Lexical aspects of translation

Since the English and Ukrainian languages are typologically so different no translation can be successful without major changes in lexical and grammatical structures of the target language text.

Types of translation correspondence:

Translation science maintains close links with its parent science – contrastive linguistics.

According to the findings of contrastive linguistics the correlations between the lexical and grammatical forms of the source language and target language fall into 3 types:

• Complete coincidence;

• Partial coincidence:

• Complete discrepancy;

These linguistic correlations are merit in the theory of regular correspondences suggested by prominent Russian linguist who focuses on the 3 major types of translation correspondence:

• Lexical and idiomatic equivalence;

• Various contextual substitutions;

• All sorts of translational transformations.

Equivalents are the unambiguous one to one correspondences identical or very close in their referential meanings and for that reason normally independent in the context. They are prominent in terminology and proper names, which tend to have 1 to 1 correspondence in the context.

In a vast variety of occasions equivalence can have correspondence which differs in components and grammatical structures.

e.g. police reconstruction – слідчий експеримент, sole trader – приватний підприємець, zero gravity – невагомість

The majority of equivalences are the 2-way equivalents (molecule) but in some cases we come across 1-way equivalents (historic – історичний can be historical)

Idiomatic equivalence is the method of translation by which every componential part of the source language idiom is retained in the target language unchanged:

e.g. neither fish nor flesh, time is money

Variants represent multiple ways of rendering the meaning of the source language lexical unit. There are mostly target language synonyms.

Variants – the target language lexical units having identical or very similar core meanings while differing from each other in the shades of meaning.

e.g. old stocking – старий

old face - старече

old frend – давній

Depending on the context, the same text can be translated in different ways.

Variants are mostly given in the bilingual dictionaries. But the dictionary can sometimes be misleading.

e.g. general as «генерал»

Many words in both languages have structural variants that are virtually identical in meaning but they’re nearly identical semantically:

e.g. to hit – дати по вухови/завдати удару/завдати військовий удар

The translator’s choice of the possible variants depends mostly on the context and the nature of the nominated objects:

e.g. good boy – молодий, гарний хлопчик і молодець про собаку;

e.g. room – місце, кімната/готельний номер/покої королеви.

The choice of one or another variant greatly depends on the genre of the text:

e.g. to advise – to tell somebody what you think they should do, specifically when you know them while in business correspondence or formal speech it means to inform somebody about something.

Thus it’s a part of the whole string of synonyms: to inform, to satisfy, to let somebody know, to tell, to advise.

When choosing one of the possible variants out of these range the translator is guided by the requirements of the genre and chooses the last one:

e.g. we’ll advise you of any changes in the delivery day

Variants are considerably different in all forms of implications derived from lexical and grammatical elements as well as pragmatic context:

e.g. what’s new with you? Які новини? Що у вас нового? Що у тебе новенького?

A contextual substitution is a target language unit which is of different referential meaning than the source language unit nevertheless performing in a given context similar communication function thus satisfying the requirements of communicational equivalence.

Unlike the equivalents and variants context substitution are normally not given in the dictionaries. They are chosen from the semantically or topically correlated lexical environment in the respective languages:

e.g. Newton was such a giant on the scientific field – був світилом

All sorts of communicational clichés are also function as contextual substitutions:

e.g. Please, find enclosed and agenda of the meeting – при цьому надсилаємо порядок денний.