Lecture №11 basic translation devices

This Lecture introduces basic translators' devices:

• partitioning;

•integration;

• transposition;

•replacement

•addition;

• omission and

•antonymous translation;

Assignments:

• Read lecture thoroughly

• Highlight the main key points

• Make the plan of the Lecture

You might have already guessed from previous discussion that translation was a rather individual matter brinking on art and almost in any case requiring unique and unprecedented decisions. And yet even in translation of poetry, which undoubtedly demands the most individual approach a translator is bound to use a more or less standard set of devices which helps to convey the ideas of the source text in the best possible way and. generally speaking, makes it possible to translate. Although the choice of particular devices depends on the text type, genre and style as well as on the translation variety (oral, written, consecutive, simultaneous) and translation direction (into or from a foreign language), the basic set of translation devices (a kind of translator's tool kit') usually comprises partitioning and integration of sentences, transposition of sentence parts, replacement, addition and omission of words and

word combinations as well as a special type of transformations called

antonymous translation.

Partitioning

Partitioning is either replacing in translation of a source sentence by two or more target ones or converting a simple source sentence into a compound or complex target one. One is to distinguish between inner partitioning (conversion of a simple sentence into a compound or complex one) and outer partitioning (division of a sentence into two or more). For example, inner partitioning is used when translating English verbal complexes into Ukrainian:

Come along and see me play one evening. – Приходь коли-небудь увечері – побачиш, як я граю.

More often than not inner partitioning is a regular translation transformation accounted for by the differences in the Ukrainian and English syntactic structures, although it may be also used on individual occasions as required by the text genre and style and communication variety of the source sentence. When translating from English into Ukrainian outer partitioning (unlike inner) is more a matter of personal translator's choice based. on the proper account of stylistic and genre peculiarities and communication intent of both the source text and its translation)

Outer partitioning is out of the question in case of translating official legal or diplomatic documents (laws, contracts, memos, etc.) but it becomes a totally justified translation option, say, in consecutive translation of a long and complex sentence.)

The following example from Graham Greene is one of the cases where outer partitioning seems a proper translation device (although, not a universal recipe):

There was a real game too, not a party game played in the old school hall and invented by my eldest brother Herbert, who was always of an adventurous character until he was changed by the continual and sometimes shameful failures of his adult life.

Була і справжня, а не салонна гра, у яку ми грали в актовому залі старої школи. Цю гру вигадав мій старший брат Герберт – людина винахідлива і схильна до всіляких пригод, доки постійні негаразди дорослого життя не змінили його вдачу.