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Inroduction to Translation Studies Answered Exam Questions English II/3

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Fontos rovidítések:

@ACbefore common era ACcommon era

DTS-descriptive translation studies

SL-source language

ST-source text

TL-target language

TT-target text

1. Translation definition (27oldalt!!!!! olvassak utána)

It is a process or activity of translating words from one language into words from another. And during this process, we are able to collect information or data.

The purpose of the translation is to convey the original meaning of the message, taking into account the cultural and regional differences between the both parties.

In the beggining translations were made mostly for pleasure by writes, poest and inviduals with the taste for literature or science. But in the second half of the 20th century the passion of translating become a profession on its own. Universities, collages and other educational facilities started teaching it, this created new requirements for theory formulation.

On linguistic aspects of translation

•Rewording - an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language

•Translation properan interpretation of verbal by means of some other language

•Transmutationan interpretation of verbal signs by means of sings of non-verbal signs systems

Translation is a mental activity in which a meaning of given linguistic discourse is rendered from one language to another. It is the act of transferring the linguistic entities from one language in to their equivalents in to another language. Translation is an act through which the content of a text is transferred from the source language in to the target language (Foster, 1958). The language to be translated is called the source language (SL), whereas the language to be translated into or arrived at is called the target language (TL). The translator needs to have good knowledge of both the source and the target language, in addition to a high linguistic sensitivity

as he should transmit the writer's intention, original thoughts and opinions in the translated version as precisely and faithfully as possible

2. Significance of translating/interpreting

Definition of interpreting

Interpreting is a service that happens at the moment. The only resource of an interpreter is experience, good memory and quick reflexes.

Interpreters work on projects that include live translation: Conferences and meetings, live TV. Different between translation and interpreting

The key differences between interpretation and translation are found in each service's medium and skill set: interpreters translate spoken language orally, while translators translate the written word. Both require deep cultural and linguistic understanding, expert knowledge of subject matter, and the ability to communicate clearly.

Significance of translating / interpreting

Translation is a tool for different nationalities to get to know each others culture and to communicate between them.

Our history developed by passing on the information from generation to generation, with the help of translations this information exchange extended to a nation to nation level.

With the translation of litreature the cultural exchange of the bordering nations made them alike. Finally the power of translating and interpreting made international realations so strong that we are able to maintain things like the Europen Union.

3. Translation in teaching of foreign languages (117 oldalt scanelt könyv!!)

A translation is by definition text-bound, and confined to the two skills of reading and writing. Translation is a difficult skill which must be done well in order to be productive and rewarding. You need a lot of motivation, a very good knowledge of the language and the culture around it. Translating can hurt more than help sometimes because a bad translation can lose its meaning and can make you even beileve things that the original text was against.

And that is the cause of the need for good translations in teaching foreign languages expecially.

4. Basic translation theories

We need to know three main theories:

•Transformation Approach

•Denotative Approach

•CommunicationApproach Transfomation Approach

The transformational theories consist of many varieties which may have different names but they all have one common feature: the process of translation is regarded as transformation. According to the transformational approach translation is viewed as the transformation of objects and structures of the Source Language into those of the Target Language.

In the transformational approach we shall distinguish three levels of substitutions:

• -morphological equivalents;

•- lexical equivalents ;

•-syntactical equivalents. In the process of translation:

•at the morphological level all morphemes (both word-building and wordchanging) of the TL are substituted for those of the SL.E.g. smallest (has two morphemes –small is a word building morpheme and –est is a word changing morpheme. In the process of translation we substitute these morphemes by their equivalents in the TL;

•at the lexical level words and word combinations of the SL are substituted by the

words of the TL;

• At the syntactic level syntactic structures of the SL are substituted by those of the TL.

Denotative Approach

According to the denotative approach the process of translation is not just substitution but consists of the mental operations:

•-translator reads( hears) the text in the SL;

•-translator finds a notion and concept that correspond to this message;

•- translator formulates a message in the TL relevant to the above notion and concept. If we use this approach during translation and are not taken into account similar words in another language, as opposed to the transformational approach the relationship between the source word and the target word is occasionali rather than regular.

Communication Approach

When communicating we inform others about something we know The communicational theory of translation was suggested by O.Kade

Communication may be defined as an act of sending and receiving some information which is called a message.

Information sent may be of any kind: gestures, words, pictures, but we shall limit ourselves to verbal communication only.

That is in order to formulate a message we use our system of interrelated data which we call a thesaurus.

We shall 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 a subject thesaurus is a system of our knowledge about the content of the message.

The translator should have two language thesauruses ( the TL and the SL) because he should decode the source message and encode the target one.

5. Translation ranking

With each routine translation, it is noticeable that there are different rankings for the translation One rank of translation consists of rather simple substitutions whereas another involves relatively sophisticated and not just purely linguistic analysis.

Several experiments have been carried out to develop the translation theory(J.Firth, Y.Retsker, J.Catford, V.Komissarov):

•among those one of the most popular in the former Soviet Union was the “theory of translation equivalence level (TEL)” developed by V.Komissarov.

•according to this theory the translation process fluctuates passing from formal interlanguage transformations to the domain of conceptual interrelations.

•according to Catford a certain set of translation tools characteristic of a certain level constitutes a rank of translation and a translation performed using that or another set of tools is called rank bound.

All of these theories try to explain the exact practical process of translation but this has failed to this day.

Transformational approach

Quite convincingly any language there are certain regular syntactic, morphological, and wordbuilding structures which may be successfully matched with their analogies in another language during translation.

It forms the basis of machine translation design – almost any machine translation system uses the principle of matching forms of the languages involved in translation.

The difference is only in the forms that are matched and the rules of matching. Denotative approach

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.

In oral translation priority is given to denotative method, because a translator is first listening to the speaker and only after some time formulates the translation, which is very seldom a structural copy of the source speech.

Communicational approach

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 users’ language and the subject matter of the translation well enough. This may self-evident, but should always be kept in mind, because all translation mistakes result from the insufficiencies in the thesauruses.

All theories discussed recognize the following three basic components of translation:

•Meaning of a word or word combination in the source language.

•Equivalence of this meaning expressed in a word or word combination of the target language .

•Extralinguistic information pertaining to the original meaning and/or its conceptual equivalent after the translation.

6. Translation equivalence and equivalents

The principle of equivalence is based on the mathemaical law of transivity that reads : if A is equal to C and B is equal to C and B, then B equals A

As applied to translation, equvalance means that if a word or word combination of one language (A) corresponds to certain concept (C) and a word or word combination of anouther languages (B) corresponds to the same concept (C) these words or word combination are considered equvalent

So, the words that you find in a dictionary as translation of the given foreign language word are not the universal substitutes of this world in your language. These translation (equivalents) are worth for specific cases which are yet be determined of the translator.

The general rule of translation

The general rule of translation reads: the longer is the source text, the bigger is a chance to find proper and correct translation equivalent.

Modern translation theory suggests two basic grades of translation equivalents:

a)Full Translation Equivalents

b)Partical Translation Equivalents

Sematic similarity between the source and target text is desirable, but again it is not an ultimate goal of a translator

What is really important for translation adequacy is the pragmatic equivalence.

7. Transformations in translation

At the sentence level, the most common transformations every translator makes are:

1)omission, 2) addition, 3) transposition, 4) change of grammatical forms, 5) loss compensation, 6) concretization, 7) generalization 8) antonymic translation, 9)

meaning extension, 10) metonymic translation, 11) sentence integration, and 12) sentence fragmentation.

These transformations are caused by differences in the grammar and vocabulary of the source language (SL) and target language (TL). In order to avoid an inadequate, word-for-word translation (grammatical “over-literal rendering”) it is necessary to apply translating grammatical transformations. As a result a literal translation is adapted to the standards of the language of translation and becomes adequate. Under grammar transformation one envisages a change of the grammatical characteristics of a word, word combination or a sentence in a translation.

They differentiate a few grammatical transformations: a transposition or permutation, a replacement or substitution, addition, exclusion, complex transformation, generalization, integral transformation etc. Here are some examples of them cited below. Permutation is a grammatical transformation due to which the word order in a word combination or a sentence changes, e.g:

1.Omission.

2.Addition.

3.Transposition. Transposition involves changing the order of words in the target text (TT) as compared to the Source text (ST).

4.Change of grammatical forms.

5.Loss-of-meaning compensation involves adding to or reinforcing a TT in one place to compensate for something that hasn't been translated in a different place in the ST:

6.Concretization is used when something in the TL is usually expressed using concepts with narrower meaning or when preserving the original concepts with broader meaning would result in an awkward translation:

7.Generalization is used when something in the TL is usually expressed using

concepts with broader meaning or when pre­serving the original concepts with narrower

meaning would result in an awkward translation:

8.Antonymic translation involves trans­lating a phrase or clause containing a negation using a phrase or clause that does not contain a negation or vice versa: I don't think you're right.

9.Meaning extension or sense development involves translating a cause by its effect or vice versa:

10. Metonymic translation. A metonymic translation is similar to meaning extension.

8.Basic translation devices

Basic translation devices are: 1.partitioning 2.integration 3.transposition 4.replacement 5.addition 6.omission

These devices are replied as tools to ensure adequate translation. In translation of poetry a translator is bound to use a more or less standard set of devices, which helps to convey the ideas of the source text in the best possible way.

Although the choice of particular devices depends on the text type genre and style as well as on the translation variety (oral, written, consecutive, simultaneous).

Partitioning is either replacing in translation of the source sentence by two or more target ones or converting a simple source sentence into a compound or complex target one.

Integration is an opposite of partitioning. It implies combining two or more source sentences into one target sentence. Forxample: Elena Philipyeva loves her roles and even misses them should too much time pass without performing them.

Transposition is a peculiar variety of inner patitioning intransaltion meaning a change in the order of the target sentence syntactic elements (subject, predicate, and object) as compound with that of the source sentence dictated either by peculiarities of the target language syntax or by the communication intend. E.g. malasses buckets appeared from nowhere.

Replacement is any change in the target text at the morphological lexical and syntactic levels of the language, when the elements of certain source paradigms are replaced by different elements of target paradigms. F.ex:.He used to come to Italy each spring.

1.replacement of noun number and verb tense and voice paradigms. e.g. replacing singular form by plural and vise verse; replacement of active voice by passive? Replacement of future by present; past by present

2.replacement of parts of speech (the most common is replacing Russian nouns by English verbs, when translating into English)

3.replacement in translation of a negative statement by an affirmative one is an efficient device called antonymous translation

Addition in translation is a device intended for the compensation of structural elements implicitly present in the source text or paradigm forms missing in the target language.

(According “to Times” – по данным газеты Таймс)

9. Factors influencing the choice of equivalents

The guiding principle of the modern theory of translation is the communicative approach to translation. Under this approach, translation is defined as "a kind of linguistic mediation in which to create the TL text, communicative equivalent to the original" [Commissars, 1990, s.4445]. In the process of communication is an exchange of statements. Any statement is constructed from linguistic units, each of which has its own significance and represents certain information. The content of the statements does not exist apart from the values of linguistic units, of which it is composed, although it is not completely reduced to the simple sum of these values. Besides the fact that linguistic units in the utterance together express functionalcontextual aspects of its content, they contribute to the content and connotation, which is also included in the transmitted message. In different conditions of communication to the fore may make certain statements semantic elements, and then the choice of words becomes an important role in the content of the message. Translator does not deal with language systems and texts. The texts of grammatical and lexical factors are perceived in close connection and interaction. Thus, the function of the word and its specific value set in sentences or even in a wider context.However, speaking in different contexts, the word retains its semantic identity. The word is the smallest unit of language, capable of performing the function of the nominative and translated most of the operations associated with decoding and finding the best ways to nomination. The word is also a syntactically independent unit capable of performing communicative functions, to be a member of a proposal or offer.

10. Translation varieties

Generally speaking all translation varieties have much in common -similar approaches, similar translation means and devices. According to physical parameters of translation process, however, translation is di­vided into written translation (or simply translation) and oral (or inter­pretation).

Interpretation, in its turn, is traditionally divided into consecutive in­terpretation and simultaneous interpretation.

Written translation is also divided into several sub-categories de­pending on the genre of the text being translated, such as literary transla­tion (fiction, poetry and publicistic texts), translation of official docu­ments, etc.

In consecutive interpretation the interpretation follows the source utterance, whereas simultaneous interpretation is performed simultaneously with the original speech.

The equipment for simultaneous interpretation comprises ear­phones, a microphone and a sound-insulated booth which serves as the interpreter's work-place. Because of physical and mental strain simulta­neous interpretation is considered the hardest and most stressing inter­pretation variety that requires special skills and qualities. It is regarded as a top class of interpretation and demands special vocation and training.

Consecutive interpreter generally prefers denotative approach since it is virtually impossible to memorize the entirety of the long text passages being translated and translate close to the source text.

Simultaneous interpreter is bound to keep to transformational approach interpreting the source text by small fragments.

11. Ways of translating

Generally speaking, translators can choose from two methods of translating, namely direct, or literal, translation and oblique translation. In some translation tasks it may be possible to transpose the source language message element by element into the target language, because it is based on either parallel categories, in which we can speak of structural parallelism, or on parallel concepts, which are the result of metalinguistic parallelism. But translators may also notice gaps, or “lacunae” in the target language which must be filled by corresponding elements, so that the overall impression is the same for the two messages.

It may, however, also happen that, because of structural or metalinguistic differences, certain stylistic effects cannot be transported into the target language without upsetting the syntactic order, or even the lexis. In this case it is understood that more complex methods have to be used which at first may look unusual but which nevertheless can permit translators a strict control over the reliability of their work: these procedures are called oblique translation methods. In the listing which follows, the first three procedures are direct and the others are oblique.

12. Literary translation (42 oldalt táblázat majd nézd át)

Literary translation represents the highest level of a translator’s activity. It can be either literary artistic or literary proper depending on the type of the matter under translation.