Levels of analysis and synthesis in translation

The words “analysis” is of Greek origin. It means “the process of separating something into its constituent parts”. The word “synthesis” is also of Greek origin and means the combination of components to form a connected whole”. The translator is constantly involved in analyzing and synthesizing meaning, both while understanding the source text and creating the target text.

The process of analysis and synthesis in which the translator is involved in takes place at least on 6 levels:

· Word level

· Phrase level

· Clause or sentence level

· Paragraph

· Text level

· Pragmatics, or sociocultural, level

A word is a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used to form sentences with other similar elements. Words are the basic unit of language.

A phrase is a small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit and not containing a finite verb. A finite verb has a specific tense, voice, person and number. It is used in the predicate of a sentence.

A clause is a sentence which is used as part of a compound or complex sentence.

A paragraph is a distinct section of a piece of writing, indicated by a new line, indentation, or numbering.

A text is a written, printed or spoken piece of language regarded as a complete whole in terms of its form and content. A text may consist of one paragraph or, in rare cases, one sentence and word.

Pragmatics is the study of language as it is used in a sociocultural context, including its effect on the participants in the process of communication. The translator must be aware of the situational aspects of language usage in order to produce authentic, i.e. culturally adequate, translations. The translator has to work at all the six levels of text analysis and synthesis at the same time.

1.3. Preserving the meaning structure of the source text

This aspect is vital in terms of preserving the unique author’s style because sometimes the text is the result or a product of some specific author’s technique of writing. For example, Ernest Hemingway was an adept of simple plain style of narration and it would be a translation defect if his literary style was very grandiloquent and pompous in the target language. That’s why the translator must keep in mind the notion of the text structure. “Structure” means “the arrangement of and relations between the parts of something complex”. Any discourse is a complex structure of meaning which is realized at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and complete texts in a particular sociocultural environment. The relationships between all the levels produce the ultimate effect of gestalt, which is an organized whole perceived as more than the sum of its parts. The ultimate challenge for any translator is to preserve as much of its complex meaning structure in the translation as possible. Sometimes while comparing the source text with the target text, a researcher can see that sometimes the whole passages are omitted. The reasons for such omission can be various but the most common one is that the translator didn’t succeed in finding linguistic means to reflect peculiar sociocultural aspect of the passage. These are usually jokes on politics, specific professional humor typical of a country etc. It is clear that after translation this joke can lose its specific colouring in the target language, but nevertheless it gives a valuable piece of information highlighting the idea to the reader.

In this respect some ways of making translation decisions can be suggested. At the sentence level, the most common transformations every translator makes are:

· Omission

· Addition

· Transposition

· Change of grammatical forms

· Loss compensation

· Concretization

· Generalization

· Antonymic translation

· Meaning extension

· Metonymic translation

· Sentence integration

· Sentence fragmentation.

The most relevant means of translation among the above listed are omission, addition, transposition, sentence integration and sentence fragmentation that are directly connected with the grammatical means of translation. All the rest means can be counted to the stylistic means of translation. The suggested method of investigation is comparing the source text of Ernest Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” with the target translation made by E.Kalashnikova and pointing out cases of employing grammatical transformations.