§ 2. Literal translation

Literal translation is the translation that reproduces communicatively irrelevant elements of the source text, This usually happens when the translator copies the source language form on this or that level of the language.

According to the language level, there exist various types of literal translation:

1) on the sound level: this type of literal translation results in the so called "translator's false friends", that is words similar in sounds but different in meaning: conductor - not кондуктор, but дирижер; herb - not герб, but лекарственная трава; computer silicon chips - not компьютерные силиконовые чипсы, but кремниевые чипы компьютера.

2) on the syntactic level: copying the structure of the source language. Sometimes an inexperienced translator is hypnotized by the source language, and, to translate "accurately", he tries to render the meaning word for word, thus breaking combination rules of his/her own language. As an example, We often heard his name mentioned. - *Мы часто слышали его имя упомянутым.

3) on the semantic level: giving the primary meaning of the word or its part, whereas a semantic transformation is required: But outside it kept on raining. - *Ho снаружи шел дождь, which is incorrect. Or подпол­ковник - *subcolonel. the word not existing in English.

4) etymological errors: disregarding language changes. Words acquire new meanings over time and use: Tliere, there, don't cry. - *Там, там, не плачь.

5) following the style of the source text: different registers require different language means. Thus, to use the example by V. Komissarov³², to a Russian, who is accustomed to brief and abrupt structures in the weather forecast, an English weatherman's sentence can sound like a poem line: Mist covered a calm sea in the Strait of Dover last night. - Туман покры­вал спокойное море в Па-де-Кале прошлой ночью. Therefore, to produce the same impact upon the receptor as does the original, the translator-has to partition the English sentence and make it more adaptable to a Russian: Прошлой ночью в проливе Па-де-Кале стоял туман. Море было спокойно.⁵³

We can see that very often literal translation is not necessarily a word-for-word translation, although it is often associated with a rather negative evaluation of the translation.

Literal translation is sometimes referred to as formal, or grammar translation, though it is not the same.

However, sometimes literal translation on this or that level is a must. The translator cannot do without it when rendering proper and geographical names {Khabarov, Nakhodka); some borrowings (Red Guards - хунвэйби-ны is a literal translation (on a semantic level), into English of the Chinese hong (Red) wei bing (Guard), while the Russian word is a literal reproduction of the Chinese word on a sound level.

In some works, literal translation is called 'faithful' translation - this term does not necessarily imply the negative connotation of slavish literalism.

§ 3. Free translation

Free translation is the reproduction of the source form and content in a loose way. This concept means adding extra elements of information or losing some essential ones.

Of course, it is not very accomplished of a translator to add details not described by the author, as was often done by a well-known (sometimes notorious) Russian translator I. Vvedenski. Neither is it proficient to contract the source text like A. Houdar de la Motte who reduced the twenty-four books of the Iliad to twelve in his translation, leaving out all the "anatomical details of wounds" and some other information.³⁴ Scholars of translation usually take a negative view of this type of free translation, known as adaptation in history of translation.³⁵

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Nevertheless, free translation is appropriate in some cases: poetry 11 unslations are done with a certain degree of freedom. A translator is also live to modernize a classic text in order to subvert established target-language niulei-response. Free translation is also admitted in the titles of novels, movies, etc. For instance, the outstanding Russian novel by Iff and Petrov "Ласпадцатъ стульев" is known in the United States as "Diamonds to Sit On ", which is accounted for by the bookselling advertising policies. The British movie "Square Peg"was translated into Russian as "Мистер Пит-кип в тылу врага", since the movie translators did not find the adequate Russian idiom to convey the meaning "a person unsuitable for the place in which he works or lives" expressed by the English phrase "a square peg in a round hole".

Recently translation theorists have begun to relate free translation to communicative translation, depending on the purpose of the translation, and literal translation to the so-called semantic translation. Communicative translation tends to undertranslate, i.e. to use more generic, catch-all terms in difficult passages. A semantic translation tends to overtranslate, i.e. to be more detailed, more direct, and more awkward.³⁶ P. Newmark, however, distinguishes semantic translation - as the attempt to render as closely as possible the semantic and syntactic structures of the target language, from literal translation, when the primary senses of the lexical words of the original are translated as though out of context. He defines communicative tianslation as that which produces on its receptors an effect similar to that on the receptors of the original.³⁷