11. Lexical problems of translation

The study of the language is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic realm. It becomes a tangle begetting multiple language discrepancies. That is why linguistics compares languages and explores their histories, in order to find and to account for its development and origins to give the answers to this or that language point. 

Due to the semantic features of language the meanings of words, their ability to combine with other words, their usage, the “place” they hold in the lexical system of a language do not concur for the most part. All the same “ideas” expressed by words coincide in most cases, though the means of expression differ.

     The principal types of lexical correspondences between two languages are as follows: 1) Complete correspondences; 2) Partial correspondences; 3) The absence of correspondences 

12. Concept about Translational Transformations. Lexical Transformations in Traslating: Addition, Omission and Replacements.

Addition & omission

Grammatical transformations consist in analysis aimed at removing ambiguity and synthesis aimed at reconstruction of the original message of the TL. Addition here is caused by various factors, which are necessitated by lexical incompleteness. That means that certain word groups or sentences don’t give enough information or the lack of information sometimes depends on the insufficiency of the context or peculiarities of the language. Thus in English in many cases words, which are omitted, can be easily restored by the context. In Russian their actual presence is a necessity. Sometimes addition is required to compensate the lack of grammatical forms.

*This form of national defense investment is capable of protecting the country against attack. = Investment in national defense.

*The story of Robin Hood – told by or about?

Omission is reduction of the elements of the source text considered redundant from the viewpoint of the target language structural patterns and stylistics.

Replacement - This is a very important transformation, and I can affect any kind of linguistic units: word forms, parts of speech, sentence elements, types of syntactic relations, sentence types etc..

13.Translation of the Word. Lexical Compliances.

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17. Translation of Pseudo-International Words

There is a distinct group of words which constitute a special difficulty for the translator, the so-called pseudo-international words. International words are mostly words of Greek, Latin and French origin which have a more or less similar phonetic form in many languages. They express not only scientific, social and political notions but everyday things and notions as well: electronics – электроника; dynamic – динамичный; calorie – калория; elegant – элегантный. These words have become an indispensable part of the vocabulary of different languages. Their referential meaning is in most cases identical. But there is another category of international words which as part of the lexical system of different languages have acquired in these languages novel semantic features – different semantic structures, additional lexical-semantic variants, different connotations and different usage. The Russian language borrows these words most often as terms and they tend to be monosemantic while in the English language they are usually polysemantic. Although warned against them translators are often deceived into making errors by purely formal resemblances.

18. TRANSLATING PEOPLE’S NAMES

Anthroponyms are usually rendered through transcription or transliteration:

Thomas Heywood – Томас Хейвуд , George Gordon Byron – Джордж Гордон Байрон.

These days preference is given to transcription. (In the last century it was possible to see and hear  Шакеспиаре– Shakespeare, Невтон– Newton.) Inrendering names of living people, personal preferences should be taken intoaccount. WhenVan Cliburn, the Tchaikovsky Contest first prize winner, came back to Moscow after a long absence, he was offended by the papers calling him Ван Клайберн, as he had become accustomed to being called in Russia ВанКлибер.