On the issue of interaction of linguistic regional studies and translation theory and practice

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On the issue of interaction of linguistic regional studies and translation theory and practice

Pylypiuk K.M.

Abstract

Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor at the Department of Philology" Odessa National Maritime University

The article has been devoted to the interaction of translation studies and linguistic regional studies on the modern stage of philological science development. In the focus of the article there are problems of rendering realia in translating artisic texts from English into Ukrainian. The research has been performed on the basis of the novel by Joseph Heller "Catch-22". The realia of political and cultural life have been picked out to form the sampling for the liguistic analysis on the initial stage of the research. The realia are interpreted in the research as notions and objects which reflect the peculiarities of cultural, political and social life, and national self-identity. The realia, politically, socially and culturally biased words have been studied as linguistic and cultural symbols, charged by certain mentality and expressiveness. The topic of the research is up-to-date in the paradigm of both regional studies, intercultural communication and translation studies. The multidisciplinary character of the research contributes to its relevance in modern linguistics and philology. The semantic potential of the realia under investigation is realized simultaneously on linguistic, extralinguistic and cultural levels. Being associated with the author's background knowledge, competence and professiency words-realia and their translation equivalents are relevant for the assessment of artistic translation in general. Thus, it has been resumed that adequate rendering of cultural peculiarities is essential for faithful translation for the purposes of regional stidies. According to the findings the most productive translation devices are: approximate translation, semantic development, different types of replacements and compensations. The perspective is seen in further investigation of the issue of rendering culture peculiarities under the circumstances of the dialogue of langauges and cultures regarding the typological linguistic discrepancies in the translational aspect.

Key words: culture, realia, symbolism, peculiarities, linguistic regional studies, translation studies.

Анотація

ДО ПИТАННЯ ПРО ВЗАЄМОЗВ'ЯЗОК ЛІНГВОКРАЇНОЗНАВСТВА ТА ПЕРЕКЛАДОЗНАВСТВА

Статтю було присвячено взаємозв'язку лінгвокраїнознавства та перекладознавства на сучасному етапі розвитку філологічної науки. У роботі висвітлено проблеми відтворення реалій у перекладі художнього тексту з англійської мови українською. Дослідження провадилось на матеріалі роману Джозефа Хеллера «Catch-22». Реалії політичного та культурного життя було обрано для формування вибірки для лінгвістичного аналізу на попередньому етапі дослідження. У роботі реалії тлумачаться як поняття та предмети, що віддзеркалюють особливості політичного та суспільного життя та національну самобутність різних народів. Реалії, політично, культурно та етнічно забарвлені слова, вивчаються як мовні та культурні символи, навантажені певною ментальністю та експресивністю. Тема дослідження є актуальною і на часі у парадигмі країнознавства, міжкультурної комунікації та перекладознавства. Муль- тидисциплінарний характер дослідження підтверджує його релевантінсть для сучасноого мовознавства та філології. Семантичний потенціал досліджуваних реалій реалізується одночасно на лінгвістичному, екстралінгвістичному та культурному рівнях. Оскільки слова-реалії асоціюються з фоновими знаннями перекладача, компетентністю і професіоналізмом підбір перекладних еквівалентів є важливим для оцінювання якості перекладу. Отже, було зроблено висновок про важливість адекватного відтворення культурних особливостей для достовірного перекладу відповідно до завдань країнознавства. За результатами дослідження визначено найбільш продуктивними такі перекладацькі прийоми, як наближений переклад, прийом семантичного розвитку, різні типи замін і компенсацій. Персе- пектива вбачається у подальшому дослідженні питання про відтворення культурних особливостей в умовах діалогу мов і культур із урахуванням типологічних розбіжностей мов у аспекті перекладу.

Ключові слова: культура, реалії, символізм, особливості, лінгвокраїнознавство, перекладознавство.

Problem-setting and groundings for the urgency

In the process of rendering culturalal peculiarities in translation there occur errors, ruining adequate perception of artistic texts. Culture in the modern understanding is defined as the relevant issue focused upon the description and interpretation of cultural values, works of art, literature, national customs and traditions of different nations, their walk of life, conduct, mentality and world perception.

Consequently, linguistic priorities have changed reasonably, with the shift in orientation to the issues concerning national and cultural language specificity, world outlooks variability in different linguocultural communities. Scholars underline the relevance of regional studies and intercultural communication for translation studies as well as their interrelation.

In the focus of the research there are discrepancies in linguistic world pictures of American and Ukrainian cultures and possible ways of neutralizing potential communicative conflicts and failures in translation.

Recent research analysis

The history of the research in regional studies on the issue of cultural components rendering dates back to the works of such well-known linguists as L. Barkhudarov, V. Gak, L. Grishayeva, V. Komissarov, V. Kryzhanivskyi, L. Latyshev, T. Pisanova, Ya. Retsker, Yu. Sorokin, S. TerMinasova, V. Khayrullin, and C. Kramschand [1,с.5;2,с.8]. Unlike the previous works, dedicated to the issues of fundamentals of the semantics and pragmatics of the national and cultural components of artistic texts, this investigation is an attempt to find apt ways of their faithful and adequate rendering.

The novelty of the research consists in the focus upon the cultural environment in re-creating the semantics and pragmatics of the source artistic text with regards to the changes in the world outlook and mentality for the representatives of different nationalities, in particular for Ukrainian target audience.

The objective and tasks. The objective of the research is to perform dwell on the interaction of linguistic regional studies and translatology as discipline both in the theoretical and practical aspects. The tasks are as follows:

to provide the most apt and comprehensive definition of linguistic regional studies relevant for translation studies;

to perform the analysis of cultural and national components as potential challenges in translation;

to systematize the existing approaches to adequate rendering of cultural and national components;

to determine the most appropriate translation strategy and operations of rendering cultural components in American artisic texts in Ukrainian translation.

The urgency of the research is in its orientation at the relevant field of interaction of language and culture which is manifest in two aspects: culture, reflected in the language (the specific national language world picture), and the culture, described by the language (the presentation of culture facts in the text content). This research is urgent both in regional and translation studies.

The methodology of the research included the methods of sampling, comparative and translation analysis, as well as some elements of the quantitative method.

In the focus of the reearch there are challenges of cultural components rendering. The first task is to systematize cultural elements in artistic texts, the second - to describe all the possible ways of their rendering in translation.

The research was conducted on the basis of the sampling formed by speech fragments, differentiated as culturally charged components, extracted from the novel "Catch -22" by Joseph Heller [6] and analyzed in its Ukrainian authourized artistic translation by M. Pinchevskyi [7].

Language as a nomination intrument interacts with culture not only in the aspect of its secondary, man-made nature, but also in the process of the world's cultural modification due to adaptation to the needs of the human society. Language divides world pictures of different nations by expressing and representing various kinds of mentality. It is also essential that language signs are soaked with culture while cultural component may be expressed both in denotative or connotative meaning.

The cultural component is realized in denotative meaning in case of nomination of national and cultural objects and phenomena like Masletitsa or Pancake Week, zavalinka or counter; those in con- notative meaning are expressed in cultural symbols with metaphoric meaning like bear in Russian as the embodiment of clumsiness and in German as the symbol of power.

The loading of the source text with cultural content occurs in two ways: by means of linguistic units with the cultural component realized via denotative meaning, with the cultural component presented as connotations or inclusions of extended descriptions of various objects, cultural phenomena, historical events or concise allusions.

Each of the abve-mentioned ways of cultural representation in the source text is interwoven with certain challenges for translators. This results from the following two reasons: 1) the phnomena of the alien culture are unfamiliar for the target language speakers; 2) similar cultural phenomena are analyzed in different ways by different nations, as for example positively by native source language speakers and negatively by native target language speakers.

Translation equivalence is unattainable, as the main condition of equivalence is not complied, namely it's impossible to achieve potential equality of the impact on the target audience of the source text and translation text respectively.

This is another argument to support the opinion that cultural discrepancy in translation studies is a stronger obstacle than linguistic discrepancy. There are two opposite strategies of rendering the cultural content of the source text.

The former consists in adapting the source language culture to the perception of target language speakers: the cultural discrepancies are softened, vividly specific notions are replaced by more general concepts (generalization) or the similar ones (adequate replacement).

The latter strategy is the contrary to the above- mentioned: the target audience is transferred into the world of the target language speakers: cultural discrepancies are sometimes emphasized (the wide distribution of transliterations).

In both cases explicit and implicit translator's commentary is used. The former strategy is also known as the stronger adaptation, the latter - the weaker one. The choice of the stronger or the weaker cultural adaptation is determined by the position of the cultural variety in the system of cultural values.

If national coloring is one of the main advantages for the reader, the strategy of weaker adaptation is used. If the most relevant are universal values and issues, the stronger adaptation is chosen.

Translation process inevitably presupposes semantic losses. This is especially true for folklore translation (for instance there are no adequate equivalents for many culturally and nationally colored realia). The most vivid and artistically and aesthetically relevant cultural details are neutralized. In these cases there arises the issue of translation rentability and sometimes free interpretation or retelling is preferred.

Thus, it may be concluded that the solution of translation challenges stemming from linguocultural translation is predetermined by the translator's competence and ability to select the adequate degree of their substitution for functionally similar elements of the target language culture. Provided this requirement is fulfilled, sufficient culturological errors andirregu- larities are excluded.

As it has been mentioned above translation is studied in the following two aspects: 1) as the reproduction of the source text semantic invariant (content) with functionally differentiated presentation;

as the adaptation of the source content and form to a new linguistic and ethnic environment predetermining changes in presentation.

Such interpretation of translation allows to condition all possible irregularities by defects in the source text perception and translation as well as by the drawbacks of its adaptation to the totally different target audience.

There is certain ambiguity in the definition of linguistic regional studies. Some scholars interpret it as cultural science ( R. Miniar-Beloruchev, M. Ariyan, M. Borisenko, T.Kyak) [1, с.10] while others emphasize its philological nature (H. Tomakhin, Yu. Prokhorov, I. Arnold) [2, с.20].

We adhere to such definition as the most logical and comprehensive: liguistic regional studies represent a field of knowledge in linguistics and linguistic didactics comprising both the study of the language units semantics and the investigation and interpretation of national and cultural realia.

This definition comprises such philological aspects as the methodology of foreign languages study and translation issues. Moreover, linguistic regional studies is a part of sociolinguistics as the science about language and society. But unlike sociolinguistic issues oriented at the investigation of socially conditioned variability of the langauge structure within particular social groups of the same national origin, it is revealed in the universal language standard.

The objective of linguistic regional studies is to provide communicative competence in the acts of intercultural communication by means of adequate perception of the speaker's speech and understanding of source texts.

Communication theory presupposes approximate equality of communicators in the aspect of information possessed: this requires the common scope of extralinguistic knowledge which may serve as the basis for communication.

The main task of the linguistic regional studies is to investigate linguistic units which most vividly reflect national peculiarities of the culture of the native speakers and environment: realia (the nominations of objects and phenomena peculiar for certain culture and not registered in others), connotative lexis (words, identical in denotative meaning but different in cultural and historic associations), background vocabulary (the nominations of objects and phenomena which have analogues in the contrasted cultures but different in the national specificity of functioning, form and destination of objects). Phraseological units are also relevant for linguistic regional studies as they reflect the national diversity of history, culture and traditional lifestyle.

To sum it up, cultural and regional value, as well as commonness, topicality and functional character of the phenomena are the crucial criteria of the national and cultural essential component selection. In this connection it's good to quote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen" which in English sounds like "He who does not know foreign languages does not know anuthing about his own". Learning a foreign language is similar to visiting a country where it ios spoken with all its traditions, customs and national colouring. and vice versa, to lose a language means to lose its culture. The issue of national, cultural and linguistic identity is very urgent today both in the aspect of state languages promotion and preservation of the ethnic minorities' languages as well.

The term cultural and historic semantic component was introduced into linguistics by N. Komlev. According to this scholar, a word reflecting an object or a phenomenon of the specific society not only denotes and signifies it but also creates a peculiar background associated with this particular word. Thus its semantics must include a certain component which fixes this particular social background. translation text cultural

The study of the cultural components of meaning is an important prerequisite of successful foreign language acquisition but in its turn it is included into a wider scope of cultural and historical senses of the corresponding social reality.

The selection of units with vivid national and cultural semantics is the main objective of the linguistic regional studies. Background knowledge is in the focus of the linguistic regional studies.

Linguistic regional studies are focused upon proper names, both toponyms and anthroponyms, ethnic realia, social and cultural realia, political realia, cultural realia and mass media realia.

The novel "Catch-22" [6] has been selected for the sampling as it contains many politcal and social realia. Social and political vocabulary is the main centre of nationally charged words reflecting the peculiarities of the other nation's lifestyle.

Unlike geographical names, names of animals and plants which portray the natural geographical environment, the names of state institutions, authorities and official organizations reflect the social and political state. Political realia are registered in political dictionaries. In Americal literary works they contribute to the vivid national coloring, thus their rendering in translation is manadatory.

Political and social vocabulary is the most representative in class approach to the linguistic phenomena. The language specificity allows to charge the linguistic signs with totally different meaning.

The semantic content of the social and political terminology is often emotionally and evaluatively colored and evokes different associations.

Findings and Conclusions

The total identity of the source text and translation text in rendering the realia is impossible due to the discrepancy in conno- tational meaning and cultural and sociopolitical associations. Realia have the utmost potential of expressiveness and assessment. The knowledge of the realia and of the possible ways of their rendering are the criteria of translator's competence. The main deter- monator of qualified translation is adequate reaction of the target audience in the translation languge culture similar to that is the source language culture.

Translation transformations come in hand when translator encounters challenges in rendering the meaning of realia in artistic texts. Semantic development, loan translation, different type of replacement and compensation seem to be the most productive translation devices. The prespective is seen in investigating other interdisciplinary issues of linguistic regional and translation studies.

References

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2. Томахін Г.Д. Реалії в мові і культурі. Москва, 1997. 180 с.

3. Чередниченко О.І. Про мову і переклад. Київ: Либідь, 2007. 248 с.

4. Dictionary of Politics and Government. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004. 289 p.

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6. Heller J. Catch-22.

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