VERBAL IMAGE

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 915.

Words in context, as has been pointed out, may acquire additional lexical meanings not fixed in dictionaries, what we have called contextual meaning. The latter may sometimes deviate from the dictionary meaning to such a degree that the new meaning even becomes the opposite of the primary meaning. This is especially the case when we deal with the transferred meaning. We deal in fact with the substitution of the existing names approved by long usage and fixed in dictionaries by new, occasional, individual ones, prompted by the speaker's subjective original view and evaluation of things. This act of name-exchange is traditionally referred to as transference, for, indeed, the name of one object is transferred onto another, proceeding from their similarity (of shape, colour, functions, etc.), or closeness (of material existence, cause/effect, instrument/result, part/whole relations, etc.). Thus, transferred meaning is practically the interrelation between two types of lexical meaning: dictionary and contextual. The contextual meaning will always depend on the dictionary (logic) meaning to the greater or lesser extent.

Image is a means of artistic generalization of reality, a sign of the objective correlation of human feelings and surroundings. In its broader meaning, image is the reflection of the outer world in the consciousness. Verbal image as one of the means of reflecting the reality has its peculiarities: it allows to comprehend the world in another way, to show a certain attitude to the surrounding. Verbal image is created by words: білими квітами зацвіла моя голова, to be wrapped in thoughts. From the point of view of the theory of literature verbal image is one of the tropes. Very often the author of a piece of literature finds unexpected associations between the remote notions.

When considering the structure of an image we may distinguish:

1. Tenor – the actual meaning of the image, what is being talked about, existing denotative meaning;

2. Vehicle – the object with which the tenor is compared, connotations;

3. Ground – common feature of the compared concepts;

4. Relationship between the two;

5. Comparison technique (type of trope);

6. Grammatical and lexical peculiarities of comparison.

The image can be purely descriptive and symbolic. Symbol is a particular kind of the image. Symbols usually serve to render especially important notions and ideas: s. of friendship, peace, faithfulness, love, death, victory, etc. In an artistic text, symbol reflects some important ideas and is usually repeated through the text.

From the functional-communicative point of view, the verbal image has two aspects. On one hand, it has cognitive value, being a sign rendering a certain idea, playing a certain role in comprehending extralinguistic reality through reflecting ethno-cultural bonds. On the other hand, it is a means of emotional influence, expression of the author's subjective evaluation of the reality.

Verbal images constitute the basis of any piece of artistic literature. They are considered as inseparable elements of the text. The need of rendering semantic and stylistic functions of verbal images in the process of artistic translation is an important constituent of translation studies. The imagery of speech is based on the nature of the language. The process of cognizing the reality springs up from concrete observation to the abstract thinking. This complicated process is impossible without a fantastic element, which is culturally biased and differs with different language speakers. Verbal images are caused by the vagueness of meaning, by the lexical insufficiency.

The problem of conveying verbal images has long been under consideration with the translators. This problem is based on establishing functional equivalence of the TT. The main function of the belle-lettre is artistic-aesthetic. Such texts are first and foremost aimed at rendering not certain facts but aesthetic impression.

Methods of rendering the meaning of a verbal image are based on studying its complex semantic structure. Verbal images can be studied on different levels. Each verbal image consists of a number of lexemes, which constitute its first sense layer. Imagery is created not by arbitrary combination of words. It takes two or more lexemes to occur together and simultaneously to violate the conventional combinability in order to make the reader/listener change the conceptual fields. The reader/listener has to think differently, unusually. As a result, semantic fields are broken, separate semantic elements are detached from these lexemes. These detached elements form up an emotional-conceptual image with a certain denotative imagery, on the basis of which a new semantic imagery, new meaning is created. Freshness of associations is a necessary precondition for the vividness of the verbal image. Detachment of a large number of semantic components of each word amplifies the connotative meaning and reduces or sometimes eliminates the denotative meaning of separate lexemes.

The new meaning created by these components is an integral semantic unit, which is formed by the interaction of separate semantic components and reaches the mind through imagination. This meaning is usually imposed on by various connotations. This constitutes the 2^nd sense layer.

The fundamental possibility of rendering the function of the verbal image in TL is based on the following factors: people have a lot in common in their life experience; cultural background serving as the basis for the imagery is often understandable to the target readers/listeners; semantic peculiarities of the components in the SL are often equivalent or close to those of the TL. However, there exists a number of features making translation of verbal images very complicated: diversities in language structures, in lexico-semantic combinability of the words, in ethnolinguistic (cultural) background of the speakers. Each image in the original bears a certain cognitive and expressive load, which is to be reproduced in the translation. Its substitution for another impoverishes the TT reducing the expression of the original. E.g. sonnet 2 by W. Shakespeare