conservationists we have rendered it by two words любителей природы; and
taking into consideration the combinability of the attribute wise we have
translated it by adverbial modifier applying introductory words like
понимающих всю важность её сохранения, the noun сохранения renders all the
essence of the given sentence which is contained in conservationists. To
make the perception of the sentence easier we have we added the words
штатов, на берегу реки. The last supplementation was made on the basis of
its spread context. The passive participle aided was rendered by
preposition благодаря. We should also point to lexico-grammatical
transformation: have set this land aside – эта местность …была превращена.
Ellipsis involves the omission of an item. In other words, in ellipsis
an item is replaced by nothing. This is a case of leaving something unsaid
which is nevertheless understood. It doesn’t include every instance when
the hearer or reader has to supply missing information, but only those
cases where grammatical structure itself points to an item or items that
can fill the slot in question. Here are some examples of ellipsis:
The United States donated two millions dollars and Britain one and a
half millions pounds. (omitted item: donated in second clause ).
Here are four strategies. Choose any of them. (omitted item strategy)
Use of synonymy pairs is characterized to all styles of written speech
of English language. Preserving such synonymy pair is accepted as pleonasm
and it is absolutely superfluous even when translating official documents
that demand preciseness. For example:
The Treaty was declared null and void.
Договор был объявлен недействительным.
Condemned by almost all members of the United States, and regarded as
an outcast and criminal system by the vast majority of mankind, it
(apartheid) is able to exist and defy censure solely because of the aid and
support given to it by the Western imperialist countries.
Апартеид осуждён почти всеми членами ООН, и подавляющее большинство
человечества считает эту систему преступной. Апартеид существует благодаря
помощи и поддержке империалистических государств Запада.
In this example are used two synonymy pairs: outcast and criminal, aid
and support. In the first case преступный sufficiently renders the essence
of both synonyms. The lexical meaning of the attribute outcast – изгнанный,
отверженный doesn’t fit to this context neither owing to norms of
combinability nor to the power of its meaning. The second pair of synonyms
can be preserved without any difficulty – помощь и поддержка. The
participle given is omitted for its meaning is supplied by case flexion.
The battle was fierce while it lasted.
Бой был жесток.
Time complex object in this in this case functions as a clichй and
doesn’t have corresponding equivalent in Russian.
So we can see that in the majority cases of translation some piece of
political literature we have make necessary changes. We should remind you
that it is not always an English sentence completely corresponds to the
Russian one. Very frequently the structure of a Russian sentence absolutely
differs from the one English. It has different word order, parts of the
sentences and pretty often differs even the order of sentences. In some
instances, parts of speech expressed in English are translated into Russian
by the help of different parts of speech. You should remember that the
compressed way of expression in the English can not be followed in Russian
and we therefore have to “decompress” them so that to make the easy to
perceive and understand, e.i. we have to add some words or expressions or
even sentences in whole. Nevertheless, some differences in usage of some
specific features make us leave some elements unsaid while translating the
whole. And all these cases are explained by grammatical transformations we
have just investigated.
§ II. Lexical difficulties of transformation.
Every word in a language carries some concrete notion. The semantics of
a word reflects different signs of the subject and the relation of its
meanings to other objects it denotes. The semantics of a word includes word
perception characteristic to the studied language, being more precise to
the bearers of the studied language. When studying the reality of some
object we can identify that its name reveals its functions which finds the
reflection in the semantics of the word. Lets take as an example the word
glasses – очки. In English it reveals the substance of which the object is
made and in Russian firstly it reveals its function – second eyes – очи.
Despite distinguishing all kinds of differences we should say that,
both languages sufficiently reflect one and the same perception of reality.
Therefore the difficulty stylistic devices represents to a translator is
based on word play, if in corresponding words of both languages are
featured different signs.
The second reason, causing lexical difficulties to translation of
political literature is the difference in the semantic volume of a word. In
every language a word exists in a close connection with the lexical-
semantic system of a given language. It may have various kinds of lexical
meanings (lexical-semantic) variants; it may widen or narrow its meaning
and make it more abstract or concrete.
The third reason presenting lexical difficulties in translation the
difference in combinability. Words in languages have some definite
relation characteristic only to the given language. It should be mentioned
that word combinability is possible if words point to similar objects they
denote. This difference of word combinability in various languages is very
important; therefore some types of combinability are easily accepted in one
of language and are completely unacceptable in other languages.
Last but not the least is the accepted usage of words in a language. It
is, of course related to the development of a given languages and formation
of its lexical system. Every language worked out its own clichйs and some
set expressions used by speakers, nevertheless those word expressions are
not phraseological units but they possess complete form, which, in
comparison with the phraseological units, are never broken by adding some
introductory words or substitution of some of its elements.
Translation studies showed that there are cases when due to the
distinguished signs a word acquires wider semantic volume and can not be
covered by corresponding equivalent in the target language. Let us take
teenager for example: etymologically it is related to the numerals from
thirteen till nineteen. The Russian подросток does not semantically cover
its meaning in complete volume for its is narrower in its meaning.
Therefore the word teenager is usually translated by different words –
подросток, юноша, and in plural as молодёжь.
Difference in the semantic structure of a word represents one of the
main reason causing lexical difficulty in translation. These difference are
related to peculiar features of separate words or word groups. And it is
quite natural that this matter covers a wide range of examples.
Practically, even identical words in different languages are not always
equal in their meaning, they never correspond completely. Most often is the
correspondence of first lexical-semantic variants of such words – their
primary meaning – then we have various lexical-semantic variants for the
course of development of these words was of different nature.
This is characterized by different functioning of a word in language,
different in usage and combinability, but even the primary meaning of an
English word maybe wider of the corresponding one in Russian.
The semantic structure of a word predefines the possibility of its
contextual use, and the translation of contextual meaning presents a hard
task to translators.
Contextual meaning of a word in many instances depends on the character
of semantic context, on the semantics of the words combining with it.
Occasional meanings, suddenly originated in the context are not always
arbitrary – its is based into the semantic structure of the word. In
contextual usage of a word in poetry or prose – often point to the author’s
penetration into the depth of the word’s semantic structure. For
paradigmatic and semantic relations are characteristic to any words and the
lexical potential of words can be revealed in both cases. But revealing
these potentials of words is closely connected with the specificity of
lexical-semantic aspects of every language and here forth we may observe
the difficulty of translation of contextual meaning of words. What is
possible in one language maybe impossible in another because of its
difference in semantic structure and its usage.
In an atomic war women and children will be the first hostages.
The word hostage according to different dictionaries has got only one
meaning – заложник. But in the given instance the hostage acquired the
meaning жертва. Its contextual meaning probably exists in its paradigmatic
meaning; any hostage may get killed therefore while translating this
example we have to use the word жертва since заложник is not used in the
given contextual meaning.
Первыми жертвами в атомной войне будут женщины и дети.
A very interesting contextual meaning of exploitation will be given in
the following example:
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