11.4. Phraseology in interpretation

Translation of phrasal units (proverbs, sayings) represents considerable difficulty in two-way and, moreover, in synchronous translation, when the factor of time “plays” against translator.

Qualified translator has his own “gold reserves” of the most widespread equivalents, analogues, phrasal expressions in different languages, including Latin, French, and Italian.

A number of phrasal units (catchwords) which have come from mythology, Roman history, the Bible, from Latin and Greek, have steady correspondences (translations) in different languages, which have become canonical and are not subject to any changes.

Other purely English (or purely Ukrainian or Russian) proverbs can get approximate translation, by changing figurativeness, and sometimes only descriptive one. If you do not know the analogous phrasal unit, but understand its meaning, you should render its meaning, even with the loss of figurativeness. It is worse if the meaning is unclear to you, but the context should help here.

As Lynn Wisson figuratively marks, “Actually one should translate not from language into language, but from one culture into another”. It is very true, especially in case of translating proverbs, sayings, catchwords, in which all riches of cultural and historical heritage of the country are reflected.

Chapter 12: Specialized Interpretation (Continued)

12.1. Scientific and technical translation (performances, seminars, lectures, reports)

Speaking on the basis of scientific works, articles, monographies intended for experts and the given sphere of knowledge belong to this kind of interpreting. It means, that the recipient is an expert (translator, usually, is not an expert).

Scientific speech serves for rendering cognitive information. Numerous language devices provide its arrangement as objective information requiring equivalent rendering:

• as a subject, key noun in the given sphere of knowledge or the means of secondary nomination (personal and demonstrative pronouns, adverbs) are used. Personal pronouns in singular with the meaning of subject occur seldom, and are replaced by pronoun “we” as object;

• various means of passivity in relation to a formal subject: special verbal forms, impersonal and indefinite-personal sentences;

• prevalence of present time of verb – informed data as absolutely objective;

• abundance of compound words and words with abstract meaning, constructed according word-formation model;

• high level of generalization and objectivity (especially in Russian and Ukrainian);

• nominative feature of the text – expression of action mainly through a verbal noun with desemantisized verb of speech, that raises the level of abstractiveness.

Abundance of terms – self-regulated lexical apparatus, developed for rendering cognitive information is the basis of scientific speech, its feature. Terms are mono-semantic, do not possess emotional coloring and are independent of context. To render them mono-semantic correspondences-equivalents, independent of context, are used. Replacement of terms with close words (descriptive translation) is possible in case they are unknown or due to any difficulties.

Other words are unvaried, monotonous enough in structure (to analyze, process, development, to come to conclusion, etc.). These words are called general scientific layer of terminology, or lexicon of general scientific description. It is deprived of emotional coloring, it is a neutral variant of modern literary norm where stylistically equal synonymy is widely developed (play important role, have great value, considerable enough, etc.). When translating lexicon of general scientific description one should choose something in between equivalents and variant correspondences as the majority of variants are interchangeable, and all of them are neutral. Translator thus can be guided by a common language (non-technical) dictionary.

In scientific performance the means raising the level of cognitive information density are used.