”. The linguist admits that in some cases transposition signifies the strain between grammar and meaning, so sometimes it is advisable to prefer lexical synonym instead of the transposition in order to retain the meaning [7, p. 88]. Moreover, in order to render the meaning of a target text some information might me even added.

Structural transposition, according to E. Nida [5, p. 226], has various purposes including: 1) to permit adjustment of the form of the message to the requirements of structure of the receptor language; 2) to produce semantically equivalent structures; 3) to provide equivalent stylistic appropriateness; 4) to carry an equivalent communication load. Syntactic transposition as a grammatical transformation may be characterised as the change of the lingual items order: words, syntagmata, parts of the sentence and sentences themselves change their place in the text. The fixed order of words in English bears hierarchic character. It is known that traditional word order in English has the following shape: subject - predicate - direct object - indirect object - adverbial modifiers. On the other hand a Ukrainian informative sentence features its organic word order beginning with the adverbial modifier of time, place followed by the objects and the principal parts of the sentence close the saying. For example: Name recognition is synonymous with an easy-to-remember domain name. Розпізнання імені є синонімічним домену, який легко запам'ятовується. It is used to convert scanned documents, PDF documents, and image files, including digital photos, into editable formats. Вона призначена для конвертування у формати з можливістю редагування відсканованих документів, PDF-документів і файлів зображень, в тому числі цифрових знімків.

In both languages the main idea of the message is placed at the end of the sentence. As in Ukrainian the word-order is not fixed one can observe the tendency to locate the main information at the end of sentences expressing it by a noun. This phenomenon can be illustrated by the following example: Only a qualified technician should open this apparatus. Відкривати пристрій дозволяється лише кваліфікованим технічним працівникам.

It is a very frequent case when grammatical and lexical transformations demand supplementation or omission of some words or elements.

Supplementation is a grammatical translation transformation with the help of which the number of words and parts of a sentence in translation are increased with the aim of the right transfer of the meaning of the original. Supplementation of parts of speech is characterized by several factors: difference in structures of sentences and that sort of English sentences demand extended translation in the Ukrainian language. Some words in the original text might be omitted but implied and such expressions do not raise any difficulties for a native speaker, whereas the same idea might be unclear or even bear different associations for the speaker of a TL. Information which is not present in the source language text may be added to the target language text. According to P. Newmark [4, p. 91], information added to the translation is normally cultural (accounting for the differences between SL and TL cultures), technical (relating to the topic), or linguistic (explaining wayward use of words).

This transformation can be illustrated by such example: Trademarking the Net. Ліцензування сайтів в Інтернеті.

An opposite process to supplementation is omission. Omission is the operation reverse to addition. In the translation process we most often omit or leave out semantically redundant elements provided the faithfulness of translation is not impaired. According to M. Baker omission of a lexical item is due to grammatical or semantic patterns of the receptor language. This strategy may sound rather drastic, but in fact it does not harm to omit translating a word or expression in some contexts. If the meaning conveyed by a particular item or expression is not vital enough to the development of the text to justify distracting the reader with lengthy explanations, translators simply omit translating the word or expression in question [1, p. 40]. For example: Users can change the interface language directly in the program. У програму вбудована функція автоматичного визначення мови документа. Delete a page from the current document. Видалити сторінку з документа.

The process of translation from one language into another is impossible without necessary grammatical transformations (the change of structure). It is very important in translation to add or omit some words since structures of languages are quite different. Grammatical transformations are characterized by various principles - grammatical and lexical as well, though the principal role is given to the grammatical ones. Grammatical meanings are no less significant than lexical meaning as they express such fundamental categories as tense relations, gender, number, modality, categories of definiteness and indefiniteness etc. Some of these categories may be expressed grammatically in different ways owing to the existence of grammatical synonymy.

The usage of grammatical translation transformations in the translation of technical texts from English into Ukrainian has been determined by various reasons, mostly by the discrepancies of English and Ukrainian language systems. The following grammatical translation transformations could be distinguished: substitution, transposition, omission, and supplementation. The analysis of grammatical translation transformations collected from English computer manuals and their translated Ukrainian versions showed that substitution is a rather complicated and frequently used grammatical translation transformation in the computer terminology translation. The cases of pure substitution are rare, as it is usually combined with other grammatical translation transformations.

Literature

1. Baker M. In Other Words: a Coursebook on Translation / M. Baker. - London: Routledge, 1992. - 320p.

2. Breus E. V. Fundamentals of theory and practice of translation from English into Russian / E. V. Breus. - Moscow, 2001. - 598p.

3. Catford J.C. A Linguistic Theory of Translation / J.C. Catford. - London: Oxford University Press, 1965. - 105p.

4. Newmark P. Approaches to Translation / P. Newmark. - Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall, 1988. - 210p.

5. Nida E. A. Toward a Science of Translating, with Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating / E. A. Nida. - Leiden: Brill, 1964. - 328p.

6. Proshina Z. Theory of translation (English and Russian) / Z. Proshina. - Vladivostok: Eastern University Press, 2008. - 276p.

7. Зуброва О. Способи утворення нових одиниць сучасної англійської комп'ютерної лексики / O. Зуброва // Південний Архів. Філологічні науки. - Херсон, 2009. - Вип. 45. - c. 169-173.

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