Differences in the Semantic Structures of Source Language and Target Language

Translation is one of the most important aspects and methods of comparative study of languages. One of the obstacles to a ready equivalence between the 2 languages is the difference in their semantic structures. Apart from few specific areas, different speech communities have approximately the same experience of extralinguistic reality, that is, human experience in general is common to all humans. However, in language this common experience finds different expression. For example, Russian квитанция has the following parallels in English: receipt, luggage, baggage ticket (check), pawn???????? ticket, acknowledgement etc. The point which we are trying to make is that national PECULIARITIES of general semantic segmentation manifest themselves in a specific grouping of notions, in the way these notions are arranged and result in specific semantic structures of words. Thus, some notions can be expressed by one word in some language and by different words in another. For example, дерево and tree are partial equivalents because дерево as building material corresponds to the words “wood” and “timber”.

Extralinguistic reality is the basis of something which may be called an invariant meaning, variantly expressed in different languages: кожа – skin, leather. Actually, in a confrontation of a word in one language with what is usually considered its parallel in another we do not deal with words as a global semantic structure, that is lexemes. An English lexeme finds a parallel in a Russian lexeme only if it is a monosemantic word. Thus, the English word “valour” corresponds to the Russian доблесть. In most cases no correspondence between a lexeme in one language and a lexeme in another can be established. Rather we have a lexeme in one language and elements of different lexemes in the other. For example, “strange”: чужой, неизвестный; странный, необыкновенный; непривычный; сдержанный, холодный; “pattern”: образец, пример; модель, шаблон; выкройка; рисунок, узор; стиль, характер литературного произведения; отрез, купон на платье. One of the most important principles in the study of languages is the principle of equivalence. It implies a special sort of correspondence between the words of the two languages rather than absolute identity. The degree??????? in lexical and grammatical systems of the language. In such a case as the Russian рука and the English “hand” and “arm”, the degree of equivalence of the nominative meanings is somewhat different. We speak of the absolute equivalence of the Russian word to the English words and partial equivalence of each of them to the Russian word: сломать руку – break one’s arm; обжечь руку – burn one’s hand (arm); пожать друг другу руки – shake hands; протянуть руку – stretch one’s arm, give smb one’s hand, reach out; держать ребёнка на руках – hold the child in one’s arms; wave one’s hand. Russian phraseological units are parallel in English in this way: под рукой – at hand; приложить к чему-либо руку – to have a hand in smth; прибрать к рукам, завладеть – lay hands on upon smth; с пустыми руками – empty-handed; это дело его рук – that’s his work; это мне на руку – that fits right in with my plans; нам не хватает рабочих рук – we are short-handed; сидеть сложа руки – doing nothing; работать не покладая рук – to work one’s head off; его здесь на руках носят – they make a big fuss over him here; без вас я как без рук – I’m lost without you; всё из рук валится – I’m all thumbs today.

As we can judge from the examples, the Russian word рука can be rendered either by English words “hand”, “arm” or by means of other words, especially in phraseological units. As analysis of equivalence of separate words, that is a paradigmatic approach to the problem, proves once again that the polysemy of a word is best and most thoroughly shown in speech, oral or recorded. The word’s paradigmatic features are most readily discoverable in the syntagmatic relationships. Translation, therefore, is of special interest for a bilingual lexicographer, because a dictionary entry must give not only a direct equivalent to the word in the source language but also indicate some peculiarities of the source words usage, correspondingly translation. A translator is uniquely placed to decide which of the source language meanings can be used to render them in translation.

Human Translation Theories – Современные теории перевода

Roughly, the human translation theories may be divided into 3 main groups which quite conventionally may be called transformational approach, denotative approach, and communicative approach. This group of translation theories consists of many varieties which may have different names but they have one common feature: the process of translation is regarded as transformation (Бархударов, Латышев, Рецкер, Марчук, Комиссаров etc.). According to transformational approach, translation is viewed as the transformation of objects and structures of the source language into those of the target one. Transformation in translation is any replacement of a source language unit by its equivalent in the target language one. There can be distinguished 3 levels of substitutions: morphological substitutions, lexical and syntactic substitutions. At the morphological level morphemes of the source language are substituted for those of the target one. English word building suffixes -tion, -sion may be transformed into Russian suffixes: -ание, -ение, -ация. At the lexical level words and word combinations are substituted for those of the translation: space (пространство, космос), in blue mood (не в духе, в плохом настроении). At the syntactic level sentence structures of the source language are transformed into those of the target one. The syntactic transformations comprise a broad range of structural changes in the target text, starting with the reversal of the word order in a sentence and finishing with the DIVISION of the source sentence into 2 or more target ones. The above examples of transformations at various levels are the simplest. Real translation transformations are more complex. Every now and then a syntactic pattern in the source language is transformed into its equivalent in the target language at the morphological level and vice versa. This kind of transformation is especially frequent when translation involves an analytical and a synthetic language. For example, Russian case forms are rendered in English by means of relevant prepositions: to dig with a spade – копать лопатой. Hence, in such instances we observe transformation between different levels (morphological -> lexical and syntactic). According to the transformational approach, translation is a set of multilevel transformations of a text in one language into a text in another governed by specific transformation rules. Of course, there are dictionaries, grammars of the languages involved, perhaps, some matching word building patterns. They are helpful, all translators use them to a greater or lesser extent but the question is whether they are sufficient.

In accordance with the transformational approach, they are both primary and deduced observed events (language forms) in translation. Word forms are primary observed events, whereas lexical meanings and grammar rules are those deduced from the primary ones. The observed events are interrelated – words and word forms of different languages are experimentally interrelated through the equivalence of their concepts and the relations are shown in bilingual dictionaries; the interrelation of grammar forms and rules is also established in experiments and shown in the relevant translation manuals. The selection of equivalence of words and grammar rules is governed by the context (text environment) which is also a set of events. All this means that within the framework of the transformational approach one may build up a formal model of translation using observed events and rules for their interrelation and a formal model makes the translation problem a well-defined one.

The transformational approach has been confirmed by the operation of machine translation systems. In some cases, the transformational approach may come handy, but sometimes it is not appropriate for translation; for instance, the translation of almost every piece of poetry or high style prose cannot be explained by mere substitution of source language unit by a target language one.

According to the denotative approach, during translation we deal with similar objects, events (word forms of the matching languages) and concepts deduced from those observed events, however, as opposed to the transformational approach, the relationship between the source language and target language word forms is occasional rather than regular. To illustrate this difference, let us consider the following examples: The sea is warm tonight – Сегодня вечером море тёплое; A stitch in time saves nine – Дорога ложка к обеду. In the first sentence the equivalences are regular and the concept pertaining to the whole sentence may be divided into those relating to its individual components (words and word combinations). In the second instance, however, equivalence between the original sentence and its translation is occasional, that is worth only for this case; and the concept pertaining to the whole sentence cannot be divided into individual components. The indivisible nature of the concept characteristic of the second example may be proved by literal translation of the sentence: стежок, сделанный вовремя, экономит девять. It is much more difficult to model translation based on denotative approach. Conceptual (semantic) models are more ambiguous than those based on verbal equivalences. There is only one case where denotative theory does explain translation: that of occasional verbal expressions related to indivisible concepts, such as idioms, poetry etc.

Communicational Approach to Translation. The communicational theory of translation was suggested by O. Kate (?) and is based on the notions of communication and thesaurus. Communication may be defined as an act of sending and receiving some information which is called a message. It is necessary to distinguish between two kinds of thesauruses: language thesaurus and subject thesaurus. Language thesaurus is a system of our knowledge about the language which we use to formulate a message, whereas subject thesaurus is a system of our knowledge about the content of the message. It’s very important to understand that thesauruses of message sender and recipient may be different to a greater or lesser degree and that is why we sometimes do not understand each other even when we think we are speaking one and the same language. In monolingual communication there are 2 actors: sender and receiver, and each of them uses 2 thesauruses. In bilingual communication we have 3 actors: sender, recipient and intermediary. The translator has 2 language thesauruses: source and target one, and performs 2 functions: decodes the source message and encodes the target one to be received by the end user of the translation. The following sentence can have different translation versions depending on translation situation: Several new schools appeared in this area – В районе появилось несколько новых косяков рыбы; В районе появилось несколько новых школ.

Let us assume that the message sender being a fisherman and using relevant subject thesaurus, by “schools” meant a large number of fish swimming together rather than institutions for educating children, and the correct translation had to be 1. Whereas the translator who presumably didn’t have relevant information in his subject thesaurus translated “schools” as institutions for educating children which naturally led to miscommunication. The above example shows a case of miscommunication based on the insufficiency of extralinguistic information. However, there are also cases of miscommunication caused by the insufficiency of linguistic information. These are inadequate translation of verbal tenses, incorrect choice of lexical equivalence and other errors well represented in translation manuals. This example is of course an exaggeration but it clearly illustrates a dividing line between linguistic and extralinguistic information in translation as visualized by the communicational approach.

The communicational approach to translation: translation is a message sent by a translator to a particular user and the appropriateness of the translation depends on sufficiency and similarity of their background information rather than only on linguistic correctness.

Generally speaking, all theories of human translation try to explain the process of translation to a degree of precision required for formalization but no explanation is complete so far.

The transformational approach quite convincingly suggests that in many languages …regular, syntactic, morphological and word building structures which may be successfully matched with their analogies in another language. The transformational approach forms the basis of machine translation design. Almost any machine translation system uses the principal of matching the observed events (language forms) of the languages involved in translation. The denotative approach treats different languages as closed systems with specific relationships between formal and conceptual aspects, hence, in the process of translation links between the forms of different languages are established via conceptual equivalence. The communicational approach highlights a very important aspect of translation – the matching of thesauruses. Translation may achieve its ultimate target of rendering a piece of information only if the translator knows the user’s language and the subject matter of the translation well enough. That is: if the translator’s language and subject thesauruses are sufficiently complete. Any theory recognizes 3 basic components of translation and different approaches differ only in the accents placed on this or that component. So, basic components are:

1. meaning of a word or word combination;

2. equivalence of this meaning expressed in a word or word combination of the target language;

3. extralinguistic information pertaining to the original meaning and to its conceptual equivalent after the translation

The hierarchy of this method may be different. Thus, in oral consecutive translation the priority is given to denotative method. …formulates a translation which is very seldom a structural copy of the source language speech. In simultaneous translation, as opposed to consecutive, priority is given to direct transformations since a simultaneous interpreter simply has no time for conceptual analysis. The matching language forms and concepts are regular and irregular; that seemingly the same concepts are interpreted differently by the speakers of different languages and different translation uses.