Translation transformations at the sentence level in economic media discourse

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¹National Technical University «Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute»

²Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics

Translation transformations at the sentence level in economic media discourse

¹Ahibalova T.M.,¹Karachova D.V., ²Lyutviyeva Ya. P.

Abstract

The article investigates the specifics of translation techniques providing the transition from units of the original text to communicatively equivalent units when dealing with the translation of English economic texts into Ukrainian.

The practical significance of the concept of translation transformations, denoting the replacement of regular counterparts with irregular (contextual) ones due to impossibility or inexpediency of their involvement in a certain content environment, is determined by the normative criterion of translation adequacy and illustrated on the basis of modern electronic media.

Differential features of the media economic text, which combines the attributes of journalistic and scientific functional styles of speech, are outlined.

Therefore, the emphasis is on certain difficulties encountered by translators when they work with such texts, guided, firstly, by the desire to maintain the emotional intensity of the author's manner, and secondly, by the need for precise transmission of information.

In this way the differentialfeatures of English and Ukrainian professional contexts are characterized, it is emphasized that while in the first one figurative means is a common and standardized use, the second tends more to the scientificity of speech and content.

Current groups of phraseological units that are common in the English-language economic text as figurative means are identified.

It is proved that adequate interpretation of the semantic capacity of denoted concepts by means of translation language does not have a single methodology when translators use such techniques as permutation, replacement of syntactic sentence structure, addition, exclusion. It is established that despite the high level of scientific functionality of professional vocabulary units, for economic texts of the media industry (as having both a strong connotative and informative load) the use of combined translation is the most frequent while zero transformation is involved almost exclusively in headings and subheadings.

Key words: translation, translation transformation, translation equivalence, media text, journalistic style, scientific style, figurative means.

Introduction

Defining the problem and argumentation of the topicality of the consideration. In the modern world, professional vocabularies and terminological systems are becoming one of the most popular lexical resources of language, because professional communication is considered the exchange of the most valuable achievements of civilization - information and knowledge. Because innovative technologies enable progress, it is obligatorily to have a timely and adequate understanding of their nature, and this is done internationally through the correct translation performed by qualified professionals.

Thus, the relevance of the translation transformations investigation is since the economic reality, which is dynamically developing and constantly updated, requires detailed research by modern scientific translation studies aimed at investigating both factors influencing the choice of translation and their relationship to the specific language of interpretation.

As the sphere of international contacts is directly related to the partnership of countries in production management, resource efficiency, sales, and consumption of goods, the economic context has become one of the most popular for both professionals and others who are indirectly involved in finance, credit, and money circulation as residents of their country.

In stating, first, the need to use translation transformations for the language of Economics, we relied on the following postulate: in the economic text, we must translate the concepts underlying the semantic basis of the language unit, not words themselves.

This is due to the fact that lots of terms have appeared in the Ukrainian language relatively recently and/or been borrowed, and the concepts to which they correspond are either completely absent or only formed under the influence of modern economic realities.

Based on the existing theoretical research, we propose to interpret the concept of "economic text" as a unit of communication in the field of economic relations, which has a specific language design, accessible to experts in this field of knowledge. In this text, there is a category that distinguishes it from the others and is determined as economic detalization that is a function of the professional competence of economic discourse's participants.

And it is performed through the involvement of an extended amount of economic terminology.

Secondly, explaining the choice of media text for analysis, we rely on the understanding that in the journalistic language style, which is the "living communication" of the author with the reader, a terminological language unit crystallizes and passes from passive vocabulary to active. In this case, we can talk about its determinologization, when the word does not require additional explanation, so it becomes clear not only to professionals but also to the ordinary reader.

Analysis of recent research and publications. Investigations on the specifics of translation of economic texts, namely: definition, description, and comparison of traditional and innovative ways, methods, and approaches - is of interest as a translation problem for scientific study, as it helps to solve a number of applied industry problems and accelerate information exchange between specialists and scientists of the world's leading countries.

Aspectology of interlingual transformations is studied and described by V. Karaban, I. Korunets, V. Komissarov, L. Latyshev, F. Tsitkina, J. Retsker, V. Slepovich, V. Koptilov, T Levitska, A. Gorokhova, L. Latyshev, T Kozakova; the emphasis on economic translation is made by both researchers and compilers of modern dictionaries of relevant terminology: L. Chernovaty, Z. Kudelko, T Krysanova, Y. Vysochynsky, R. Sonevytsky, A. Latygina, N. Bessarab, A. Shymkiv.

Setting the goal and subject of the article. The purpose of the article is to identify and investigate the specifics of interlingual transformations at the sentence level in the translation of texts of economic semantics from English into Ukrainian. The subject of research is translation transformations of syntactic level, which arise as a result of translation of English economic texts into Ukrainian.

The outline of the main research material

Among the main linguistic features of modern media texts, researchers identify the following: a high degree of informativeness, which implies the presence of extensive professional terminology and certain knowledge of the relevant issues in the reader's world view; democratization of the journalistic language style, in other words, its de-formalization and the related expansion of stylistic norms; following the so-called language fashion and the corresponding expansion of the vocabulary of media language; to some extent the Englishization of the language of modern media, which should be considered as a notion deserving special attention by modern translators. Since our work focuses on the economic text, we must highlight its main characteristics.

The first is the style of language. The economic text of the media combines the features of journalistic and scientific styles. We share the opinion of researchers that economic texts of mass communication, on the one hand, are close to the literary and scientific styles and characterized by logic and standardization of speech, clear presentation of facts and events, detailed expression, terminology capacity in certain areas of knowledge, such as political, technical, public, etc.; on the other hand, for the texts of media economic discourse (as such where the image of the author is very important) it is common to apply emotionally evaluative, expressive lexical units, the phraseology of different structural types and different stylistic aspects, colloquial vocabulary, professional jargon because messages that use emotional impact on the reader are easier to absorb and longer stored in memory [1].

In addition, the stylistic standards of the economic text in the original language and the target language do not coincide, because, unlike the English version, Ukrainian professional journalism does not have such an enhanced layer of figurative vocabulary, and this to some extent neutralizes its level of connotative capacity. Thus, the use of various phraseological units is a feature of the English media text: 1) the designation of monetary relations and monetary units: pennies on the dollar - придбати товар за значно заниженою ціною: I'll bet you've seen the TV ads from tax services claiming they'll settle your tax debts for pennies on the dollar (The Forbes, Mar 2 2015); money burns a hole in someone's pocket - гроші, що одразу витрачаються: Money is starting to burn a hole in households ' pockets (The Market Oracle, Mar 31 2012); 2) variety of coloronyms: a golden goose - надійне джерело прибутку: A golden goose for investment bankers has stopped laying eggs (The Business Insider, Aug 9 2015); the Black Friday - розпродаж зі суттєвими знижками у п'ятницю після Дня подяки: Retail sales on Black Friday have exceeded Cyber Monday for the first time in the UK after shoppers rushed to snap up bargains (The Telegraph, Dec 2 2014); 3) phraseo-contexts with somatic component: to get an upper hand on - управляти чимось, мати перевагу: Buyers get the upper hand as rising interest rates slow property sales (The Guardian, Jul 22 2011); to cost an arm and a leg - коштовний або отриманий дуже високою ціною: Bookmakers' starting prices often costing punters an arm and a leg (The Guardian, Feb 3 2013).

In return, the Ukrainian economic text uses a larger number of standardized cliches, which allows us to conclude that the domestic professional media discourse tends more to the scientific functional style compared with English media.

The second important characteristic is that the economic terminological systems of the Ukrainian and English languages do not coincide. Lots of economic terms are "unmotivated", due to the lack of concepts in the Ukrainian language that correspond to the modern market economy. As we have found, economic terms are often translated with the means of transcription and transliteration, as well as calque translation is used. In addition, the so-called "language fashion", which is widely represented in the media, indicates a tendency to use a large number of borrowings instead of domestic language counterparts, even in case of their traditional use in the language of translation. This is largely due to the tendency of the terminology in professional languages to laconicism: міжнародні торги - тендери; передавальний напис на цінному папері - індосамент; зниження курсу - девальвація; нематеріальні активи - гудвіл; Міжнародні правила інтерпретації торгових термінів - Інкотермс; працівник транспортної компанії-логіст; кеш-флоу-рухгрошових коштів; паблік рилейшнз - зв'язки з громадськістю.

The third characteristic is due to the fact that the English media texts are dominated by so-called "popular" economic terms, well known to readers: default - дефолт, budget - бюджет, tax - податок, in return, the use of units of narrow industry terminology is mostly accompanied by the explanation of the relevant concepts: credit rating - кредитний рейтинг, public debt - державний борг, budgetary policy - бюджетно-податкова політика.

The fourth differential characteristic is based on the statement that to achieve adequacy in the translation of texts of economic discourse, a necessary condition is the use of translation transformations. Since the morphology and syntax of English and Ukrainian do not coincide, when translating professional texts, the interpreter is faced with the task of conveying the essence of the concept behind the letter-sound unit of the original language. If the word has an expressive load, the translator should rely on the interpretation of the feature underlying the word, firstly, given that when translating an English text into Ukrainian in some cases there is a decrease in expressiveness, and the same can happen with reverse translation; secondly, realizing that since the economic discourse of the media is aimed at a wide audience, the language of economic articles, in general, should not be difficult to be understood.

Defining such a concept as "translation transformations", scholars choose quite different keywords, qualifying them as methods of logical thinking that help to reveal the meaning of a foreign word in context and find its Ukrainian equivalent, which does not match the dictionary (J. Retsker), transformation and replacement in the process of translation of one form of expression by another (A. Schweizer), interlingual paraphrases (L. Latyshev), means of translation in the absence of vocabulary or the impossibility of using such equivalents given the contextual environment (V. Komissarov) [2; 3; 4; 5]. The main motives for the use of translation transformations are the purpose to avoid literal translation, the intention to use expressions and constructions that are more commonly applied in the language of translation, the necessity to avoid word-formation patterns that are not typical in the language of translation, the desire to convey the most important background information to the reader or remove unnecessary facts.

Given the research and numerous classifications of translation transformations (V. Komissarov, T. Kazakova [6], J. Retsker, L. Latyshev), we consider it appropriate to identify the following types of interlingual transformations in the economic text: lexical transformations: transliteration, calque, narrowing of meaning (concretization), expansion of meaning (generalization), explication (descriptive translation); lexico-grammatical transformations and grammatical transformations: zero transformation (complete preservation of linguistic elements and their place in the sentence when translating), permutation, replacement (at the level of the syntactic structure of the sentence), addition (addition of parts of speech), removal (removal of elements), antonymic translation; stylistic transformations: emphatization (stylistic specialization), stylistic neutralization.

L. Latyshev names three main reasons for the use of translation transformations: 1) differences in the systems of source and target languages (in one language there is no category, specific to another language; comparative language categories are not fully correlated in terms of meaning); 2) differences in the language standards of the target text and the original (we face a violation of the norm in the case when the essence of the statement is clear, but it gives the impression of incorrect language (normative deviations); 3) the discrepancy between the usus operating in the environment of native speakers and the usus operating in the language of translation [4].

Using the method of continuous sampling from the Internet sources (www.bakerinstitute.org; www.nytimes.com;www.thenews.com.pk; www.ft.com;www.healthaffairs.org;www.latimes.com; londonnewstime.com; nypost.com; www.theguardian. com) we have selected a range of economic contexts, both professionally oriented as well as publications for a general audience. So, within the framework of this investigation, we will study interlanguage transformations at the sentence level as presented in the following samplings.

Zero transformation. This type of syntactic transformation involves the complete preservation of linguistic elements and their place in the sentence when translating the source language: He acknowledged that Meta is facing serious competition. - Він визнав, що Meta стикається з серйозною конкуренцією (Bloomberg News, 03 February 2022); Rising demand is pushing many to buy a home even if the market is already tough. - Зростаючий попит спонукає багатьох купувати будинок, навіть якщо ринок і без того жорсткий (The Wall Street Journal, 14 January 2021); Omicron is an economic threat, but inflation is much worse (London News Time, 17 December 2021). - Омікрон - це економічна загроза, але інфляція набагато гірша; On Thursday, Britain's central bank unexpectedly raised interest rates (The News International, 17 December 2021). - У четвер британський Центробанк несподівано підвищив процентні ставки. Due to their syntactic compactness (mostly simple or complex sentences without subordinate parts), such statements are almost exclusively represented by headlines and short sentences-annotations to newspaper articles, the presence of professional terminology in them is minimized. Of course, both differences in the morphological and syntactic plans of the original language and the target language, and differences in the stylistics of both languages lead to a low frequency of zero transformation, especially when dealing with complex syntactic constructions. adequacy translation ukrainian phraseological

Permutation. This type of transformation, in our opinion, can be considered the most commonly involved technique in economic translation. When using permutation, a professional translator changes the order of the linguistic elements of the original text, namely: words, phrases, parts of a complex sentence, or even independent sentences. According to the analysis, the most frequent translation transformations in the economic text is permutation, in which the subject group loses its first place in the sentence; there is a change in the order of adverbial construction and grammatical basis of the sentence to emotionally emphasize a certain part of the expression; there may be a change in the order of parts of a complex sentence (main and subordinate):

a) replacement of the order of the grammatical basis in the sentence and the insert construction: We see, day after day, that the main drivers of inflation are imported from overseas, such as fuel and energy, vehicles, and other imported goods such as garments and furniture, along the biggest macroeconomic question facing the UK whether families feel deceived this Christmas (The Guardian, 25 November 2021). - День за днем ми бачимо, що основними чинниками інфляції є імпортовані з-за кордону паливо й енергія, транспортні засоби й інші імпортні товари, такі як одяг і меблі, разом із найбільшим макроекономічним питанням, що стоїть перед Великобританією: чи почуватимуться обдуреними наші сім'ї цього Різдва;

b) replacement of the place of the adverbal modifier (adverbs of manner) in the sentence: Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, wanted to withdraw economic help slowly but now she might support a rate increase as soon as March (The New York Times, 21 December 2021). - Мері Дейлі, президент Федерального резервного банку Сан-Франциско, хотіла поступово відкликати економічну допомогу, проте зараз вона може підтримати підвищення ставки вже в березні.

In the first sentence, the author of the article focuses on the adverbial construction day after day, punctuating it in the text of the sentence, so when translating this emphasis should be preserved. In the Ukrainian language, the inserted unit in the preposition can be used as a means of communicative influence in journalistic discourse, so we consider it appropriate to use it before the grammatical basis of the sentence.

In the second example, we consider it appropriate to change the place of the adverb поетупово in the sentence, based on the semantic load of the second part of the statement, because the idea is that the President of the Federal Bank wanted to stop funding completely, not that she allegedly believes it should be done gradually. Replacement of the syntactic structure of a sentence (replacement of the number and types of sentences/ parts of a sentence: replacement of a simple sentence by a complex one; replacement of a complex sentence by a simple one; replacement of the main sentence by a subordinate one, and vice versa: She had three children to provide for and her husband was forbidden from working while his application for asylum was processed (Financial Times, 20 December 2021). - Вона мала забезпечувати трьох дітей, а її чоловікові заборонили працювати на час, поки розглядалася його заява про надання притулку. This sentence combines the technique of permutation with changing the type of complex sentence and adding. Thus, in its third part, the group of the subject in translation stands after the group of the predicate, and this part itself is translated by means of a compound sentence since in the Ukrainian language поки belongs to the subordinating conjunctions of tense. We consider it inappropriate to translate the part with the preposition while as під час розгляду його заяви про надання притулку, because, in our opinion, this incorrectly conveys the meaning of a real event in which the employment ban extended to the entire period of the claim period, not just court hearings. It is in order to convey this semantics of the expression that we also add на час.

Addition as a translation transformation is a high- frequency technique in the professional discourse because even when used in the journalistic genre, such a text is perceived by the recipient as a resource of information with a high degree of reliability or as attracting new ideas and knowledge to existing reality. This is facilitated by the lexical layer of terminology, and the implementation of emphasized accuracy and unambiguity as stylistic features of professional discourse contributes to the concretization of speech content - decoding of certain concepts of economic and political life, correspondence of the expression to the object-material reality and the system of concepts about it. Of course, the syntactic transformation of addition as a rearrangement of grammatical construction is mostly combined with such lexical transformation as paraphrasing, because the translator's goal is to convey stylistic, semantic, and pragmatic features through language equivalents of the target text, and the traditions of the use of words in a particular field of speech and awareness of the socio-economic system are among the most important criteria in choosing a lexical element. Thus, the sentence The Political Economy of the Arab Gulf Program studies the link between economic reform and the wider operation of social andpolitical systems across the Middle East, assessing the short- and longterm implications for regional politics, security, and U. S. interests (Baker Institute, 25 February 2020) is translated as Програма «Політична економія арабських країн Перської затоки» вивчає зв'язок між економічними реформами й більш масштабним функціонуванням соціальних і політичних систем на Близькому Сході, оцінюючи короткострокові й довгострокові наслідки для регіональної політики, безпеки й інтересів США. We consider it expedient to translate the use of Arab Gulf as арабські країни Перської затоки because the phrase in English is concise and needs semantic expansion to achieve the adequacy of translation in this functional style. Based on the fact that the media professional text combines the features of two styles - literary and scientific manner and journalistic style, the ideas and concepts considered by the author should be clear to the reader. In addition, the noun politics, which is used in the English sentence in plural form, is translated as політика, because in the Ukrainian language it is usually used in the singular.

According to the analysis of the selected material, the most frequently used means are the addition of such parts of speech as adjectives and nouns. Thus, the sentence Yes, the number of personal and business bankruptcies filed last year in the country fell by nearly 30 % from 2019 despite COVID-19 (Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2021) is translated as Так, незважаючи на Новід-М, кількість випадків банкрутства фізичних і юридичних осіб, заявлених торік у країні, знизилася майже на 30 % у порівнянні з 2019 роком. In this sentence, the addition of nouns випадків and осіб is due to stylistic requirements of accuracy in professional language. Although usually in the Ukrainian language the theme precedes the rheme, in the implementation of certain communicative tasks (as in our case: the need to emphasize the conditions in which this situation occurs) rheme precedes the theme. That is why we consider it necessary to use the translation transformation of the permutation of the adverbial construction despite COVID-19 and in the language of translation put it at the beginning of the statement after the affirmative part так, enhancing the emotional impact on the target audience by the positional contiguity of the positive так and negative prefix не.

Removal. In contrast to artistic discourse, where the author's imagination promotes creative rethinking of images, in professional texts that present the communicative component of interactive cooperation of participants in the field of financial, credit, tax, commercial, business relations, preference is given to the accuracy of transmission. In the media professional discourse - on the one hand, informative, and on the other - specifically emotional - you can remove only those elements that violate the norms of the target language or duplicate the concepts. For example, the tautology in the translation of concepts can be eliminated by omitting one of the synonymous words: Health care costs and spending in the US continue to grow at an unsustainable rate. Increased health care costs and spending contribute to the lack of affordable health care (Health Affairs, December 2021). - Витрати на охорону здоров'я у США продовжують зростати нестійкими темпами. Збільшення витрат на охорону здоров'я призводить до нестачі доступної медичної допомоги. In both sentences, we consider it appropriate to delete the word spending as synonymous with cost when translated into Ukrainian.

Conclusions and directions for the further research in this field

Translation transformations used in the interpretation of economic media texts require both the proper understanding of the target language and professional knowledge, involving some creativity of the translator in the application of language means. Thus, although high-frequency translation methods at the sentence level are permutation, replacement, addition, while zero transformation is observed almost exclusively in the titles, and removal is possible only if the target language is violated or in case of duplication of concepts, we state that most often the combined method is used for media texts of economic orientation due to their dual literary-scientific and at the same time journalistic genre nature. We see the prospects of further scientific research in the analysis of lexical transformations on the material of political and economic media discourses.

References

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Анотація

Перекладацькі трансформації на рівні речення в економічному медіадискурсі

Агібалова Т. М., Карачова Д. В., Лютвієва Я. П.

У статті досліджено специфіку використання технічних прийомів перекладу, що уможливлюють перехід від одиниць оригінального тексту до комунікативно-рівноцінних одиниць при перекладі англійських економічних текстів українською мовою. Практичну значущість концепції перекладацьких трансформацій, яка полягає в заміні регулярних відповідників нерегулярними (контекстуальними) через неможливість або недоцільність їх залучення в певному змістовому оточенні, визначено з огляду на нормативний критерій забезпечення адекватності перекладу й проілюстровано на матеріалі мовного ресурсу сучасних електронних ЗМІ.

Окреслено диференційні ознаки медійного економічного тексту, що поєднує атрибути публіцистичного й наукового функціональних стилів мовлення, у зв'язку з чим акцентовано на певних труднощах, із якими стикається перекладач при роботі з такими текстами, керуючись, по-перше, прагненням зберегти емоційне навантаження авторської манери, по-друге - необхідністю об'єктивної передачі інформації. У такий спосіб схарактеризовано диференційні ознаки англійського й українського професійних контекстів, акцентовано, що в той час, коли в першому засоби образності є поширеним і унормованим вживанням, другий більш тяжіє до науковості мовлення й змісту. Визначено групи фразеологічних одиниць, що є поширеними в англомовному економічному тексті в якості засобів образності.

Доведено, що адекватна інтерпретація змістової ємності означуваних понять засобами мови перекладу не має єдиної методології у разі застосування таких прийомів, як-от: перестановка, заміна синтаксичної структури речення, додавання, вилучення.

Установлено, що не зважаючи на високий рівень наукового функціоналу мовних одиниць професіонального словника, для економічних текстів медійної галузі як таких, що мають водночас потужне конотативне й інформативне навантаження, найчастотнішим є прийом комбінованого перекладу, а нульова трансформація задіяна майже виключно в заголовках і підзаголовках.

Ключові слова: переклад, перекладацька трансформація, еквівалентність перекладу, медійний текст, публіцистичний стиль, науковий стиль, засоби образності.

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