Theory of translation

     The first group of operations (or transformations) is characterized by imitation of the form of a word or of a collocation. In the first case the translator tries to represent the pronunciation or the spelling of the foreign word with the TL letters. Thus we get such translations as «битник», «стриптиз», «эскалация», etc.

     In the second case the translator creates a blueprint collocation in TL by using a loan translation. This results in such forms as «людидоброй воли» (people of good will/ oameni de bună voinţă/ credinţă).

     The second group of operations includes all types of lexical transformations involving certain semantic changes. As a result, the meaning of a word or word combination in ST may be made more specific, more general or somewhat modified as a way to discovering an appropriate equivalent in TL.

     The choice of a more specific word in translation which gives a more  detailed description of the idea than does the word in SL is a very common case in the English-Russian translating process. English often makes use of general terms to describe very definite objects or actions. The following sentence refers to a frightened woman trying to hide from an intruder who had suddenly burst into the room where she was pensively looking into the fire:

     My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the corner. (Ch. Dickens)

     An attempt to use regular Russian equivalents for such general English verbs as “to leave – a părăsi” and “to go – a se duce” will produce a ludicrous Russian/ Romanian phrase like this: «Матушкаоставила свое кресло и пошла за него в угол».

     То соре with the problem a contextual substitute may be created by using the detailing technique, i.e. by describing how the woman performed those actions instead of just naming them, e.g.:

     Взволнованная матушка вскочила со своего кресла и забилась в угол позади него./ Mama speriată a sărit din fotoliu şi s-a ascuns după dînsul.

     Another type of lexical transformations is often called “modulation”. It involves the creation of an equivalent by replacing a unit in SL with a TL unit the meaning of which can be logically deduced from it and which is just another way of referring to the same object or an aspect of the same situation. Consider the following sentence:

     Manson slung his bag up and climbed into a battered gig behind a tall, angular black horse. (A. Cronin)

     It confronts the translator with a number of problems. First, what should be said in Russian for “to sling a bag up”? Second, in Russian it seems so obvious that one gets into a gig behind and not in front of the horse that any mention of the fact is preposterous unless it is implied that the horse was in the gig, too. Third, “an angular horse” cannot be either «угловая» or «угловатая лошадь».

     All these translation problems can be solved with the help of contextual substitutes. “Slinging the bag up” evidently implies that the bag was placed into the gig, “climbing into the gig behind the horse” certainly means that this horse was harnessed to the gig and “an angular horse” is probably a horse with bones sticking out at angles, i.e. a bony or skinny animal. The Russian translation can therefore express these derived ideas to describe the identical situation, e.g.:

     Мэнсон поставил свой чемодан и влез в расхлябанную двуколку, запряженную крупной костлявой черной лошадью./ Manson şi-a pus valiza şi a urcat în brişcă veche, la care era înhămat un cal slăbănog negru.

     In such cases the substitute often has a cause-and-effect relationship with the original:

     - The window was full of clothes I wouldn’t want to be seen dead in. В витрине были выставлены платья, в которых я не хотела бы даже лежать в гробу.

     A dead person is usually put in a coffin and “to be seen dead in a dress” logically implies lying in the coffin in such a dress. One more example.

     - People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented. (J.K. Jerome)

     A direct translation of “who have tried it” is hardly possible. But if somebody has tried something he has some experience about it. So, the translation may run as follows:

     Некоторые люди, ссылаясь на собственный опыт, утверждают, что чистая совесть делает человека веселым и счастливым.

     The third group of translating procedures comprises all types of transformations involving units of SL grammar. The translator may solve his problems by preserving the syntactic structure of the source text and  using the analogous TL grammatical forms or “a word-for-word translation”. This may be called “a zero transformation” and can be easily exemplified, e.g.:

     John took Mary by the hand. Джон взял Мери за руку.

     In other cases the translator may resort to various types of grammatical substitutes.

     First, we may mention two types of transformations which change the number of sentences in TT as compared to ST.

     As a rule, the translator renders the original text sentence by sentence and the number of sentences remains the same. However, it may so happen that the structural and semantic problems of a translation event can be best solved by breaking an original sentence into two parts, i.e. translating it with two sentences in TL. Another type of such partitioning is to replace a simple sentence in the original with a complex one in the translation, comprising one or several subordinate clauses.

     The problems that can be solved through this technique are varied. First of all it may come handy in dealing with the English syntactic complexes which pack in two subject-predicate units, each unit making up a sentence or a clause in the Russian translation, e.g.:

     - I want you to speak English. - Я хочу, чтобы вы говорили по-английски.

     - She hates his behaving in this way.- Ей очень не нравится, что он так себя ведет.

     The partitioning of sentences in translation can also be used to overcome the difficulties caused by the idiomatic semantic structure of the original text, e.g.:

     - This was a man to be seen to be understood. -Чтобы понять этого человека, надо было его увидеть.

     Sometimes the translator can prefer partitioning to the other possible methods of translation, as producing a variant more suitable stylistically or emotionally. Consider the following examples:

     The annual surveys of the Labour Government were not discussed with the workers at any stage, but only with the employers.

     The contrast in the last part of the sentence can be best reproduced in Russian by making a separate unit of it, e.g.:

     - Ежегодные обзоры лейбористского правительства не обсуждались среди рабочих ни на каком этапе. Они обсуждались только с предпринимателями.

     And this is how this procedure can be used to reproduce the emotional implications of the original:

     - How well I recollect it, on a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain. (Ch. Dickens) - Как хорошо помню я наш приезд! Вечереет, холодно, пасмурно, хмурое небо грозит дождем.

     The opposite procedure means integrating two or more original sentences into one or compressing a complex sentence into a simple one. This technique is also used both for structural and semantic reasons.

     Sometimes one of the sentences is grammatically too incomplete to warrant its separate reproduction in translation:

     - It is not possible to do the work in two days. Nor is it necessary. Выполнить эту работу за два дня нет ни возможности, ни необходимости.

     The integration procedure may be necessitated by close semantic ties between adjacent sentences:

     - We did not want scenery. We wanted to have our supper and go to bed. Мы не хотели красивых пейзажей —мы хотели поужинать и лечь спать.

     The partitioning and integration procedures may be used together, resulting in a kind of syntactic and semantic reshuffle of sentences in translation. Here is an example:

     But occasionally an indiscretion takes place, such as that of Mr. Woodrow Wyatt, Labour M.P., when Financial Secretary to the War Office. He boasted of the prowess of British spies in obtaining information regarding armed forces of the USSR. (J. Gollan) ^

     The end of the first sentence is replaced by the personal pronoun in the second sentence. The sentence can, therefore, be broken into two and its last part integrated with the second sentence, e.g.:

     Однако по временам допускается нескромность. Так, например, лейборист, член парламента Вудро Уайтт в бытность свою финансовым секретарем военного министерства хвастался ловкостью, проявленной английскими шпионами в деле получения сведений о вооруженных силах СССР.

     Another type of grammatical transformations is characterized by the  translator’s refusal to use analogous grammatical units in TT. He tries to render the meaning of SL units by changing the grammatical form of a word, the part of speech or the type of the sentence. Such changes are very common and the translator should never hesitate to use them whenever necessary. Here are some examples:

     -We are searching for talent everywhere. Мы повсюду ищемталанты.

     -I am a very rapid packer. Я очень быстро укладываюсь.

     - It is our hope that an agreement will be reached by Friday.Мы надеемся, что к пятнице будет достигнуто соглашение.

     - Не does not mind your joining our group. Он ничего не имеет против того, чтобы вы присоединились к нашей группе.

     Finally, there is a group of transformations which ensure the required degree of equivalence by a number of changes of both lexical and grammatical nature. They involve a different arrangement of ideas, a different point of view and other semantic modifications whenever a direct translation of a SL unit proves impossible. A typical example of such a procedure is the so-called antonymous translation describing the situation, as it were, from the opposite point of view and rendering an affirmative SL structure by a negative TL one or vice versa:

     The door was not unbolted. Дверь была на засове.

     A complex change also occurs in explicatory translations in which a SL unit is replaced by a TL word combination describing or defining its meaning:

     A demonstration of British conservationists was held in Trafalgar Square yesterday. Вчера на Трафальгар-сквер состоялась демонстрация английских сторонников охраны окружающей среды.

     In conclusion, we should mention one more specific procedure which may come handy to the translator when he is baffled by an apparently un-solvable translation problem. It may be called the compensation technique and is defined as a deliberate introduction of some additional elements in translation to make up for the loss of similar elements at the same or an earlier stage. For instance, Eliza in B. Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion” makes a mistake typical for the speech of an uneducated person: ‘Tm nothing to you — not so much as them slippers.” And Professor Higgins corrects her saying: “those slippers”. The linguistic error in the episode is untranslatable and its loss makes this dialogue meaningless. But the loss can be compensated for by introducing a mistake — and its correction — at a point where everything is correct in the original but where an uneducated Russian speaker is likely to make it. As a result in the translation Eliza says: «Ядля вас ничто, хуже вот этих туфлей»; And Higgins can self-righteously correct her: «туфель».

     The compensation method is often used to render the stylistic or emotional implications of the original. Consider the following example.

     They had reached the mysterious mill where the red tape was spun, and Yates was determined to cut through it here and now. (S. Heym)

     “Red tape” is translated as “bureaucracy but the latter cannot be spun at a mill. And the translator invents his own figure of speech to compensate for the loss:

     Они уперлись в стену штабной бюрократии, но Йейтс твердо решил тут же пробить эту стену.  

     5. PRAGMATICS OF TRANSLATION  

     Words in language are related to certain referents which they designate and to other words of the same language with which they make up syntactic units. These relationships are called semantic and syntactic, respectively. Words are also related to the people who use them. To the users of the language its words are not just indifferent, unemotional labels of objects or ideas. The people develop a certain attitude to the words they use. Some of the words acquire definite implications, they evoke a positive or negative response, they are associated with certain theories, beliefs, likes or dislikes. There are “noble” words like “honour, dignity, freedom“, etc. and “low” wordslike “infamy, cowardice, betrayal”. Words can be nice or ugly, attractive or repulsive. Such relationships between the word and its users are called “pragmatic”.

     The pragmatic implications of a word are an important part of its meaning that produces a certain effect upon the Receptor. Of even greater significance is the pragmatic aspect of speech units. Every act of speech communication is meant for a certain Receptor, it is aimed at producing a certain effect upon him. In this respect any communication is an exercise in pragmatics.

     Since the pragmatic effect plays such an important part in communication, its preservation in translation is the primary concern of the translator, though it is by no means an easy task. The pragmatic aspect of translation involves a number of difficult problems.

     To begin with, the pragmatics of the original text cannot be as a rule directly reproduced in translation but often require important changes in the transmitted message. Correlated words in different languages may produce dissimilar effect upon the users. An “ambition”  in English is just the name of a quality which may evoke any kind of response — positive, negative or neutral. Its Russian counterpart «амбиция» is definitely not a nice word. Thus, the phrase ‘The voters put an end to the general’s political ambitions” can be translated as «Избиратели положили конец политическим амбициямгенерала», retaining the negative implication of the original, but if the implication were positive the translator would not make use of the derogatory term. The sentence ‘The boy’s ambition was to become a pilot” will be translated as «Мечтой мальчика было статьлетчиком».

     Such words as “idealism” or “nationalism” often have a positive effect in the English text and are rendered into Russian not as «идеализм» or «национализм» but as «служение идеалам,бескорыстие» and «национальное самосознание, национальныеинтересы», respectively.

     When we consider not just separate words but a phrase or number of phrases in a text, the problem becomes more complicated. The communicative effect of a speech unit does not depend on the meaning of its components alone, but involves considerations of the situational context and the previous experience. A report that John has run a hundred metres in 9 seconds will pass unnoticed by some people and create a sensation with others who happen to know that it is a wonderful record-breaking achievement.

     Here again, a great role is played by differences in the historical and cultural backgrounds of different language communities, in their customs and living conditions. It stands to reason that the natives of a tropical island can hardly be impressed by the statement that something is “as white as snow”. The reported “cooling” in the relations between two friends may be understood as a welcome development by the people who live in a very hot climate.

     It seems imperative, therefore, that translation should involve a kind of pragmatic adaptation to provide for the preservation of the original communicative effect. This adaptation must ensure that the text of translation conveys the same attitude to the reported facts as does the original text. It goes without saying that in an adequate translation the comical should not be replaced by the tragical or a praise turned into a censure.

     The pragmatic adaptation of the translation must also see to it that TR understands the implications of the message and is aware of its figurative or situational meaning. A phrase like “Smith made another touchdown in three minutes” refers to a situation which does not mean anything to a Russian Receptor who does not know anything about the rules of American football. When the English original just refers to the First Amendment, the Russian translation should make it more explicit by speaking about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; otherwise TR will not understand what it is all about.

     It is obvious that there can be no equivalence if the original text is clear and unequivocal while its translation is obscure and hard to understand.