8

Lecture 5. Translation equivalents

Plan

1. The notion of a Translation Equivalent

2. Translation equivalents to the units of various levels

3. Principles of classification of equivalents

4. One-to-one equivalents and one-to-many equivalents

5. The notion and kinds of context. The meaning of the word in context.

6. The choice of the equivalent in translation. Occasional equivalents.

7. Equivalent-lacking lexical and grammatical units

8. The principles of description of phraseological equivalents

1. The notion of a translation equivalent

The usage of a certain TL unit for the translation of a certain SL unit is not accidental. Both units have a relatively stable meaning and the fact that one may replace the other in translation proves the considerable similarity of their meanings. Such similarity provides prerequisites for them to enter into the relations of translation equivalence, i.e. for the regular usage of one of them to translate the other. The TL unit regularly used to translate the given SL unit is called its TRANSLATION EQUIVALENT.

Particular translation theories study the systems of translation equivalents in different languages.

Translation equivalents are COMMUNICATIVELY similar to the SL units, therefore the proximity of the meanings of SL and TL units is only a prerequisite for the achievement of translation equivalence, but, in itself, it is not a sufficient condition for that. Equivalence relations in translation are established not between isolated language units, but between SL and TL units as parts of utterances. Their ability to be communicatively equivalent is not determined only by their meaning within their language system, but also by the peculiarities of their usage in speech. That is why it is impossible to find translation equivalents while trying to compare the units that have analogous place in the systems of the two languages involved in the translation process. It is necessary to obtain them from the communicatively equivalent utterances involved in translation. That is achieved through comparative analysis of translations, during which SL and TL units that are equated in the process of translation are discovered in a large number of the originals and their translations.

For practical reasons, a special translation theory investigates such units of the vocabulary and grammar of the SL, for which it is especially difficult to pick up equivalents. Thus comparing the English originals with their Ukrainian translations, a great parallelism is seen in using such parts of speech as numerals and adjectives, and so the ways of their rendering in translation are not described in detail. On the other hand, much attention is given to the Ukrainian equivalents to various categories of the English verb and verbal phrases (syntactic complexes). Out of verbals, the main focus in the infinitive (especially perfect infinitive), and describing the ways of translating the infinitive, detailed analysis is made its usage in the attributive function, which causes considerable difficulties in translation. For each language pair there is a separate set of translation difficulties.

2. Translation equivalents to the units of various levels

As a starting point for the analysis, they usually take the SL units, for which equivalents in TL are found. In general, such equivalents are found at any level of the language system: from phoneme to sentence.

Equivalents on the phoneme level: lady - леді, speaker – спікер, Liverpool - Ліверпул

Equivalents on the morpheme level: table-s - стол-и, strict-ness - сувор-ість. In translation each English morpheme has a correspondent morpheme in Ukrainian. All kinds of morphemes can have an equivalent – root, affixes and inflexions.

Equivalents on the word level: he came home – він прийшов додому, I looked at her - я подивився на неї, my brother lives in Cherkasy – мій брат мешкає в Черкасах. Here each word in the English sentence has an equivalent in the Ukrainian translation.

Absolute equivalence to all SL elements is not presupposed in word-for-word translation, as in the Ukrainian translation, as a rule there are no direct equivalents to the English articles and some auxiliary words. Most often word-for-word equivalents are found only for some of the words in the original and the rest of the equivalents are achieved on other levels.

Equivalents on the word-combination level: to take part – брати участь, to spill the beans – виказати таємницю, to come to the wrong shop - звертатися не за адресою. In these cases the word-combinations in the ST and TT are equivalent as a whole, and within them there are no words that are equivalent to each other.

Sentence-level equivalents: Keep off the grass - По газонам не ходити, There’s a good boy! - От молодець!, Will you leave a message? – Що йому передати?. There are no equivalent words or word-combinations. At the same time, the translations are regularly used to render the meaning of the originals, so they are their full equivalents.

Description of translation equivalents mainly focuses on LEXICAL, PHRASEOLOGICAL AND GRAMMATIC SL UNITS, which have a stable meaning, which is implemented in a large number of utterances. As a rule, the equivalent is a unit of the same level in TL. Utterances, however, are built upon the correlation of units of different levels, and in the process of translation, it is not determined in advance with the help of what level units the given unit of the original will be rendered. Therefore interlevel translation equivalents are possible and, in fact, often occur.

Thus, accentuation of a usually unstressed auxiliary verb in an English sentence “But he 'will meet her” is rendered in translation through lexical units: “Але ж він обов’язково зустрінеться з нею” (phonetic-lexical equivalent). The same way lexical-grammatical (Give me some bread – Дай мені хліба) and grammatical-lexical (The delegation had been received by the prime-minister – До цього делегацію приймав прем’єр-міністр) equivalents may be created.

Within the same level, correlations may be both the units that occupy in the TL a position analogous to the replaced original units and other units of the same level. In speech words with general meaning are used more often in English that in Ukrainian. Thus in the process of comparing, the English “to be” will correspond not only to “бути”, but also to „стояти”, „знаходитись”, „мешкати”, etc., to go – „йти”, „їхати”, „летіти”, „вмирати”, etc.

My feelings then would have been even stronger had I known that Karl Stock was to be burnt in the incinerators of Majdanek.

Мое тогдашнее возмущение было бы еще большим, если бы я знал, что Карлу Стоку суждено погибнуть в печах Майданека. (Cf. feelings - возмущение.)