A Detailed Analysis of Translation

Proverbs and Sayings represent pithy and formal unity and execute special, independent communicative tasks. These tasks are contained in reporting information about surrounding world in maximally general character, which are based on life experience and artistically processed content. Considering texts have a certain set of cognitive, emotional and aesthetic information and have own exclusive structure.

Thanks to generalization of their content they have acquired the status of the text, as they are collected and published in separate sources, where they are isolated from the context emerged, and still serve the source of information for people. Proverb is always possessed as ‘two-compound’ sentence, although its some components are submitted in curtailed form.

The author is information source which passes mini texts. When we become acquainted with such kind of text, we recognize the text objectiveness that is reported. Objectiveness of cognitive core of reporting information is provided in first and second cases with situational context, which is a common base of expertise for the source text and its recipient. A situational context is life experience, which everyone has and lets us recognize the authenticity of the report. This objectiveness is expressed with the verb in present tense form, subject collective semantics.

Because the content of the text differs with limited generalization, they almost never contain words with an unambiguous correlation. In proverbs, even personal names are collective in nature, so in translation they can be replaced by other names, which have the function of collectiveness.

Palette of means expressing emotional information is wide. Here you can meet emotionally colored evaluative vocabulary, words of elevated style, popular speech, rhetorical questions and exclamations, emotional inversions and so on. However, the brightest peculiarity of proverbs is specific character of authentic information, which it contains. Most of these texts represent artistic miniatures. Let us start with the phonetic, rhythmic features.

Words of these mini-texts often, especially in Germanic languages, are connected with special ornamental means – with initial alliteration-repetition of consonant or vowel at the beginning of two or more words. Moreover, these texts often rhythmical structured: they may be divided into two parts with the same rhythm, and the rhythm emphasizes logical formula of the identity, or its whole rhythm becomes like to one of the sillabo-tonical sizes. It emphasizes rhythmical structure and internal rhyme.

A proverb is text considerably more archaic, where there is no diverse of lexical means, but on the other hand archaism acquires ornamental meaning of forms and structure, that becomes lexical archaism.

I have transferred not all means of processing authentic information in proverbs and sayings, but such kind of their concentration which gives little volume of authentic importance evidence of these texts and makes translator worry in transferring them.

Before summarizing conclusions for the translator, it is necessary to remind that proverbs in TT may be found with ready correspondence – with the same content and the same form or with the same content but another form. In these cases the interpreter should search for equivalence which is not given. He composes a mini-text itself, focused on the dominant transfer.

Translation dominants of proverbs and sayings provide meaningful and communicative information, clothed in an art form. In this regard, the following means are on the first level

1. The present tense forms and the collective semantics of the subject as the cognitive information expression are transmitted with grammatical and lexical invariant correspondences;

2. Emotionally colored vocabulary, highly poetic vocabulary, colloquial vocabulary, archaisms , rhetoric questions and exclamations, emotional inversion are transferred with invariant correspondences and transformations preserving stylistic coloring;

3. Phonetic repetitions: alliteration, assonance, internal and final rhyme are transferred, as a rule, with the phoneme replacement into different one, but the principle and repetition position is remained, if necessary, the number of repetition components can be reduced.

4. Rhythmic pattern that is any size or the same rhythmic construction of two parts of logically identified shapes are transmitted in translation with the help of source text reproduction or with rhythmic pattern compensation where rhythm itself is kept.

5. Metaphor, synesthesia, oxymoron, zeugma and others are transmitted with invariant correspondence keeping the structure and image features.

6. Archaisms forms, structure, lexical archaisms are usually transmitted with the help of replacement in position (forms, vocabulary) or with the help of grammatical compensation (syntax).

There are various types of translation: an equivalent, calques or loan translation, a combined translation, analogue, etc. Equivalents for the most part are used because it turned out that the overwhelming majority of Kazakh proverbs coincide with the English ones in meaning and form. Although the Kazakhs differ widely from the English in the way of thinking, it is remarkable how many English proverbs have their counterparts in Kazakh language. Here are a few examples to emphasize this point.