Lecture 1. Problems and theoretical issues of translation

Міністерство освіти і науки України

Дніпропетровський національний університет

Імені Олеся Гончара

О.О. Конопелькіна

КОНСПЕКТ ЛЕКЦІЙ ІЗ ДИСЦИПЛІНИ “ПЕРЕКЛАД НАУКОВО-ТЕХНІЧНОЇ ІНФОРМАЦІЇ”

COURSE OF LECTURES ON “TRANSLATION OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION”

 

 

Дніпропетровськ

РВВ ДНУ

 

 

ББК81.432.1 – 923

К 64

Рецензенти:

канд. філол. наук, доц. Е.В. Неженець

канд. філол. наук, доц. В.В. Яшкіна

 

 

К 64 Конопелькіна, О.О. Конспект лекції із дисципліни “Переклад науково-технічної інформації” [Текст]/ О.О. Конопелькіна. – Д.: РВВ ДНУ, 2011. – 32с.

 

Уміщено лекційний матеріал із курсу “Переклад науково-технічної інформації”. В посібнику розглядаються різноманітні техники перекладу складних граматичних, лексичних, термінологічних та жанрово-стилістичних явищ англійського науково-технічного дискурсу.

Призначено для студентів ДНУ, які навчаються за програмою підготовки бакалаврів на англійському відділенні факультету української та іноземної філології та мистецтвознавства.

Course of lectures on “Translation of Sientific and technical Information” includes several lectures that would improve general linguistic awareness of the students and contain information which is a necessary prerequisite for proper understanding of translation.

The target audience of the guidlines is the students of the English Philology Department, the Faculty of Ukrainian and Foreign Philology and Fine Arts, Oles’ Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University

 

 

Темплан 2011, поз. 92

 

Навчальне видання

Олена Олексіївна Конопелькіна

Конспект лекцій із дисципліни

“Переклад науково-технічної інформації”

 

Редактор О.В. Бец

Техредактор Л.П. Замятіна

Коректор А.А. Гриженко

 

Підписано до друку 24.01.11. Формат 60х84/16. Папір друкарський. Друк плоский. Ум. друк. арк. 3,3. Ум. фарбовід. 3,3. Обл.- вид. арк. 4,2. Тираж 100 пр. Зам. №

РВВ ДНУ, просп. Гагаріна, 72, м. Дніпропетровськ, 49010.Друкарня ДНУ, вул. Наукова, 5, м. Дніпропетровськ, 49050

© Конопелькіна О.О., 2011

Introduction

At present time there is a great necessity to emphasize scientific-technical translation not only as a special kind of translation activity and special theory that investigates this kind of activity but as to assign scientific-technical translation a status of independent applied science. From the linguistic viewpoint peculiarities of scientific-technical are spread on its stylistics, grammar and vocabulary.

The main task of scientific-technical translation is a possiblity clear and precise bringing of the information to the reader. This can be achieved by logical interpretation of actual material withougt explicit emotionality. The style of scientific-technical materials can be identified as formally logical.

Scientific-technical texts reveal a great number of grammar pecularities. The most typical lexical feature of scientific-technical materials is terms and terminology saturation as well as presence of lexical structures and acronyms. A special place in such materials is the text oriented not only for these group language speakers but for representatives of a certain professional group with certain extra linguistic knowledge.

 

Lecture 1. Problems and theoretical issues of translation.

 

Translation problems can be divided into linguistic problems and cultural problems: the linguistic problems include grammatical differences, lexical ambiguity and meaning ambiguity; the cultural problems refer to different situational features. Culture constitues another major problem that faces translators. An unadequate model of translated pieces of literature may give misconception about the original.

Translation is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language and the production, in another language, of an equivalent text that communicates the same message. Translator must take into account a number of constraints, including context, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, their idioms and others factors. Consequently, as has been recognized at least since the time of the translator Martin Luther, one translates best into the language that one knows best. Traditionally traslation has been human activity, though attempts have been made to computarize or otherwise automate the translation (machine translation) or to use computers as an aid to translation (computer-assisted translation). Perhaps the most common misconception about translation is translation is that there exists a simple 'word-for-word' relation between any two languages, and that translation is therefore a straightforward and mechanical process. On the contrary, historical differences between languages often dictate differences of expression. Hence, source and target texts may differ significantly in length. The translation of technical texts that contain a high amount of terminology, that is, words or expressions that are used (almost) within a specific field, or that describe that field in a great deal of detail. The scienific and technical translation includes the translation of scientific research papers, abstracts, conference proceedings, and other publications from one language into another. The specialized technical vocabulary used by researchers in each discipline demand that the translator of scientific texts have technical as well as linguistic knowledge.

Types of translation

Though the basic charateristics of translation can be observed in all translation events, different types of translation can be singled out depending on the predominant communicative function of the source text or the form of speech involved in the translation process. Thus we can distinguish between literary and informative translation, on the one hand, and between written and oral translation, on the other hand. Literary translation deals with literary texts, i.e. works of fiction or poetry whose main function is to make an emotional aor esthetic impression upon the reader. Their communicative value depends, first and foremost, on their artistic quality and the translator's primary task is to reproduce this quality in translation.

Informative translation is rendering into the target language non-literary texts, the main purpose of which is to convey a certain amount of ideas, to inform the reader. However, literary text may, in fact, include some parts of purely informative charectar. Contrariwise, informative translation may comprise some elements aimed at achieing an esthetic effect. Within each group further gradations can be made to bring out more specific problems in literary or informative translation.

A number of subdivisions can be also suggested for informative translations, though the principles of classification here are somewhat different. Here we may single out translations of scientific and technical texts,of newspaper materials, of official papers and some other types of texts such as public speeches, political and propaganda materials, advertisements, etc., which are, so to speak, intermediate, in that there is a certain balance between the expressive and referential functions, between reasoning and emotional appeal.

Translation of scientific and technical materials has a most important role to play in our age of the revolutionary technical progress. There is hardly a translator or an interpreter today who has not deal with technical matters. Even the 'purely' literary translator often comes across highly technical stuff in works of fiction or even in poetry. An in-depth theoretical study of the specific features of technical translation is an urgent task of translation linguistics while training of technical translators is a major practical problem. In technical translation the main goal is to identify the situation described in the original. The predominance of the referential function is a great challenge to the translator who must have a good command of the technical terms and a sufficient understanding of the subject matter to be able to give an adequate description of the situation even if this is not fully achieved in the original. The technical translator is also expected to observe the stylistic requirements of scientific and technical materials to make text acceptable to the specialist. When the translator finds in a newspaper text the headline ' Minister bares his teeth on fluoridation' which just means that this minister has taken a resolute stand on the matter, he will think twice before reffering to the minister's teeth in the Ukrainian translation. He would rather use a less expressive way of putting it avoid infrigiment upon the accepted norms of the Ukrainian newspaper style.

Apart from technical and newspaper materials it may be expedient to single out translation of official diplomatic papers as a separate type of informative translation. These texts make a category of their own because of the specific requirements to the quality of their translations. Such translations are often accepted as authentic official texts on a par with the originals. They are important documents every word of which must be carefully chosen as a matter of principle. That makes the translator very paricular about every little meaningful element of the original which he scrupulously reproduces in his translation. This scrupulous imitation of the original results sometimes in the translator more readily erring in literality than risking to leave out even an insignificant element of the original contents.

The line of demarcation between written and oral translation is drawn not only because of their forms but also because of the sets of conditions in which the process takes place. The first is continious, the second is momentary. In written translation the original text can be read and re-read as many times as the translator may need or like. The same goes for the target text. The translator can re-read his translation, compare it to the original, makes the necessary corrections or start his work all over again. He can return to the preceding part of the original text or get the information he needs from the subsequent messages. These are most favorable conditions and here we can expect the best performance and the highest level of equivalence. That is why in theoretical discussion we have usually examples from written translations where the translating process can be observed in all its aspects.

The conditions of oral translation impose a number of important restrictions on the translators's perfomance. Here the interpretor receives a fragment of the information only once and for a short period of time. His translation is also one-time act with no possibility of any return to the original or any subsequent corrections. This type of translation involves a number of psycholinguistic problems, both of theoretical and practical nature.