2014-02-09
851
Кафедра акушерства и гинекологии
Hope
Надеяться
1) to wish but necessarily with expectation (возлагать надежду);
2) to wish (полагаться, хотеть);
3) to wish or require with strong expectation (рассчитывать, быть уверенным).
1) надеяться (to hope);
2) хотеть (to want);
3) ожидать (to expect);
4) ожидать с нетерпением (to look forward to).
The correct English translation will depend on the context and the force of the Russian. In the example, expect is clearly far too emphatic for the intention of the message. Another, even clearer, example of non-correspondence of semantic field is рука, for what in English is covered by the concepts of arm and hand. Translation from English to Russian requires disambiguation using co-text and context (the situation).
These examples are relatively straightforward, but Nida and Larson use such visual representations of semantic structure to describe much more complex words such as spirit which we mentioned above.
HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURING AND COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
At other times the problem is more one of locating an equivalent on the same level in the TL. This occurs where one language has a wider range of specific terms for a given semantic field operating at various levels. E. Nida gives the example of a series of motion verbs under the generic verb wove, which they ordered hierarchically:
Generic term move
Lower level walk, run, skip, hop, crawl
(more specific forms of move)
Lower level march, stroll
(more specific forms of walk)
The generic term is known as the superordinate and the lower level terms as hyponyms – their more specific meaning is included within the meaning of the superordinate. Here analysis contrasts elements in the same semantic area, particularly on the same semantic level. Walk involves motion, on foot, moving legs alternately while always keeping at least one foot in contact with the ground; run involves motion on foot, moving legs in 1-2,1-2 (left-right) fashion but not always keeping one foot on the ground, and so on. Both include the sense of motion, which can be described as a central or core component of meaning, and so can the use of the legs (or leg). But if we turn to the analysis of crawl we find that there is movement of legs and hands but not an upright posture, so this may cause us to modify what we consider to be central and what are supplementary features. Distinguishing run from skip would conversely require the addition of more clearly differentiated supplementary components.
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Componential analysis
A technique of semantic analysis that examines the basic meaning components of a word and allows contrast with other terms in the same semantic field.
One of the prime elements of componential analysis is the notion of binary opposites: one sense of bachelor (a famous example in Katz and Fodor), would be: + (плюс) human, + (плюс) male, – (минус) married. This ‘principle of contrast in identifying meaning’ is crucial. It was initially used, and continues to have great currency, in anthropology for the mapping of kinship terms in different cultures.
CONNOTATIVE MEANING
The other area explored by E. Nida is connotative meaning (the emotional response evoked in the hearer). For instance, on various occasions in St John’s gospel, the Greek word gunai is translated as woman in the old King James Version but as mother in the New English Bible. The justification for this change is the positive connotation of the Greek, which, the translators felt, merited a similarly positive translation equivalent. This is a much more difficult area to investigate objectively. Nevertheless, Ch. Osgood did carry out an important study on what he terms ‘semantic space’, asking respondents to assess words according to dines of evaluation (good to bad), potency (strong to weak) and activity (active to passive).
E. Nida discusses aspects other than single words or idioms that carry connotative associations, including pronunciation (some accents are more prestigious than others), style and subject matter when translated into a radically different cultural context.
The nature of meaning and how to analyze and evaluate it is crucial for a translator working on a text and for a theorist who is assessing the transference of meaning. This unit has examined forms of ‘scientific’ analysis adapted from English linguistics for the purposes of assessing translation. These include disambiguation of referential meaning through semantic structure analysis and componential analysis, and the gauging of connotative meaning using clines.
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LECTURE 8
DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE AND THE RECEPTOR OF THE MESSAGE
The previous lecture focused on the scientific analysis of linguistic meaning, particularly in relation to translation equivalence at the level of individual words and phrases. In this lecture, we continue the discussion of equivalence but widen the focus on meaning and define it in terms of broader contextual categories such as culture and audience in both ST and TT. Specifically, we will deal with the process of translation, the problems of establishing equivalent effect in translation and how this factor, which draws heavily on context, affects meaning and determines the choice of translation method.
We argued that to insist on full translatability across languages and cultures is to risk being incomprehensible (i.e. producing TTs that are confusing at best). Similarly, to insist on full comprehensibility in translation is to perpetuate the myth that there is no real difference between translation and other forms of communication. A more reasonable position to take is perhaps to see translatability and comprehensibility in relative terms. These two principles are not always in conflict, constantly pulling in opposite directions. In practice, an important assumption which translators entertain seems to be one epitomized by something E. Nida said many years ago, echoing R. Jakobson: ‘ Anything which can be said in one language can be said in another, unless the form is an essential element of the message ’.
The focus in this ‘universalist’ orientation to language use in translation is on the need to respond to the communicative requirements of the text receiver and, by implication, to the purpose of the translation, without necessarily losing sight of the communicative preferences of the original message producer or the function of the original text.
FORMAL EQUIVALENCE
This attitude to translatability and comprehensibility has given rise to dynamic equivalence, a translation method that may helpfully be seen in terms of its counterpart – formal equivalence. The latter (also referred to as ‘structural correspondence’), is a relationship which involves the purely ‘formal’ replacement of one word or phrase in the SL by another in the TL. According to E. Nida, this is not the same as literal translation, and the two terms must therefore be kept distinct. For our purposes, one way of clarifying the distinction between formal and literal in this context is to suggest that: While literaltranslations tend to preserve formal features almost by default (i.e. with little or no regard for context, meaning or what is implied by a given utterance), a formal translation is almost always contextually motivated: formal features are preserved only if they carry contextual values that become part of overall text meaning (e.g. deliberate ambiguity in the ST).
To illustrate this special use of formal equivalence defined here in terms of contextual motivatedness, consider the following example, drawn from the Newsweek obituary of Sir Alee Guinness (the famous British actor who died on 5 August 2000). The text happens to be particularly opaque regarding one character trait of the great actor, Guinness’s reticence, and whether it is to be regarded as ‘condonable diffidence’ or ‘unforgivable arrogance’.
Read through this excerpt and note features likely to be noteworthy regarding this issue. Reflect on how you would deal with this situation in translation.
[...] a face so ordinary as to approach anonymity, a mastery of disguise so accomplished he could vanish without a trace inside a role and a wary intelligence that allowed him to reveal the deepest secrets of his characters while slyly protecting his own.
(Newsweek 21 August 2000 [italics added])
The general ambiguity, which is no doubt intended (i.e. it is contextually motivated) in a context such as that of an obituary, and which threads its way subtly throughout the text, must somehow be preserved in translation, and one way of doing this is perhaps through opting for formal equivalence. Any explication of while slyly protecting his own, for example, could seriously compromise intended meaning.
Preserving ST ambiguity is thus one legitimate use of formal equivalence. But there are other contexts. An extreme form of this kind of equivalence may be illustrated by St Jerome’s oft-cited injunction in the context of Bible translation: ‘even the order of the words is a mystery’. More generally, however, E. Nida deals with such contexts in terms of focusing ‘ attention on the message itself, in both form and content ’ for whatever purpose. This is strictly the sense, which he most probably intended for his formal equivalence.
DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE
Formal equivalence is a contextually motivated method of translation (i.e. a procedure purposefully selected in order to preserve a certain linguistic / rhetorical effect). We can sometimes preserve these effects in translation simply by doing nothing, which happens quite often when we do not need to interfere with the formal arrangement of words, structure. But, even in such cases, the decision to opt for formal equivalence must always be a conscious decision (i.e. taken for a good reason and not gratuitously). The aim in this kind of adherence to form would be to bring the target reader nearer to the linguistic or cultural preferences of the ST.
Yet, for a wide variety of texts, and given a diverse range of readers and purposes of translation, there is often a need for some ST explication and adjustment. That is, if in the translator’s judgement, a form of words that is not sufficiently transparent in the TT is likely to pose a threat to comprehensibility and therefore result in unintended and unmotivated opaqueness, intervention on the part of the translator becomes inevitable. In such cases, the translator would need to resort to more ‘dynamic’ forms of equivalence.
Through dynamic equivalence, we can thus cater for a rich variety of contextual values and effects which utterances carry within texts and which a literal translation would simply compromise. These effects would not be so much form-bound, as content-bound. That is, we opt for varying degrees of dynamic equivalence when form is not significantly involved in conveying a particular meaning, and when a formal rendering is therefore unnecessary (e.g. in cases where there is no contextual justification for preserving ST opaqueness, ambiguity, etc.).
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An important point to underline here is that opting for this or that form of equivalence is not an either/or choice. The distinction dynamic vs formal equivalence (or dynamic vs structural correspondence) is best seen in relative terms, as points on a cline. The two methods are not absolute techniques but rather general orientations. In fact, what experienced translators seem to do most of the time is to resort to a literal kind of equivalence initially, reconsider the decision in the light of a range of factors, and ultimately make a choice from literal, formal or dynamic equivalence in this order and as appropriate.
ADJUSTMENT
Adjustment or the gradual move away from form-by-form renderings and towards more dynamic kinds of equivalence is thus an important translation technique. In the search for dynamic equivalence, it is proposed by Nida as an overall translation technique which may take several forms. In dealing with texts that are likely to produce a dense translation, for instance, we may opt for building in redundancy, explicating or even repeating information when appropriate. Alternatively, we may opt for gisting, a technique most useful in dealing with languages characterized by a noticeably high degree of repetition of meaning. Also as part of adjustment, we may at times have to re-order an entire sequence of sentences if the ST order of events, for example, does not match normal chronology, or proves too cumbersome to visualize.
Adjustment is also needed to cope with the wide range of purposes, which translations might serve.
THE TRANSLATION PROCESS: ANALYSIS, TRANSFER, RE-STRUCTURING
The dynamically equivalent version of the above editorial exhibits some of the following adjustment strategies:
• Jettisoning less accessible ST items
We can strike a deal with someone, or we can deal them a blow preserves the word play in the source.
• Regulating redundancy
There are those, however, who enjoy deliberately confusing the two ideas. So where there should be honor and trust we find lies and deceit establishes a contrast which enhances the relevance of the distinction introduced earlier.
These changes are introduced in the so-called ‘restructuring’ stage, the last of three phases through which the process of translation is said to pass.
The translator:
(1) analyses the SL message into its simplest and structurally clearest forms (or ‘kernels');
(2) transfers the message at this kernel level;
(3) restructures the message in the TL to the level which is most appropriate for the audience addressed.
The ‘analysis’ phase begins with discovering the so-called ‘kernels’ (a term which E. Nida borrows from Chomsky’s transformational generative grammar). Kernels are basic structural elements to which syntactically more elaborate surface structures of a language can be reduced. To return to an example a phrase such as children of wrath yields ‘God directs wrath at the transgressors’ or ‘the transgressors suffers God’s wrath’ as possible kernels representing the clearest understanding of ST meaning.
Kernel analysis is thus a crucial step in the process of moving from ST to TT. This is in keeping with the essentially universalist hypothesis to which E. Nida subscribes: languages ‘agree far more on the level of the kernels than on the level of the more elaborate structures’.
Kernels consist of combinations of items from four basic semantic categories:
• object words (nouns referring to physical objects including human beings);
• event words (actions often represented by verbs);
• abstracts (qualities and quantities, including adjectives);
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• relationals (including linking devices, gender markers).
Kernel sentences are derived from the actual source sentence by means of a variety of techniques including, most importantly, back-transformation. In explicating grammatical relationships, ST surface structures are ‘paraphrased’ into ‘formulae’ capturing the way in which elements from the various categories listed above are combined. Thus, the surface structure will of God may be back-transformed into a formula such as: В (object, God) performs A (event, wills).
We move from ST to TT via a phase called transfer. This is the stage ‘in which the analysed material is transferred in the mind of the translator from language A to language B’. What does this essentially ‘mental’ activity involve? It is important to remember that, during ‘transfer’, kernels are not treated in isolation since they would already be marked temporally, spatially and logically. But they would still be raw material which the translator, in the light of his or her knowledge of TL structure, must now modify in preparation for restructuring (the stage of putting pen to paper, as it were). A SL word may have to be expanded into several TL words, or alternatively, a SL phrase re-moulded into a single TL word. Along similar lines, structural differences between SL and TL are reconciled at the sound, word, sentence or even discourse level. It is probably here that ‘strategy’ (or the translator’s ‘game plan’) is worked out, and decisions regarding such matters as register and genre are initially taken. Thus, rather than a simple replacement exercise of actual SL elements with their most literal TL counterparts, 'transfer' is a dynamic process of ‘reconfiguration’ in the TL of sets of SL semantic and structural components.
The translator should now be ready for restructuring the transferred material, which hitherto has existed only in the form of kernel sentences. What is needed is a set of procedures by which the input accrued so far may be transformed into a ‘stylistic form appropriate to the receptor language and to the intended receptors. In particular, restructuring ensures that the impact which the translation is to have on its intended receptors is what the ST producer has intended: any message which does not communicate is simply useless. It is only when a translation produces in the audience a response, which is essentially the same as that of the original audience that the translation can be said to be dynamically equivalent to its ST.
ЗАЧЕТ
Вопросы
1. Translation as a professional activity.
2. The role of training professionals in translation.
3. Academic and vocational training in translation.
4. Definitions of translation.
5. Language, culture and thought.
6. Interligual translation.
7. Intralingual translation.
8. Intersemiotic translation.
9. Translation strategies: format and content.
10. Translation strategies: literal and free.
11. Comprehensibility and translatability.
12. Systematic approaches to the translation unit. The lexicological unit.
13. The lexicological unit. The unit of translation as a prelude to analysis.
14. Translation shifts.
15. Langue and parole. Formal correspondence. Textual equivalence.
16. Compensation, loss, gain.
17. The analysis of meaning.
18. Referential meaning.
19. Hierarchical structuring and componential analysis.
20. Connotative meaning.
21. Dynamic equivalence.
22. Formal equivalence.
23. The translation process: analysis, transfer and re-structuring.
24. Kernel analysis.
Пособие для студентов лечебного факультета,
факультета иностранных учащихся, педиатрического,
медико-психологического факультета и факультета
медицинских сестер с высшим образованием
