24. Translator’s false friends. Classification. The factors influencing translator’s choice of equivalent.

International words have the same meanings in different languages. In most cases, however, the semantics of such words do not coincide and they should rather be named "pseudointernational".

The pseudointernational words can be classified in two main groups. First, there are words which are similar in form but completely different in meaning.

Second, there are many pseudointernational words which are not fully interchangeable though there are some common elements in their semantics. They may become the false friends if the translator substitutes one of them for the other without due regard to the difference in their meaning. There are factors that can preclude the possibility of using the formally similar word as an equivalent:

1. The semantic factor resulting from the different subsequent development of the words borrowed by the two languages from the same source.

2. The stylistic factor resulting from the difference in the emotive or stylistic connotation of the correlated words.

3. The co-occurrence factor reflecting the difference in the lexical combinability rules in the two languages. The choice of an equivalent is often influenced by the usage preferring a standard combination of words to the formally similar substitute.

4. The pragmatic factor reflecting the difference in the background knowledge of the members of the two language communities which makes the translator reject the formal equivalent in favour of the more explicit or familiar variant.

25. Figure out the role of translation proofreading/edition and specify its stages.

When four stages of written translation are completed the translated text must go through edition and proofreading which is done by a definite person who did not translate this text.

Editing: At this stage, the task of an editor is revising, segment by segment, that the translator has really made accurate translation of the original and has fully understood the text and has not missed any of the information, and that there has not been any omission.

However, when an editor is given a text to translate he must first of all read it up to the end without looking at the original. While reading first time, an editor underlines the fragments which are seemed to be unclear or sound strange from the point of target language. When suspected fragments are defined an editor can take an original to verify them.

Correction (Proofreading): This final review focuses primarily on the idea that the translated text sounds natural in the target language, in addition to detecting possible inconsistencies regarding capitalization and punctuation. Also, when dealing with documents that have a particular format, he or she may often detect typographical errors, issues related to images and fonts, etc.

26. What are the strategies in translating abbreviations and acronyms?

Abbreviations and acronyms

Acronyms and abbreviations are among the most attention-grabbing and potentially intimidating aspects of a technical text for translators. The primary motivation for using acronyms and abbreviations is brevity and to avoid repeated use of the same words. We can group abbreviations and acronyms into a number of categories:

• International Organizations, such as NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), EU (European Union), WHO (World Health Organization) National Organization, ICTU (Irish Congress of Trade Unions), BSI (Brit¬ish Standards Institution),

• Name of Companies, such as ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries), RENFE, (Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Espaholes), AIB (Allied Irish Bank)

• Technical Entities, such as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), GP (General Practitioner), Laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation)

• Geographical Locations, such as USA (United States of America), UAE (United Arab Emirates),

• Latin, such as q.e.d. (quod erat demonstrandum), i.e. (id est)

• Ad-hoc or specially coined acronyms, usually only used in a particular context or document and for a finite period of time.

The way in which they are dealt with is determined by various contextual factors such as the text type and age, readership, importance, the lifespan of the acronym and how well known they are.

Strategies

Naturally, the first and most appropriate strategy is to check the Internet to see if there is an existing authoritative translation. If you find one, use it. If not, you can do one of the following:

• Transfer. If the acronym is sufficiently well known you can retain the original SL acronym in the target text

• Reconstitute: Translate the full name into the TL and use this as the basis for creating an acronym in the TL This strategy is more suited to non-specialized acronyms, general texts or ad-hoc acronyms

• Define: If there is no way of transcribing or reconstituting the SL acronym, if it is not possible to reconstitute the acronym or where it makes more sense in the text to explain the acronym, you can replace the acronym with a definition. This is quite a useful method for rendering Latin abbreviations and acronyms into language where Latin is not used or is unknown.

• Combine: A combination of the transfer and definition strategies. This will usually only need to be done once in a text when the acronym is first used; afterwards, the SL acronym can be used on its own.

• Write out SL: A much less common approach which involves replacing an acronym with its full name in the SL. This approach would be appropriate in higher level texts where the target audience is familiar with or interested in the source culture and language.

• Translate: If an official or widely used translation of the full name exists and there is a corresponding acronym, they can be used instead of the SL acronym.