P a r т ii. Exercises in translation 3 страница

2.2. HANDLING PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS

Introductory Notes

Phraseological units are figurative set expressions often described as "idioms". Such units have an important role to play in human communication. They produce a considerable expressive effect for, besides conveying information, they appeal to the reader's emotions, his aesthetic perception, his literary and cultural associations. Whenever the author of the source text uses an idiom, it is the translator's duty to try and reproduce it with the utmost fidelity.

Now an idiom's semantics are a complex entity and there are five aspects of its meaning that will influence the translator's choice of an equivalent in the target language. They are the idiom's figurative meaning, its literal sense, its emotive character, stylistic register and national colouring. The figurative meaning is the basic element of the idiom's semantics. Thus "red tape" means bureaucracy, "to kick the bucket" means to die, and "to wash dirty linen in public" means to disclose one's family troubles to outsiders. The figurative meaning is inferred from the literal sense. "Red tape", "to kick the bucket", and "to wash dirty linen in public" also refer, respectively, to a coloured tape, an upset pail and a kind of

laundering, though in most cases this aspect is subordinate and serves as a basis for the metaphorical use.

Idioms can be positive, negative or neutral. It is clear that "to kill two birds with one stone" is good, "to find a mare's nest" is a ludicrous mistake while "Rome was not built in a day" is a neutral statement of fact. They can also differ in their stylistic usage: they may be bookish (to show one's true colours) or colloquial (to be a pain in the neck). Besides, an idiom can be nationally coloured, that is include some words which mark it as the product of a certain nation. For instance, "to set the Thames on fire" and "to carry coals to Newcastle" are unmistakably British.

The complex character of the idiom's semantics makes its translation no easy matter. But there are some additional factors which complicate the task of adequate identification, understanding and translation of idioms. First, an idiom can be mistaken for a free word combination, especially if its literal sense is not "exotic" (to have butterflies in one's stomach) but rather trivial (to measure one's length, to let one's hair down). Second, a SL idiom may be identical in form to a TL idiom but have a different figurative meaning. Thus, the English "to lead smb. by the nose" implies a total domination of one person by the other (cf. the Russian «водить за нос») and "to stretch one's legs" means to take a stroll (cf. the Russian «протянуть ноги»). Third, a SL idiom can be wrongly interpreted due to its association with a similar, if not identical TL unit. For instance, "to pull the devil by the tail", that is to be in trouble, may be misunderstood by the translator under the influence of the Russian idioms «держать бога за бороду» or «поймать за хвост жар-птицу». Fourth, a wrong interpretation of a SL idiom may be caused by another SL idiom similar in form and different in meaning. Cf. "to make good time" and "to have a good time". Fifth, a SL idiom may have a broader range of application than its TL counterpart apparently identical in form and meaning. For instance, the English "to get out of hand" is equivalent to the Russian«OT6nTbcaoT рук» and the latter is often used to translate it:

The children got out of hand while their parents were away. В отсутствии родителей дети совсем отбились от рук.

But the English idiom can be used whenever somebody or something gets out of control while the Russian idiom has a more restricted usage:

What caused the meeting to get out of hand? Почему собрание прошло так неорганизованно?

The possibility of misinterpreting an idiom in the source text calls for a great deal of vigilance on the part of the translator.

There are four typical methods to handle a SL idiom in the translating

process. First, the translator can make use of a TL idiom which is identical to the SL idiom in all five aspects of its semantics, e.g. "to pull chestnuts out of the fire for smb." — таскать каштаны из огня для кого-либо.

Second, the SL idiom can be translated by a TL idiom which has the same figurative meaning, preserves the same emotive and stylistic characteristics but is based on a different image, that is, has a different literal meaning, e.g. "make hay while the sun shines" — куй железо, пока горячо.

Third, the SL idiom can be translated by reproducing its form word-for-word in TL, e.g. "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones." - Люди, живущие в стеклянных домах, не должны бросать камни.

Fourth, instead of translating the SL idiom, the translator may try to explicate its figurative meaning, so as to preserve at least the main element of its semantics.

Selecting the appropriate method of translation the translator should take into account the following considerations:

1. Translating the SL idiom by an identical TL idiom is, obviously, the best way out. However, the list of such direct equivalents is rather limited. The translator has a good chance of finding the appropriate TL idiom if the SL idiom, is, so to speak, international, that is, if it originated in some other language, say Latin or Greek, and was later borrowed by both SL and TL. Cf. the English "Achilles' heel" and the Russian «Ахиллесова пята». Equivalent idioms may be borrowed in more recent periods, too, e.g. "the game is not worth the candle" — игра не стоит свеч (both borrowed from French). Even if the translator has managed to find an equivalent idiom in TL he may not be able to use it in his translation because of a difference in connotation. For example, the English "to save one's skin" can be replaced with the Russian «спасти свою шкуру» when its meaning is negative. But it may also have a positive connotation, which its Russian counterpart has not and then the translator will have to look for another way:

Betty saved Tim's skin by typing his report for him. Бетти выручила Тима, напечатав за него доклад.

2. Whenever the translator fails to find an identical TL idiom he should start looking for an expression with the same figurative meaning but a different literal meaning. Cf. "to get out of bed on the wrong side" -встать с левой ноги. Here the change in the literal meaning of the idiom does not detract much from its effect. Two additional factors, however, should be taken into consideration. First, here again the translator should take care to preserve the original emotional or stylistic characteristics. So, the English "Jack of all trades" and the Russian «мастер на все руки» both

refer to a person who may turn his hand to anything. However, the Russian idiom should not be used to translate the English one, as they are quite different emotionally. In English "Jack of all trades" is derogatory, for he is "master of none", while the Russian saying implies that the man can do many different things well. Similarly, the English "can the leopard change his spots", which is a literary idiom, should not be translated by the Russian «черного кобеля не отмоешь добела» which is highly colloquial, verging on the vulgar. Second, this method of translation should not be used if the TL idiom is distinctly nationally marked. As a rule the translation is presumed to represent what has been said by the foreign author of ST and he is not expected to use definitely Russian idioms such as, for instance, «ездить в Тулу со своим самоваром».

3. A word-for-word translation of the SL idiom is not possible unless the Russian reader will be able to deduce its figurative meaning. Therefore a caique of the English idiom "a skeleton in the cupboard" will be counterproductive, while "to put the cart before the horse" can be well rendered as «ставить телегу впереди лошади».

4. Obviously an explication cannot reproduce the semantics of the SL idiom in a satisfactory way and should be used only in the absence of a better alternative. Cf. "to cut off with a shilling" and «лишить наследства» or "to dine with Duke Humphrey and «остаться без обеда».

The translator's memory should be well stocked with SL and TL idioms. Handling idiomatic phrases he will find A. Kunin's "English-Russian Phraseological Dictionary (M., 1984) of great assistance.

Exercises

I. Identify all the semantic aspects of the following phraseological units.

1. to mark time; 2. to play second fiddle; 3. to hide behind smb.'s back; 4. to be in the same boat; 5. to be cut of the same cloth; 6. to sit on the fence; 7. to draw in one's horns; 8. to spread like wildfire; 9. to win with a small margin; 10. to make no bones about smth.; 11. to play into smb.'s hands; 12. to show one's true colours; 13. to twist the lion's tail; 14. to send smb. to Coventry; 15. to have some strings attached; 16. to turn back the clock; 17. to throw cards on the table; 18. to put one's weight behind smth.; 19. (to sell smth.) lock, stock and barrel; 20. (to swallow smth.) hook, line and sinker

H. Find the Russian equivalents to the following English proverbs.

1. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. 2. A burnt child dreads the fire. 3. A rolling stone gathers no moss. 4. Necessity is the mother of invention. 5. Rome was not built in a day. 6. Small rain lays great dust. 7. Enough is as good as a feast. 8. A miss is as good as a mile. 9. It is a good horse that never stumbles. 10. It is a long lane that has no turning. 96

III. State what method you would choose to translate the following idioms.

1. The fish begins to stink at the head. 2. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. 3. to have money to burn. 4. to give smb. the cold shoulder. 5. to set the Thames on fire. 6. to give away the show. 7. to ask for the moon. 8. to be at the end of one's rope. 9. to bet on the wrong horse. 10. A new broom sweeps clean. 11. a fly in the ointment. 12. good riddance to bad rubbish. 13. with fire and sword. 14. You can't run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

IV. Translate the phraseological units in the following sentences.

1. British bourgeois periodicals prefer to give a wide berth to the delicate question of American military bases in Britain. 2. Numerous examples of violence against workers give the lie to the assertions of the reactionary American union bosses that there is no class war in the United States. 3. The British economy is not out of the wood yet. 4. The manager was passing the time of the day with one of his secretaries. 5. Trying to make him change his mind is just beating your head against the wall. 6. If he has spoken publicly about the truth he would have gotten the axe one way or another. 7. She gave her father a hug, and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as he with her. 8. Students get it in the neck when they lose library books. 9. "Oh! tell us about her, Auntie," cried Imogen; "I can just remember her. She's the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn't she? And they are such fun."

CHAPTER 3. GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS

OF TRANSLATION

3.1. HANDLING EQUIVALENT FORMS AND STRUCTURES

Introductory Notes

Every Word in the text is used in a particular grammatical form and all the words are arranged in sentences in a particular syntactic order. Grammaticality is an important feature of speech units. Grammatical forms and structures, however, do not only provide for the correct arrangement of words in the text, they also convey some information which is part of its total contents. They reveal the semantic relationships between the words, clauses and sentences in the text, they can make prominent some .part of the contents that is of particular significance for the communicants. The syntactic structuring of the text is an important characteristics identifying either the genre of the text or its author's style.

Though the bulk of the information in the original text is conveyed by its lexical elements, the semantic role of grammatical forms and structures

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should not be overlooked by the translator. The importance of the grammatical aspects of the source text is often reflected in the choice of the parallel forms and structures in TL, as in the following example:

The Industrial Revolution brought into being the industrial proletariat and with it the fight for civil and political rights, trade union organization and the right to vote.

Промышленная революция вызвала к жизни промышленный пролетариат и вместе с ним борьбу за гражданские и политические права, тред-юнионы и право голоса.

In many cases, however, equivalence in translation can be best achieved if the translator does not try to mirror the grammatical forms in the source text. There are no permanent grammatical equivalents and the translator can choose between the parallel forms and various grammatical transformations. He may opt for the latter for there is never an absolute identity between the meaning and usage of the parallel forms in SL and TL. For instance, both English and Russian verbs have their infinitive forms. The analogy, however, does not preclude a number of formal and functional differences. We may recall that the English infinitive has perfect forms, both active and passive, indefinite and continuous, which are absent in the respective grammatical category in Russian. The idea of priority or non-performed action expressed by the Perfect Infinitive is not present in the meaning of the Russian Infinitive and has to be rendered in translation by some other means. Cf. 'The train seems to arrive at 5." - Поезд, видимо, приходит в 5. and 'The train seems to have arrived at 5." - Поезд, видимо, пришел в 5.

A dissimilarity of the English and Russian Infinitives can be also found in the functions they perform in the sentence. Note should be taken, for example, of the Continuative Infinitive which in English denotes an action following that indicated by the Predicate:

Parliament was dissolved, not to meet again for eleven years. Парламент был распущен и не созывался в течение 11 лет. Не came home to find his wife gone. Он вернулся домой и обнаружил, что жена ушла.

A similar difference can be observed if one compares the finite forms of the verb in English and in Russian. The English and the Russian verbs both have active and passive forms, but in English the passive forms are more numerous and are more often used. As a result, the meaning of the passive verb in the source text is often rendered by an active verb in the translation:

This port can be entered by big ships only during the tide. Большие корабли могут заходить в этот порт только во время 98

прилива. (The sentence can certainly be translated in some other way, e.g. Этот порт доступен для больших кораблей только во время прилива.)

A most common example of dissimilarity between the parallel syntactic devices in the two languages is the role of the word order in English and in Russian. Both languages use a "direct" and an "inverted" word order. But the English word order obeys, in most cases, the established rule of sequence: the predicate is preceded by the subject and followed by the object. This order of words is often changed in the Russian translation since in Russian the word order is used to show the communicative load of different parts of the sentence, the elements conveying new information (the rheme) leaning towards the end of non-emphatic sentences. Thus if the English sentence "My son entered the room" is intended to inform us who entered the room, its Russian equivalent will be «В комнату вошел мой сын» but in case its purpose is to tell us what my son did, the word order will be preserved: «Мой сын вошел в комнату».

The predominantly fixed word order in the English sentence means that each case of its inversion (placing the object before the subject-predicate sequence) makes the object carry a great communicative load. This emphasis cannot be reproduced in translation by such a common device as the inverted word order in the Russian sentence and the translator has to use some additional words to express the same idea:

Money he had none.

Денег у него не было ни гроша.

The refusal to use a parallel structure in the target text may involve a change in the number of independent sentences by using the partitioning or the integrating procedures described above (see pp. 35-36). Here is another example of such translations:

The two boys flew on and on towards the village speechless with horror.

Мальчики бежали вперед и вперед по направлению к деревне. Они онемели от ужаса.

It should be noted that a parallel form may prove unsuitable because of its different stylistic connotation. For instance, both English and Russian conditional clauses can be introduced by conjunctions or asyndetically. But the English asyndetical form is bookish while its Russian counterpart is predominantly colloquial. As a result, it is usually replaced in the target text by a clause with a conjunction, e.g.:

Had the Security Council adopted the Soviet proposal, it would have

been an important step towards the solution of the problem.

Если бы Совет Безопасности принял советское предложение, это было бы важным шагом к решению проблемы.

The translator usually finds it possible to make a relatively free choice among the possible grammatical arrangements of TT, provided the basic relationships expressed by the SL grammatical categories are intact.

Exercises

I. Translate the following sentences with the special attention to the choice of Russian equivalents to render the meaning of the English infinitives.

1. The people of Roumania lived in a poverty difficult to imagine. 2. The Security Council is given the power to decide when a threat to peace exists without waiting for the war to break out. 3. The general was a good man to keep away from. 4. This is a nice place to live in. 5. He stopped the car for me to buy some cigarettes. 6. Jack London was the best short-story writer in his country to arise after Edgar Рое. 7. In 1577 Drake set out on his voyage round the world, to return with an immense cargo of booty. 8. How different a reception awaited those workers who went to the centre of the city last May Day to be beaten and arrested by mounted policemen when they raised their banners in defence of peace. 9. Katherine had been for a walk by herself one morning, and came back to find Lenox grinning at her expectantly. 10. The Foreign Secretary said they were glad to have made such good progress at the Geneva conference last month.

П. Note the way the meaning of the English passive forms is rendered in your translation of the following sentences.

1. The Prime-Minister was forced to admit in the House of Commons that Britain had rejected the Argentine offer to negotiate the Folklands' crisis. 2. The amendment was rejected by the majority of the Security Council. 3. He rose to speak and was warmly greeted by the audience. 4. The treaty is reported to have been ratified by all participants. 5. The general was preceded into the room by his daughter. 6. It was the late President Roosevelt who told the American people that "more than one-third of the nation is ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-fed". 7. People must be met, they must be faced, talked to, smiled at. 8. The Foreign Secretary was questioned in the House of Commons about the attitude of the British Government to the sentences on Nazi war criminals. 9. When our business was attended to, our bags packed, and our families taken leave of, we started from Victoria Station.

III. Select the appropriate word order in the Russian translations of the following sentences.

1. Great strikes raged in steel, meat-packing, lumber, railroad, textiles, building, marine transport, coal, printing, garment-making — wherever there were trade unions. 2. The United States government refused to recognize the Soviet government until 1933; sixteen years after the revolution. 3. It was primarily because of these concessions to Negro and white labor that big capital came to hate Roosevelt so ruthlessly. 4. The Dutch Navy rescued the crew of a British freighter which began to sink near the Dutch coast after loose cargo shifted, a Navy spokesman said. 5. More than 500 senior British scientists from 20 universities have signed a pledge boycotting research for the American Strategic Defence Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars. 6. Japan may seem a rich country from abroad, but most Japanese still feel that basic living standards are below international par. 7. Floating on waves thousands of miles from any city, deposited on mountains and remote beaches, plastic trash is one of the most annoying of modern artifacts. 8. The position of a black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, has been identified by measurements that can be made only once every 19 or so years. 9. Sugar consumption was predictably down again, by 7.5 per cent, but the traditional habit of tea drinking recovered slightly.

IV. Employ the panitioning and integrating procedures to translate the following sentences

into Russian.

1. The United States reactionaries likewise cynically sabotaged cooperation with the USSR during World War II, in the hope that Hitler's forces would so butcher the Red Army as to make it virtually powerless after the war. 2. More than 2,600 local farmers, radical leftists and others rallied to protest against the planned expansion of Tokyo's international airport at Narita, but 10,000 riot police kept them away from the airport. 3. Typhoon Peggy cast a destructive path across the northern Philippines recently, killing more than 40 people, flooding huge areas and leaving behind a wide trail of wrecked houses, crops and building before heading towards south-east China. 4. Dr. Weinberg, the senior member of the research team that identified and cloned the gene, is one of the pioneers in the study of cancer genes. They are known to scientists as oncogenes, and they contribute to cancer development when they are abnormal or abnormally activated. 5. Italian magistrates have issued warrants for the arrest of 40 people over a huge fruit and vegetable racket they say has defrauded the EEC of up to 33 billion lire. 6. The blood-sucking leech, which fell out of medical favor a century ago after a career that predated the Christian era, is back in the science laboratories as a result of research

indicating it may have a role in treating tumors and other conditions. 7. House prices increased by 4 per cent in the third quarter of the year, the same rise as in the previous quarter, and giving an annual increase of 12 per cent to the end of September, according to the latest house price survey by the Nationwide Building Society.

3.2. HANDLING EQUIVALENT-LACKING FORMS AND STRUCTURES

Introductory Notes

It has been mentioned (see p. 24) that the source language may have a number of grammatical forms and structures which have no analogues in the target language, and some procedures were suggested for dealing with such equivalent-lacking elements.

The English grammatical form that has no direct equivalent in Russian may be a part of speech, a category within a part of speech or a syntactical structure. A lack of equivalence in the English and Russian systems of parts of speech can be exemplified by the article which is part of the English grammar and is absent in Russian. As a rule, English articles are not translated into Russian for their meaning is expressed by various contextual elements and needn't be reproduced separately. Translating the phrase "the man who gave me the book" with the Russian «человек, который дал мне книгу» the translator needn't worry about the definite article since the situation is definite enough due to the presence of the limiting attributive clause. There are some cases, however, when the meaning of the article has an important role to play in the communication and should by all means be reproduced in TT. Consider the following linguistic statement: 'To put it in terms of linguistics: a sentence is a concrete fact, the result of an actual act of speech. The sentence is an abstraction. So a sentence is always a unit of speech; the sentence of a definite language is an element of that language." It is obvious that an entity cannot be both a concrete fact and an abstraction. The difference between "a sentence" (любое отдельное предложение) and 'the sentence" (предложение как понятие, тип предложения) should be definitely revealed in the Russian translation as well.

Even if some grammatical category is present both in SL and in TL, its subcategories may not be the same and, hence, equivalent-lacking. Both the English and the Russian verb have their aspect forms but there are no equivalent relationships between them. Generally speaking, the Continuous forms correspond to the Russian imperfective aspect, while the Perfect forms are often equivalent to the perfective aspect. However, there are many dissimilarities. Much depends on the verb semantics. The Present Perfect forms of non-terminative verbs, for instance, usually correspond to the Russian imperfeclive verbs in the present tense:

I have lived in Moscow since 1940. 102

Я живу в Москве с 1940 г.

Progressive organizations and leaders have been persecuted. Прогрессивные организации и передовые деятели подвергаются преследованиям.

The Past Indefinite forms may correspond either to the perfective or to the imperfective Russian forms and the choice is largely prompted by the context. Cf.:

After supper he usually smoked in the garden.

После ужина он обычно курил в саду.

After supper he smoked a cigarette in the garden and went to bed.

После ужина он выкурил в саду сигарету и пошел спать.

The Past Pefect forms may also be indifferent to these aspective nuances, referring to an action prior to some other action or a past moment. Cf.:

I hoped he had read that book.

(а) Я надеялся, что он читал эту книгу, (б) Я надеялся, что он (уже) прочитал эту книгу.

And, again, the broader context will enable the translator to make the correct choice.

Of particular interest to the translator are the English syntactical (infinitival, participial or gerundial) complexes which have no parallels in Russian. Translating sentences with such complexes always involves some kind of restructuring.

A special study should be made of the translation problems involved in handling the Absolute Participle constructions. To begin with, an Absolute construction must be correctly identified by the translator. The identification problem is particularly complicated in the case of the "with"-structures which may coincide in form with the simple prepositional groups. The phrase "How can you play with your brother lying sick in bed" can be understood in two different ways: as an Absolute construction and then its Russian equivalent will be «Как тебе не стыдно играть, когда твой брат лежит больной (в постели)» or as a prepositional group which should be translated as «Как тебе не стыдно играть с твоим больным братом».

Then the translator should consider the pros and cons of the possible translation equivalents. The meaning of the Absolute Participle construction can be rendered into Russian with the help of a clause, an adverbial participle (деепричастие) or a separate sentence. Each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages. Using a clause involves the

identification of the specific adverbial function of the construction: "Business disposed of, we went for a walk." - Когда (так как) с делом было покончено, мы отправились погулять. This can be avoided by using an adverbial participle, but then care should be taken to refer it to the subject: Покончив с делом, мы отправились погулять. (Dangling participles are common in English but are usually not used in literary Russian. Cf.: "But coming from West Indies, his chances were very slim" and «Подъезжая к станции, у меня слетела шляпа».)

The same sentence can be rendered into Russian by two separate sentences: Работа была закончена. Мы отправились погулять. This method is not infrequently used by the translators, whenever it suits the style of the narration.

Specific translation problems emerge when the translator has to handle a syntactical complex with a causative meaning introduced by the verb 'to have" or "to get", such as: "I shall have him do it" or "I shall have him punished". First, the translator has to decide what Russian causative verb should be used as a substitute for the English "have" or "get". Depending on the respective status of the persons involved, the phrase "I shall have him do it" may be rendered into Russian as «Я заставлю его (прикажу ему, велю ему, попрошу его и т.п.) сделать это» or even «Я добьюсь (позабочусь о том, устрою так и т.п.), чтобы он это сделал». Second, the translator must be aware that such complexes are polysemantic and may be either causative or non-causative. The phrase 'The general had his horse killed" may refer to two different situations. Either the horse was killed by the general's order (Генерал приказал убить свою лошадь) or he was killed in combat and the general was not the initiator of the act but the sufferer (Под ним убили лошадь). An error in the translator's judgement will result in a distorted translation variant.