The notion of translation. Significance of translation.
Translation as a means of interlingual communication.
Literal translation.
Verbal translation.
Word-for-word translation.
Interlinear translation.
Literary translation.
Ways of translation.
Kinds of translation.
Machine translation.
The notion of translation. Significance of translation.
Тranslation is communication of the meaning of a sours-language (SL) text by means of an equivalent target-language (TL) text. Тranslation turns a text of SL into a correct and understandable version of TL without losing the suggestion of the original.
Conventionally, it is suggested that translators should meet three requirements, namely: familiarity with the SL, familiarity with the TL and familiarity with the subject matter to perform the job successfully.
Successful translation is indicative of how closely it lives up to the expectations as: reprodusing exactly as for as possible the meaning of the ST using naturalforms of the TL in such a way as is appropriate to the kind of text being translated and expressing all aspects of the meaning closelyand readily understandable to the intended audience/reader.
Technically translation is a process to abstract the meaning of a text from its current forms and reproduce that meaning in different forms of another language.
Linguistically, translation consist of studying the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation and cultural context of the SL, analyzing it and then reconstructing the same meaning using the lexicon and grammatical structure which are appropriate in the TL.
Тranslation is not merely linguistic conversion or transformation between languages but it involves accommodation in score of culture, politics, aesthetics and many other factors.
Translation as a means of interlingual communication.
The translator makes possible an exchange the information between the users of different languages by creating a target text (TT) which has an identical communicative value with the source text (ST).
The translation isn’t fully identical with the ST as to its form encounter due to the limitations imposed by the formal and semantic difference between the SL and TL.
The translation receptor however identifies the TT to all instances in purposes with the ST structurally , semantically and functionally.
The functionally identification: the translations functions as if it was the original text (OT) (published, criticized…)
The structurally identification: should follow the OT there should be no change in the sequence of narration or in the arrangement of the text.
The semantic identification: it’s presumed the translation has the same meaning as the OT.
No exchange of information is possible if there is discrepancy between the ST and TT. The translator is allowed to resort to different transformation if direct translation is impossible. The translator is expected to avoid any interference with the process of communication between the source and the translation receptor.
Literal translation.
Literal translation – is the rendering of text from one language to another; is a translation that follows closely the form of the SL. Literal translation denotes technical translation of scientific, technical, technological or legal text. Literal translations are sometimes prepared for a writer who is translating work written in a language he doesn’t know. Literal translations can also denote a translation that represents the precise meaning of the original text but doesn’t attempt to convey its style, beauty or poetry.
Literal translation implies that it is probably full of errors, since the translator has made no effort to convey, for example, correct idioms or shades of meaning. Literal translating, however, can pervert the sense of the SL lexemes or sentences when their lingual form accidentally coincides with some other language lexemes having quite different meanings: artist митець, художник (rarer артист); decoration відзнака, нагорода (and not декорація); matrass колба (and not матрац); replica точна копія (and not репліка), etc. Hence, literal translating has some restrictions in its employment and does not always help to render the lexical meaning of words or even morphemes
Verbal translation.
Verbal translation is also employed at lexeme/word level. But unlike literal translating it never conveys the orthographic or the sounding form of the source language units, but their denotative meaning only: fearful страшний, fearless безстрашний, helpless безпорадний, incorrect неправильний, mistrust недовір'я (недовіра), superprofit надприбуток, non-interference невтручання, weightlessness невагомість etc.
All the words above are practically translated at the lexico-morphological level, as their lexical meanings and morphological stems are identical to those of the English words (cf. help-less без-порадний, mis-trust не-довір'я, super-profit над-прибуток, etc.).
Verbal translating of polysemantic words permits a choice among some variants which is practically impossible in literal translating, which aims only at maintaining the literal form.
Thus, the Ukrainian word автомат can have the following equivalent variants in English:
automatic machine;
slot-machine;
automatic telephone;
submachine gun (tommy gun).
Similarly, the Englsih word ban/cwhen out of a definite context may have the following equivalent variants in Ukrainian: 1. берег (річки); 2. банк; 3. вал/насип; 4. мілина; 5. замет; 6. крен, віраж(авіац.); 1. поклади (корисних копалин). The literal variant/equivalent of the noun bank in Ukrainian can be, naturally, «банк» only.
Verbal translation is widely employed first of all at language level, i.e., when the lexical meaning of separate words is to be identified. A graphic example of verbal translation is presented in dictionaries which list the lexical meanings of thousands of separate words. Verbal translation is also employed for the sake of discriminating the meanings of some words at the lessons, with the aim of identifying the meaning of the unknown words (when translating sentences or passages).