1. Types of translation.

T can be of 3 types:

Translation means written work.

Interpretation means oral work.

Rendition means retelling some information (makes use of both translation and interpretation), When we speak about written T we can divide it into T of fiction, poetry, technical and scientific texts, business, official documents, etc. When we speak about oral interpretation we have 3 types: simultaneous (immediate – синхронный перевод); consecutive or sequential interpretation (последовательный перевод); signing (=sign interpretation, intersemiotic interpretation).

Interpretation can take place in the following eniroments: escort (сопровождение группы или 1-го человека) meeting (конференция, т.д.)

phone translation

court-room translation (в суде)

sight translation (перевод секретной информации)

Classification of translation according to Kazakova.

She has summed up the classifications given by different scholars, that’s why it’s the most completed.

Word-for-word T. (complete) is necessary when dealing with scientific text of logical documents. Smt it is used in fiction. (Радлова, Лозинский – Shakespeare)

Semantic T. (complete) based on rendering the contextual meaning of the text.

Дам я ему денег:

- пусть не беспокоится, дам;

- как же я не дам.

The T. may not even be found in the dictionary, but the translator has a feeling that here the word conveys this meaning.

Communicative T. (complete) – to produce an adequate impression upon the reader.

Equivalence belongs more to the language, adequacy belongs to the content. Equivalence relies upon the correspondence and the translator’s ability to find the correspondents (words, phrases) in the TL and uses those to convey the meaning. If the SL text contains some language phenomenon that doesn’t exist in the TL, you can hardly produce an equivalent T.

He is a public figure. – Он – общественный деятель.

At the reception there were some very important public figures. – На приеме присутствовали некоторые государственные деятели.

# complete T. (=metaphrase, paraphrase, imitation, adaptation, interpretation)

# abridged T. (= selective or searching T.)

Abridged T. preserves the essence of the text disregarding the parts the translator believes to be of little importance. Ex. When you have to give your boss some information contained in several business letters, you must compress a text.

Another example of abridged T. is the functional T. The task is to rearrange the parts of the ST in such a way that the information, which is valid for the recipient, comes first. In any case you simplify the text to make it clear for the reader.

2. Translation techniques.

Kazakova distinguishes between lexical (transliteration, transcription; calque/loan translation; semantic modifications: concretization, generalization, functional substitution, emphatization, neutralization, description, commentary; mixed translation), grammatical (partial translation, zero translation, functional substitution, assimilation, conversion, antonymic translation, transformation), stylistic (word substitution, image substitution, trope substitution, omission of figurative meaning, literal translation and commentary) techniques.

Komissarov speaks about lexical (transliteration, transcription, calque/loan translation, semantic modification, concretization, generalization, modulation), grammatical (syntactic assimilation, grammatical substitution) techniques.

1. Transliteration. 2. Transcription. 3. Concretization. 4. Generalization. 5. Loan translation. 6. Discriptive translation. 7. Antonymic translation. 8. Substitution translation. 9. Addition / ommition.

As far as the types of T go, we can speak of the strategies and within the strategies we can use certain techniques to solve the problem that occurs within the smaller portions of the text. Here we should mention transliteration – rendering of the SL letters by the TL equivalents.

Washington Post – Вошингтон Пост.

Very often transliteration is combined with transcription (a written representation in the TL of the SL speech sounds).

The Gardian – Гардиан

It is not the duty of a translator to invent new transcriptions or transliteration. His duty is to follow the rule of precident (to lock up the word in the dictionary). He can invent if there is no any more such term. Generalization is used when the TL and the SL have different visions of the same phenomenon.

Пойди и вымой руки. – Go and wash your hands (not arms).

He has rather long legs (not feet).

Concretization is the reverse of generalization. It means bringing down the units meaning from the more general to the more concrete. It’s a frequent device that is used in T. When you have to specify the meaning of a word r a phrase, it’s very often used when you translate from English into Russian, due to wider scope of meaning of many English words.

He can’t be a good parent. – Не поверю, что он хороший отец.

Antonymic T is a technique of adding or cutting out a negation to achieve a better effect or better stylistic appropriateness.

I’ve been in the whole week. – Я не выходил из дома целую неделю.

Keep off the grass. – По газону не ходить.

Paraphrasing: when we have an idea or a fixed combination of words, and we cannot render it in the TL, we seek a phrase or a word or a sentence which is differently worded and structured but it still convey the same meaning.

Hear! Hear! – at the meeting means “I agree.”

Here is to you – Я пью за вас

When there are no satisfactory equivalents in the TL, we use the translation techniques.

He lives in Kent. – Он живет в графстве Кент.

When the explanation is needed, you broaden the text by explaining what’s meant in the text. Smt you can’t do that for the explanation will take too much space and ruin the flow of the text.

It’s Guy Fox’s Day. – Here you should enlarge about G. Fox, his actions, etc.

If you can’t do so, you appeal to footnotes. Whatever technique a translator uses, it should be well grounded. It should be consistent with basic T considerations, which are clarity, precision and contextual relevance.

3. Adequacy, precision and equivalence as related notions characterizing translation.

All the theory of T. boils down to several notions: scholars say, if T. is possible, so you have to speak about adequacy and precision, exactness and punctuality. All these notions belong to the same level of preserving both form and content. But the notions themselves are very difficult to translate, for the terms are not monosynaptic. If we are guided by the dictionary, we can translate «точный перевод» as accurate translation. Adequate T. doesn’t mean precise T., but it is precise functionally and semantically. This term implies that the SL and the TL are different. By precision we shall mean accuracy – that is the fact that the translation disregards the TL and conforms to the laws of the SL. Adequacy means observing the laws of the TL. Equivalence belongs more to the Lang. Adequacy – to content. Eq. relies upon the correspondence and the tr-or’s ability to find the correspondents (words, phrases) in the TL and use those to convey the meaning. If the SL text contains some lang. phenomenon that doesn’t exist in the TL, you can hardly produce an equiv. T. (ex. “He is a public figure” – общественный деятель; “At the reception there were some very important public figures” – государственный деятель). Some scholars subdivide T. into 3 groups: 1) equivalents; 2) analogies (adequate, but not equivalent); 3) adequate substitutions. Equivalents don’t depend upon the context (ex. The League of Nations – лига Наций; ill - больной). Adequate substitutions mean that you have to choose words or phrases that relate the same notions, but you have either to generalize or to specify the notion that exists in the SL. (ex. Father-in-law – свекор; Sibling – брат). Equivalence can range btw. Zero Eq. to complete Eq. Sometimes the complete eq-nt can be found in a meaning, but the form can be a challenge (ex. Can any of you do it? I can!– but in Rus.: Кто-то может это сделать? Я!). But the modality is preserved, though “can” is omitted. NB! Adequate translation may be defined therefore as that which is determined by semantic and pragmatic equivalence between the original and target-language text.

4. Translation and the peculiarities of the communicative situation.

Translation may be viewed as aninterlingual communicative act in which at least three participants are involved: the sender (the author of the SL message), the translator (intermediary) who acts in dual capacity – as the receptor of the SL message and as the sender of the equivalent TL message), and the recipient of the TL message (translation). If the original was not intended for a foreign-language recipient, there is one more participant: the SL recipient for whom the message was originally produced. Translation as such consists in producing a text (message) in the TL, equivalent to the original text (message) in the SL. Translation as an interlingual communicative act includes two phrases: communication btw the sender and the translator and communication between the translator and the recipient of the newly produced TL text. In the first phase the translator, acting as a SL recipient, analyses the original msg, extracting the information contained in it. In the second stage, the translator acts as a TL sender, producing an equivalent message in the TL and re-directing it to the TL recipient. In producing the TL text the translator changes its plan of expression (linguistic form) while its plan of content (meaning) should remain unchanged. In fact, an equivalent (TL) message should match the original in the plane of content. The msg, produced by the translator, should evoke practically the same response in the TL recipient as the original message in the SL recipient. That means, above all, that whatever the text says and whatever it implies should be understood in the same way by both the SL user for whom it was originally intended and by the TL user. It is therefore the translator’s duty to make available to the TL recipient the maximum amount of information, carried by linguistic signs, including both their denotational (referential) meanings (i.e. information about the extralinguistic reality which they denote) and their emotive-stylistic connotations. Communicative situation (таблица) presupposes (1) factors of communicative competence and (2) additional factors influencing communication. (1) can be: a) universal human factors (time and space); b) linguistically conditioned factors (cultural background). (2) can be: a) specific human factors (age, gender); b) socially conditioned factors; c) individual human factors.