TRANSFORMATION IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 453.

The kind of major and minor alterations in the struc­tural form of language units performed with the aim of achieving faith­fulness in translation are referred to as translator's transformations. They are carried out either because of the incompatibility of the tar­get language means of expression, which makes the transplanta­tion of some source language units to it impossible, or in order to retain the style of the source language passage and thus maintain the expressiveness of the source language sense units. Naturally, not all sense units need to be structurally transformed in the pro­cess of translation, a considerable number of them are also trans­planted to the target language in the form, meaning and structure of the original, i.e., unchanged or little changed. Among these are the following classes of lan­guage/sense units:

1) Most of genuine internationalisms (words, word-groups, sen­tences), some idiomatic expressions, culturally biased notions. For example: begonia беґонія, computerization комп'ютеризація, marketing маркетинг, electron електрон, theorem теорема, gentleman, джентльмен, etc.

2) Many loan internationalisms which maintain in the target language the same meaning and often the same structural form but have a different phonetic structure (sounding). Cf.: agreement/con­cord (gram), узгодження, adjoinment/juxtaposition прилягання, word-formation словотвір, the complex sentence складнопідрядне речення, subordination підрядний зв'язок, longitude (geogr.) довгота, latitude широта, etc.

3) Almost all proper nouns of various subclasses (names of people, family names and geographical names, etc.): Arvid Арвід, Dora Дора, Floy Флой, Cronin Кронін, Newton Ньютон, Longfellow Лонґфелло, Boston Бостон. There is not al­ways the same structural «dimension» (because of transformation) of the source language units in the target language, where they are partly transformed, as a rule. Sometimes translation of sense units at the language level, i.e., at the level they belong to in the source language, represents nothing else than a process of “con­stant” transformations. The most regular if not the most frequent of these are the following two:

1) «inner» or implicit transformations taking place at the lexi­cal/semantic level of the target language as compared with the corre­sponding source language units;

2) «outer» or explicit transformations causing some alterations in the target language as compared with the structure of the corre­sponding sense units of the source language units.

A vivid illustration of «inner» transformation is realized in genu­ine internationalisms through their synonymous or polysemantic mean­ings. For example, the noun icon apart from its direct Ukrainian mean­ing ікона may have in some context also the meanings зображення, портрет, статуя. Any of the last three forms of the word ікона represents an implicit/inner transformation of icon.

The outer/ explicit transformation is performed in the process of translation prac­tically on any type of the source language sense unit; already the change of the Roman type (шрифт) for the Ukrainian or Arabic one presents an explicit or outer transformation (cf. Львів Lviv, Чоп Chop). A kind of combined explicit and implicit transformation may some­times take place too. Thus, the proper name John, for example, may have three outer/contextual explicit realizations of its implicit mean­ings in Ukrainian: 1. Джон as in Джон Буль, Джон Кітс; 2. Іван as in Pope John Paul II папа Іван Павло Другий; 3. Іоанн as in King John І король Іоанн I, John the Baptist Іоанн Хреститель.

Compound words on the other hand may 1) maintain their outer form/structure in the target language: 1) easy-going добродушний, first-rate першорядний, fireproof вогнетривкий, fourfold чотирикратний, free­thinker вільнодумець; 2) they may be transformed into semantically corresponding word-groups: dew-fall випадання роси, bed-fast прикутий до ліжка (хворобою), spotlight прожектор для підсвічування, squaw-man (Amer.) білий/одружений з індіанкою; 3) they may turn in Ukrai­nian into simple words: ear-rings сережки, dress-coat фрак, mother-in-law свекруха/теща, ink-pot чорнильниця, operating-room операційна, glass-house теплиця/оранжерея, go-ahead заповзятливий, etc.

Similar outer (structural) and inner (lexico-semantic) transforma­tions are often resorted to when rendering the meaning of specific no­tions of national lexicon, namely: 1) when a single-word notion of the source language is translated by means of a single word (when the notions are internationalisms): mister, miss, lady, lord, barter, etc., містер, міс, леді, бартер тощо. 2) when a word-group notion is con­veyed through a common word: little Mary (jocul.) шлунок, Lord Harry чорт/чортяка, the outward man одежа (людини), for ever and a day назавжди /навіки, to turn one's way зникнути (втекти). 3) when a word-group structure of a specific source language notion is rendered through a sentence structure: Nosy Porker людина/той що втручається в чужі справи; Lazy Susan кругла велика таця, що обертається (із зaкусками); doctor Fell людина, що викликає до себе антипатію; the Centennial State штат Колорадо, який увійшов до складу США1876 р. в сторіччя проголошення незалежності CШA; K-ration (milit. Amer.) індивідуальний військовий пайок, що складається виключно з консервів. Very often, the structural (outer) forms of some sense units may also coincide.