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Theory and Practice of Translation Seminar 1. Language And Extralinguistic World.

1. What are the basic elements of the relationship between a language and extralinguistic world?

2. What is a language sign, a concept and a denotatum? Give defini­tions. Show the relation between them?

3. What is a lexical meaning, a connotation and an association? Give definitions and examples.

4. What is the range of application of a word? Give examples.

5. What are the main sources of translation ambiguity stemming from the sign-concept relationship?

Exercises

Ex. 1. Using a dictionary define the lexical meanings of the following words and word combinations. Find Ukrainian or English equivalents. Compare the lexical meanings of the English words and their Ukrainian equivalents and vice versa.

a) anticlimax; arms; bottom; bout; concert; concoct; date; detail; end; engineer; fulcrum; fun; the gist; give and take; world; worldly; peer pressure; peer-bonded; rapport; task force; track record; power broker; odds; home; war.

b) аматор - любитель - дилетант; аналізувати - розглядати -розбирати; банкір - фінансист; засновник - основоположник - фундатор - батько; малий - невеликий - нечисленний – обмежений - мізерний - нікчемний; неймовірний - неправдоподібний – дикий - парадоксальний - анекдотичний; простий - щирий - простодуш­ний - грубий - звичайний.

Ех. 2. Describe connotations of the following words and word combinations. Suggest Ukrainian translations with similar connotations.

malady - disease - illness; unusual - off-beat; efforts - travails; work - toil, gun - piece; corpse - stiff; rich - well-to-do; quit - buzz off; liqui­date - iron out.

Ex. 3. Consider regular associations between English words (concepts) in the word combinations given below, suggest Ukrainian equivalents of the latter. Observe similarity or difference of the associations in the Ukrainian equiva­lents.

white knight; white heat; yellow press; common sense; die hard; soft (hard) figures; pipe dream; red tape

Ex. 4. Suggest the missing parts of the expressions below; say where the associations are similar in English and Ukrainian.

.... Tom, ... Tom; ... Rouges, ... Rouge; ... sky, .... sky; .... apple; ... Apple, apple ..., apple ..... Apple ..., Apple, apple ..., apple ...

Ex. 5. Take three homonyms and synonyms in Ukrainian, translate them into English, point to the cases of similar and different use.

Theory and Practice of Translation

Seminar 2.

Language System: Paradigms And Syntagmas.

Language As a Means Of Communication

1. What are the two main planes of a language? What is the relationship between them?

2. What levels are traditionally distinguished in a language? Give ex­amples of the objects of each level.

3. What is a language paradigm? Give examples of lexico-semantic and grammatical paradigms.

4. What is a syntagma? Give a definition.

5. What is the language system? Give a definition.

Exercises

Ex. 1. Give the elements of the following lexico-semantic paradigms.

a) furniture, colors, time, times of the day, seasons

b) вибори; судова система; переговори; фінанси

Ех. 2. Compare the grammatical paradigms which enter the following Eng­lish words and their Ukrainian equivalents.

house, man, easy, do-little, easy-going, white

Ex. 3. In the text below, name as many lexico-semantic and grammatical paradigms as you can find.

BOTH SIDES WILL MAKE SURE AMERICAS CULTURE WARS

CONTINUE

The Internaitonal Herald Tribune. April 12, 2001. By Neal Gabler.

The culture wars that so enlivened the 1980s and 1990s in America are said to be over. The savage fights that raged full-scale as recently as two years ago over gay rights, abortion, gun control, environmental pro­tection and general permissiveness, and that culminated in the Antietam of culture battles, Bill Clinton's impeachment and trial, seem to have just petered out.

Pundits say the combatants, exhausted from all the verbal shelling, have accepted compromise rather than press on for total victory, and this has led to a new spirit of accommodation. One observer writes that the «crackle of cultural gunfire is now increasingly distant.»

It makes you wonder what country they're living in.

Ex. 4. Compare the paradigm sets used to form the following English and Ukrainian sentences and paradigm elements activated in the syntagmas of these sentences.

Jack is an early riser. Джек рано встає.

Theory and Practice of Translation

Seminar 3.

Language as a means of communication.

Translation definition.

1. What is language communication? What actors does it involve?

2. What is monolingual communication? What is bilingual communi­cation? Give examples.

3. Describe translation as a special kind of bilingual communication. Why is it called special?

4. What is peculiar about a language as a code? Which factors specify the meaning of a message?

5. What is context, situation and background information? Give defi­nition of context. Give examples of extralinguistic situations and items of background information that would clarify a message.

6. What interrelated components does translation include as an object of linguistic study?

7. Give short definition of translation (after Komissarov).

8. What are the interacting elements in translation? What elements are observable? What elements are deducible?

9. What interrelated operations does one fulfill in the process of trans­lation?

10. What three stages does one distinguish in translation?