§6. Using the ellipses

Like in Russian, the ellipses indicate the omission of words or sentences within quoted matter. But unlike Russian, if the omission takes place at the end of the sentence, four points are used: As George Bernard Shaw remarked, “Liberty means responsibility. … Most men dread it.”

NOTES TO PART III

PART IV. SEMANTIC PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION

Chapter 1. WORD CHOICE IN TRANSLATION

§1. TYPES OF TRANSLATION EQUIVALENTS

Source language words and target language words may interact in different ways. They may correspond to each other as monoequivalents or asregular equivalents. A monoequivalent is a regular equivalent of the source language word that can consist of one word or be a phrase:

oxygen - кислород

to seine – ловить неводом рыбу

the House of Commons – палата общин

Mostly, regular equivalents are terms or proper names.

Multi-equivalents arevariable equivalents, which means that to translate a source language word one has to make choice of the equivalents having the same meaning. Multi-equivalents can be monosemantic:

curtsey – реверанс, приседание

concise – краткий, сжатый

уверить – to assure, convince, persuade

Or they can be polysemantic, each meaning having one or more equivalents:

essence – 1. сущность, существо; суть;

2. эссенция

представить – 1. to present, offer;

2. to produce, submit;

3. to introduce, present (to);

4. to recommend, put forward (for);

5. to represent, display;

6. to perform, play.

Each of the variable equivalents conveys the meaning of the target language word partially: e.g., claimant – претендент (на престол), candidate – претендент (на должность), suitor – претендент (на руку женщины), contender – претендент (на победу в спорте), challenger – претендент (на победу в шахматах).

What are the reasons that make it impossible to have monoequivalents in abundance?

• Semantic structures of words in different languages are not the same.

• Word connotative meanings are not the same in different languages.

• Interlinguistic word meanings are different, which results in the word combinability.

• Words acquire specific meanings in context.

§2. Interaction of word semantic structures

The semantic structure of a word is a set of regular meanings featured in a dictionary’s entry. Words corresponding to each other in their primary meanings are usually non-equivalent in other meanings, which is seen in their word combinations. Let us, for example, compare the translation of the words brother and брат. They correspond in their primary meaning (“a man or boy with the same parents as another person”) but in other meanings there are different equivalents:

Брат : 2. a son of one’s aunt or uncle = двоюродный брат – cousin

3. people sharing the same job = братья-писатели – fellow-writers

4. familiar or patronizing term of address = Ну, брат…– old man, my lad

5.a man whose job is to care for people who are ill or injured, esp. in hospital = брат милосердия – male nurse

6. a person = (два яблока) на брата – (two apples) a head

Brother: 2. A person sharing the same job = brother in arms – собрат по оружию

brother-doctor – коллега-доктор

3. one who lives in a monastery or convent but is at a low level and usually does the simplest work for the organization = lay brother – послушник

4. a man who is married to one's sister, or to the sister of one's wife or husband = brother-in-law – (sister’s husband) зять, (wife's brother) шурин, (husband's brother) деверь, (wife's sister's husband) свояк

Thus, difference in the semantic structures is the reason why there is no full equivalence between the source and target language words.