2018-01-08
2324
The purpose of science as a branch of human activity is to disclose by research the inner substance of things and phenomena of objective reality and find out the laws regulating them, thus enabling man to predict, control and direct their future development in order to improve the material and social life of mankind. The style of scientific prose is therefore mainly characterized by an arrangement of language means which will bring proofs to clinch a theory. The main function of scientific prose is proof. The selection of language means must therefore meet this principle requirement.
The genre of scientific works is mostly characteristic of the written form of language (scientific articles, monographs or textbooks), but it may also be found in its oral form (in scientific reports, lectures, discussions at conferences, etc); in the latter case this style has some features of colloquial speech.
The language of science is governed by the aim of the functional style of scientific prose, which is to prove a hypothesis, to create new concepts, to disclose the internal laws of existence, development, relations between different phenomena, etc. The language means used, therefore, tend to be objective, precise, unemotional, and devoid of any individuality; there is a striving for the most generalized form of expression.
The first and most noticeable feature of this style is the logical sequence of utterances with clear indication of their interrelations and interdependence, that is why in no other functional style there is such a developed and varied system of connectives as in scientific prose. The most frequently words used in scientific text are functional words; conjunctions and prepositions.
The first 100 most frequent words of this style comprises the following units:
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a) prepositions: of, to, in, for, with, on, at, by, from, out, about, down;
b) prepositional phrases: in terms of; in view of, in spite of, in common with, on behalf of, as a result of; by means of, on the ground of, in case of;
c) conjunctional phrases: in order that, in case that, in spite of the fact that, on the ground that, for fear that;
d) pronouns: one, it, we, they;
e) notional words: people, time, two, like, man, made, years.
As scientific text is restricted to formal situations and, consequently, to formal style, it employs a special vocabulary which consists of two main groups: words associated with professional communication and a less exclusive group of so-called learned words. Here one can find numerous words that are used in scientific text and can be identified by their dry, matter-of-fact flavour, for example, comprise, compile, experimental, heterogeneous, homogeneous, conclusive, divergent, etc. Another group of learned word comprises mostly polysyllabic words drawn from the Romance languages and, though fully adapted to the English phonetic system, some of them continue to sound singularly foreign. Their very sound seems to create complex associations: deleterious, emollient, incommodious, meditation, illusionary.
A particularly important aspect of scientific and technological language is the subject-neutral vocabulary which cuts across different specialized domains. In particular, a great deal of scientific work involves giving instructions to act in a certain way, or reporting on the consequences of having so acted.
Several lexical categories can be identified within the language of scientific instruction and narrative:
Verbs of exposition: ascertain, assume, compare, construct, describe, determine, estimate, examine, explain, label, plot, record, test, verify.
Verbs of warning and advising: avoid, check, ensure, notice, prevent, remember, take care; also several negative items: not drop, not spill.
Verbs of manipulation: adjust, align, assemble, begin, boil, clamp, connect, cover, decrease, dilute, extract, fill, immerse, mix, prepare, release, rotate, switch on, take, weigh.
Adjectival modifiers and their related adverbs: careful (y), clockwise, continuous (ly), final (ly), gradual (ly), moderate (ly), periodic (ally), secure (ly), subsequent (ly), vertical (ly).
The general vocabulary employed in scientific text bears its direct referential meaning, that is, words used in scientific text will always tend to be used in their primary logical meaning. Hardly a single word will be found here which is used in more than one meaning. Nor will there be any words with contextual meaning. Even the possibility of ambiguity is avoided.
Likewise neutral and common literary words used in scientific text will be explained, even if their meaning is slightly modified, either in the context or in a footnote by a parenthesis, or an attributive phrase.
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A second and no less important feature and, probably, the most conspicuous, is the use of terms specific to each given branch of science. Due to the rapid dissemination of scientific and technical ideas, particularly in the exact sciences, some scientific and technical terms begin to circulate outside the narrow field they belong to and eventually begin to develop new meanings. But the overwhelming majority of terms does not undergo this process of de-terminization and remain the property of scientific text. There they are born, develop new terminological meanings and there they die. No other field of human activity is so prolific in coining new words as science is. The necessity to penetrate deeper into the essence of things and phenomena gives rise to new concepts, which require new words to name them. A term will make more direct reference to something than a descriptive explanation, non-term. Furthermore, terms are coined so as to be self-explanatory to the greatest possible degree.
The translation is the multifaceted phenomenon and some aspects of it can be the subjects of the research of different sciences. In the frames of the science of translation psychological, literature critical, ethnographical and other points of translation as well as the history of translation in one or other country are being studied. According to the subject of research we use the knowledge of the psychology of translation, the theory of art and literary translation, ethnographical science of translation, historical science of translation and so on. The main place in the modern translation belongs to linguistic translation, which studies the translation as linguistic phenomenon. The different kinds of translation complement each other and strive to detailed description of the activity of the translation.
The theory of translation puts forward the following tasks:
1. To open and describe the common linguistic basis of translation, that is to show which peculiarities of linguistic systems and regularities of the language operation are the basis of the translating process, make this process possible and determine its character and borders;
2. To determine the translation as the subject of the linguistic research, to show its difference from the other kinds of linguistic mediation;
3. To work out the basis of classification of kinds of the translating activity;
4. To open the essence of the translating equivalence as the basis of the communicative identity of the original texts and the translation;
5. To work out the common principles and the peculiarities of construction of the peculiar and special translation theories for the different combinations of languages;
6. To work out the common principles of the scientific description of the translation process as actions of a translator of transforming the original text to the translating text;
7. To open the influence on the translating process of pragmatic and social linguistic factors;
8. To determine the idea “the translating norm” and to work out the principles.
In the result of this research it can be concluded that the main stylistic feature of scientific-technical texts is exact and clear interpretation of the material without any expressive elements that make the speech more emotionally saturated. There are almost no metaphors, metonymy transpositions and other stylistic features in scientific-technical literature while they are widely used in literary works.
Although scientific texts are far from live colloquia language, it contains a number of neutral phraseological units of technical specific. Main requirements for scientific-technical translation to comply with are precision (all items in ST shall be reflected in translation), conciseness (all items of ST shall be translated laconically), clearness (conciseness and laconism of TL shall not mess the lexis, its understanding), literarily (the text of the translation shall comply with common norms of literary language without use of syntactical structures of source language).
During the research it also can be revealed that common features of scientific-technical texts are:
1) saturation with specific terms and terminology units;
2) presence of grammatical and lexical structures;
3) difference in use of analogue stylistic features in SL and TL;
4) different use frequency of certain speech parts.
All terms are united into terminology systems that express notions of techniques and science. The difficulties that appear during the translation of the terms are connected to imperfection of existing terminology systems. The most important among them are the phenomena of terminology synonyms, homonyms and polisemantic units. All of this leads to the approach of context translation that is:
identifying of the word meaning due to its context;
selection of the proper context equivalent term;
creation of adequate text by means of selected context equivalent term.
The translation of scientific-technical texts shall give an exact meaning of the source text. Some deviations can be made due to the peculiarities of target language or stylistic issue. It is very important to prevent the loss of meaningful information contained in the source text.
