Lecture 2. Main Types of Translation

1. Division of Tr types

2. classification of Literary and Informative Types of Tr

3. Written Tr and Oral Tr Intermediate Types

4. Main Types of Oral Tr

1. Different types of Tr can be singled out depending on the predominant communicative function of the ST or the form of speech involved in the tr-ing process. On the one hand, we can distinguish b/n written and oral Tr. When distinguishing the 1^st type of thr Tr we must concider that the ST genre and stylistic peculiarities. The 2^nd type of Tr is connected with psycoling. peculiarities.

Literary Tr deals with liter. texts, e.i. works of fiction or poetry whose main function is to make an emotional or aesthetic impression upon the reader. Their communicative value depends on their artistic quality and the tr-or’s primary task is to reproduce this quality in Tr.

Informative Tr means rendering into the T lg non-literary texts the main purpose of which is to convey a certain amount of ideas to inform the reader.

However, if the ST is of some length it’s Tr can be listed literary or informative only as an approximation. A Literary text may include some parts of purely informative character. Informative Tr may comprise some elements aimed at achieving aesthetic effect. Within each group further gradation can be made to bring more specific in Lit and Inform Tr.

Like literary work Lit Tr-s fall into a number of genres. As each genre calls for a specific arrangement and makes use of a specific artistic means to impress the reader. Tr-ors of prose, poetry or plays have their own problems. Each of these forms of literary activities comprises a number of subgenres and the tr-or may specialize in some of them according to his talent and experience. The particular task inherent in the Tr of literary work of each genre are more literary than linguistic. The Tr-or of belle-letters text is expected to make a careful study of literary Tr and the text belongs to the other works of the same author, the peculiarities of his individual style and manner. This involves both linguistic consideration and skill in literary criticism, a good literary Tr-or must be a good scholar, a talented writer or poet.

Informative Tr-s are subdivided into Tr-s of scientific and technical texts, newspaper’s materials, official papers and some other types of text, such as public speeches, political propaganda materials, advertisements and so on, which are intermediate, because there is a certain balance b/n the expressive and reflective functions b/n reasoning and emotional appeal. E.g. In technical Tr-s the main goal is to identify the situation described in the original. The Tr-or must have a good command of technical terms and a sufficient understanding of the subject in order to be able to give adequate description of the situation, even if this is not fully original.

The technical Tr-or is also expressed to observe the stylistic requirements of scientific and technical materials to make the text acceptable to the specialist.

Some types of texts can be identified by the difference of their functional characteristics in the 2 lg-s. Due to the frequent use of English newspaper reports differ greatly from their counterparts. Due to the frequent use of English colloquial slang, vulgar elements, various paraphrases, headlines. E.g. Minister Bares teech on Fluoridation. The Minister had taken a resolute stand on the matter. – Решительная позиция министра в вопросе фторирования воды. He (the Rus Tr-or) would rather use less expressive way of putting it to avoid infringement upon the accepted norms of the Rus newspaper style.

It is also necessary to single out the Tr of Official diplomatic papers as a separate type of informative Tr. These texts should be separated because of the specific requirements to the quality of their Tr-s. such Tr-s are often expected as authentic official texts as the originals. There are very important documents every word of which must be carefully chosen as a matter of principle, that makes the Tr very particular about every little element of the original which he scrupulously reproduces in his Tr.

Journalistic or publicistic texts dealing with social or political matters are sometimes singled out among other inform. materials. They may feature elements more commonly used in a literary text: metaphors, similes, and other stylistic devices, which cannot but influence the Tr-or’s strategy. But more often they are regarded as a kind of newspaper’s materials.

There are also some minor groups of texts, they are that can be considered. They are film-scripts, commercial advertisements and some others. When the film is doubled the Tr-or is limited in his choice of variant by the necessity to fit the pronunciation of the tr-ed words to the movement of the actor’s lips. When tr-ing captions, the Tr-or has to consider the numerous illusions to the fact of well-known to the regular readers of comics but less familiar to the Rus readers. In dealing with commercial advertisement he must bare in mind that the only purpose of commercial advertisement is to win over the prospective customers. Since the text of Tr deals with the original advertisement was meant for, there is a problem of achieving the same pragmatic effect by introducing the necessary changed in the message. In this case the Tr-ot confrance the problem of the pragmatic adaptation.

3. Tr is also classified into written and oral. It’s easy to understand that the ST is the writing. In oral Tr or interpretation thr interpreter listens to the oral presentation of the original and translates in as an oral message in T lg. as a result in the 1^st case the receptor of the Tr can read the text of Tr-or while in the 2^nd case he only hears it. There are also intermediate types: rendering his Tr orally the Tr-or may have the text of the original in front of him and translate it at sight. A written Tr can be made of the original recorded on the magnetic tape that can be replayed as many times as necessary for the Tr-or to grasp the original meaning.

There are all classifications of the 2 main type of Tr. Written and oral Tr are separated not only because there are sets of conditions in which the process takes place, but because written Tr is continues and oral Tr is momentary. In W Tr the original can be read and reread as the Tr-or may need or like. It also concerns his final product the text of Tr. He can also reread his Tr, compare to the original, and start his work all over again. W Tr has more favourable conditions. That’s why we can expect the best performance and the highest level of eq-ts. The situation is different in O Tr. The conditions of O Tr impose a number of important restrictions on the Tr-or’s performance. In O Tr the interpreter receives a fragment of the original only ones or a short period of time. His Tr is a one-times act. It’s impossible to return to the original or to make any corrections. This creates additional problems and the users have sometimes to be contempt with a lower level of eq-ts.

There are two main kinds of Oral T consecutive and simultaneous.

In Consecutive Translation the translating stars after the original speech or some part of it has been completed. Here the interpreters’ strategy and the final results depend mainly on the length of the segment to be translated. If the is just the sentence or two, the interpreter closely follows the original speech.

However the interpreter is expected to translate a long speech which has lasted for several seconds. In this case he has to remember a lot of messages and keep them in mind until he begins his translation. To make this possible the interpreter has to take notes on the original messages. Various systems of notation have been suggested for a purpose. There are ever special exercises to develop his memory. Sometimes the interpreter is set a time limit to give his rendering. It means that he will have to reduce his translation considerably selecting and reproducing the most important parts of the original, this implies the ability to make a judgment on the relative value on various messages and to generalize or impress the information. The interpreter must obviously be a good and quick-witted thinker.

In Simultaneous T. the interpreter is supposed to be able to give his translation while the speaker is uttering the original message. This can be achieved for the specific radio and telephone equipment. The interpreter receives the original speech through his ear-phones and simultaneously talks into the microphone which transmits his translation into listeners. This type of translation involves a member of psychological problems both of theoretical and practical value.

Lecture 3

Equivalence in translation

1. The notion of translation equivalence, different conceptions of equivalence.

1. Conception of Formal Equivalence

2. Conception of Nominative-semantic Equivalence

3. Conception of Translation Adequacy

4. Conception of Dynamic Equivalence

5. Conception of Functional Equivalence

2. Equivalence and adequacy. Different approaches in the notion of Equivalence and adequacy.

3. The theory of translation Equivalence levels. Types or levels of translation Equivalence.

1. In modern theory of translation the term Equivalence means the correspondence of the TT to the ST. This correspondence was treated differently at different periods of time. But it was only become really scientific basis in present time.

1. Conception of Formal Equivalence.

If appeared as the basis for conveying a written text. It is mainly connected with Christianity (the translation of the whole text – the Bible). At that time writing was used bt European of writing translation of the Bible. The Bible and the other religious texts were treated like kinds of revelation. Every element of the holy text was considered iconikal. Owing to this factor literary tran-n appeared. The word was the only main unite that had formal characteristics. Therefore the TT was the meaning of the word in the original and also the structural peculiarities of the original. The text was translated word by word. The text of translation was overloaded of interlingua information. That make the text difficult to understand, but the goal of the translation of the Bible was not understood. The text the original and the translation were equivalent both semantic and formally.