Translation as a notion and subject

LITERATURE

1. Виноградов С. Введение в переводоведение. - М.: ИОСОРАО.2001.

2. Карабан В.І. Посібник-Довідник з перекладу англійської наукової і технічної літератури на українську мову. Ч. І-ІІ - К.: Політична думка, 1997,1999.

3. Комиссаров В.Н. Современное переводоведение. - М.: «ЗТС»,2001.

4. Коптілов В.В. Теорія і практика перекладу. - К.: Видавництво Київ, університету, 1982.

5. Корунець І.В. Теорія і практика перекладу. - К.: Вища школа, 1986.

TRANSLATION AS A NOTION AND SUBJECT

Translationas a term and notion is of polysemantic nature, its common and most general meaning being mostly associated with the action or process of rendering/expressing the meaning/content of a source language word, word-group, sentence or passage (larger text) in the target language or with the result of the process/action of rendering. In other words with the work performed by the translator (cf. this is my translation).«Translation» is also used to denote the subject taught or studied, the examination in the subject (cf. we have translationin the time-table today; I have to pass translation tomorrow). «Translation» may refer to the title of the manual/theoretical work on the subject (cf. I bought Translationby Ivanenko). Besides, the Romanization of proper nouns, geographical names, different internationalisms, etc., when Latin letters are used to convey the Ukrainian nouns, verbs, adverbs is «translation» too: Київ Kyiv, Бровари Brovary, Львів Lviv, Біла Церква Bila Tserkva, Полтава Poltava, Згурівка Zghurivka, Медвин Medvyn, algebra алгебра, geographer географ, computer комп'ютер, opera опера, telephone (v) телефонувати, ignore ігнорувати, historically історично. «Translated» in this way, i.e., transliterated with the help of Cyrillic letters are many English and otherforeign names and different terms. Cf.: Archibald Cronin Арчібальд Кронін, Robert Frost Роберт Фрост, Ottawa Оттава, NickHfc, Susan Сюзан, Helmut KohlГельмут Коль, shilling шилінг¹, pizza піцца, therapeutic терапевтичний, etc.

No less ambiguous is also the term «interpretation»which is synonymous to «translation»and is used to denote the way or manner of presenting the idea of the work in translation orally (as well as its aesthetic, religious, political, pragmatic background and other qualitative characteristics of the work under translation). These may be artistic, genre and stylistic peculiarities rendered by the translator in his particular way, which is somewhat different from that of the author's.

Apart from the two mentioned above, there are some other terms in the theory of translation which may seen ambiguous to the inexperienced student. These usually common terms are: accurate or exact (to what degree?) translation точний переклад; faithful (or realistic) translation, адекватний/вірний переклад; faithfulness of translation/interpretation, адекватність/вірність перекладу/ тлумачення; fidelity (or faithfulness) of translation/interpretation вірність, адекватність перекладу; equivalent translation/interpretation еквівалентний переклад; free interpretation вільний переклад, перелицювання; free adaptation вільний переклад, переробка; free interpretation вільний переспів, перелицювання; free/loose translation вільний переклад, переказ; consecutive interpretation послідовний переклад, усне тлумачення; off-hand translation/ interpretation переклад/тлумачення без попередньої підготовки (з голосу чи з аркуша); rehash вільна переробка (вдала чи невдала) твору; sight translation/interpretation (translation at sight) переклад/ усне тлумачення з аркуша/тексту; simultaneous translation/ interpretation синхронний переклад; rough translation робочий варіант перекладу, чорновий переклад and some others.

Consequently, a «faithful translation» very often means the same as «equivalent translation» which can be best illustrated on single words, word-groups or sentences as the following: professors and students професори й студенти, to work hard важко працювати, take part брати участь, throw light проливати світло, between Scilla and Charybdis між Сціллою і Харібдою, Ukraine celebrated her fifth anniversary in August 1996Україна святкувала п'яту річницю своєї незалежності в серпні 1996 року.

Equivalent can also be considered the translation of the following English sentence which maintains in Ukrainian its main constituent parts, its content, expressiveness and picturesqueness: There was Penelope flying after me like mad. (W.Collins) За мною гналась, мов навіжена, Пенелопа.

In regard to the afore-said, there can be no equivalence but only faithfulness in the translation of such and the like English language units as: complexion колір обличчя, to take measures вживати заходів, little bird донощик («стукач»), live in the street рідко бувати вдома, one's sands are running out (idiom) тонко пряде/йому недовго ряст топтати, same here (colloq.) це ж саме (так само) і в мене (зі мною), те/це ж саме можу сказати і про себе or: це так само стосується і мене. In a large number of cases «translation» is traditionally applied to various substitutions of the source language constituents/images for the explicatory constituents and images of the target language, which helps achieve the necessary faithfulness in conveying their meaning. Cf.: penny-in-the slot прилад/пристрій-автомат для розрахунків за товари (торгівля); the land of golden fleece Австралія; red blood мужність, відвага, хоробрість (когось); let George do it Іван киває на Петра (один спихає відповідальність на другого); agonic (геометрія) що не утворює кута, etc. Therefore, «faithfull» is not always «equivalent».

The term «translation» is used even to denote purely functional substitutions which have absolutely nothing in common with any expression/rendering of meaning of the source language sense units in the target language. A graphic example of this kind of «translation» can be the following passage: «There's the treein the middle... It could bark... It says «Bough-wough»...«That's why its branches are called boughs». (L.Carrol, Alice in Wonderland). In Ukrainian: Он Фікус стоїть!.. Ми тому й прозвали його Фі-Кус, що він кусається. It goes without saying that the lexical meaning of «tree» is not «Фікус» and «Bough-wough» or «boughs» do not correlate with «кусатись» which they were substituted for in this Ukrainian translation by H.Bushyna.

Similarly «translated» i.e. functionally substituted are different English and Ukrainian metaphorically used nouns, verbs and set expressions as in the examples knight of the pencil журналіст/ кореспондент, baby-snatcher стара жінка, що одружилася з молодим чоловіком, the Square Mile Лондонське Сіті (фінансовий центр Лондона), the Square Mile of Vice (Cora, район нічних розваг міста Лондона), soft head недоумкувата людина (дурник), etc.

WAYS OF TRANSLATING

Translating is unseparable from understanding and it goes along with conveying content and sometimes even the form of language units. As a result, the process of translation, provided it is not performed at the level of separate simple words, involves simultaneously some aspects of the source language and those of the target language. These are morphology (word-building and word forms), the lexicon (words, phraseologisms, mots), syntax (the means of connection and the structure of syntaxemes), stylistics (peculiarities of speech styles, tropes, etc.).

The level or the degree of faithfulness of translation is mostly predetermined by some factors, which may be both of objective and of subjective nature. The main of them are the purpose of the translation to be performed, the skill of the translator/interpreter, the type of the matter selected for translation, etc. Depending on these and some other factors, the following methods of translating are traditionally recognized in the theory and practice of translation:

1. Literal translating,which is to be employed when dealing with separate words whose surface form and structure, as well as

their lexical meaning in the source language and in the target lan­guage, fully coincide. These are predominantly international by origi­nal morphemes, lexemes/words, rarer word-groups having in English and Ukrainian (and often in some other languages too) a literally identical or very similar presentation and identical lexical meaning: administrator адміністратор, director директор, region реґіон, hotel/motel готель/ мотель, hydrometer гідрометр, Tom Том, etc.

It is easy to notice that in some words thus translated not only the morphemic but also the syllabic structure can sometimes be fully conveyed (cf. an-ti ан-ти, es-cort ес-корт, direct-or директ-ор, ex-presid-ent екс-прези-дент).

In many a case, however, the lingual form of the source lan­guage words is only partly conveyed in the target language. This happens when the common word is borrowed by each of the two languages in question from different source languages or when its lingual form is predetermined by the orthographic peculiarities of the target language: anti-alcoholic протиалкогольний, music музика, constitution конституція, zoology зоологія, atomic weight атомна вага, chemical process хімічний процес, national opera theatre національний оперний театр.

The literal translation in all the examples above provides an equivalent rendering of the lexical meaning of each language unit despite the augmentation in the number of morphemes/syllables in the target language (cf. atomicатом-н-а, alcoholicалкоголь-н-ий).

Close to the literal method of translating or rather reproduction is the so-called way of translator's transcription by means of which partly the orthographic and partly the sounding form of the source language lexemes/words is conveyed: archbishop архієпископ, card картка/карта, European європейський, Muscovite москвич/ москвичка, organized організований, stylized стилізований, therapeutic терапевтичний.

Literal translating, however, can pervert the sense of the source language lexemes or sentences when their lingual form accidentally coincides with some other target language lexemes having quite dif­ferent meanings: art/sf митець, художник (rarer артист); decoration відзнака, нагорода (and not декорація); matrass колба (and not матрац); replica точна копія (and not репліка), etc. Hence, literal translating has some restrictions in its employment and does not always help to render the lexical meaning of words or even morphemes having often even an identical lingual form (spelling) in the source language and in the target language.

2. Verbal translatingis also employed at lexeme/word level. But unlike literal translating it never conveys the orthographic or the sounding form of the source language units, but their denotative meaning only: fearful страшний, fearless безстрашний, helpless безпорадний, incorrect неправильний, mistrust недовір'я (недовіра), superprofit надприбуток, non-interference невтручання, weightlessness невагомість etc.

All the words above are practically translated at the lexico-mor-phological level, as their lexical meanings and morphological stems are identical to those of the English words (cf. help-less без-порадний, mis-trustне-дов\р'я, super-profit над-прибуток, etc.).

The overwhelming majority of other words, when translated ver­bally do not preserve their structure in the target language. That is explained by the differences in the morphological systems of the Eng­lish and Ukrainian languages: abundantly рясно, bank берег (береговий), cliff бескид (скеля, круча), myself я, я сам/сама; автомат automatic machine/rifle, заввишки high/tall, письменник writer (author), червоніти to get/grow red, etc..

Verbal translating of polysemantic words permits a choice among some variants which is practically impossible in literal translating, which aims only at maintaining the literal form.

Thus, the Ukrainian word автомат can have the following equivalent variants in English: 1. automatic machine; 2. slot-machine; 3. automatic telephone; 4. submachine gun (tommy gun). Similarly, the Englsih word bank when out of a definite context may have the following equivalent variants in Ukrainian: 1. берег (річки); 2. банк; 3. вал/насип; 4. мілина; 5. замет; 6. крен, віраж (авіац.); 7. поклади (корисних копалин). The literal variant/equivalent of the noun ban/fin Ukrainian can be, naturally, «банк» only.

Verbal translating, however, does not and can not provide a faithful conveying of sense/content at other than word level. When employed at the level of word-combinations or sentences verbal trans­lation may often make the language units ungrammatical and pervert or completely ruin their sense, cf: / am reading now is not я є читаючий зараз but я читаю зараз; never say die is not ніколи не кажи помираю but не падай духом; to grow strong is not рости міцним but ставати дужим; to take measures is not брати міри but вживати заходів; first night is not перша ніч but прем'єра, etc.

Despite this, verbal translation is widely employed first of all at language level, i.e., when the lexical meaning of separate words is to be identified. A graphic example of verbal translation is presented in dictionaries which list the lexical meanings of thousands of separate words. Verbal translation is also employed for the sake of discriminat­ing the meanings of some words at the lessons, with the aim of identifying the meaning of the unknown words (when translating sen­tences or passages). The student like any other person eager to know the name of an object or action/quality of the object, etc., employs verbal translation too when asking: What is the English for сніп/ відлига? What is the English for нікчемна людина/нікчема, хвалити Бога? What is the Ukrainian for cranberry/mistletoe? etc.

3. Word-for-word translationis another method of rendering sense. It presents a consecutive verbal translation though at the level of word-groups and sentences. This way of translation is often em­ployed both consciously and subconsciously by students in the proc­ess of translating alien grammatical constructions/word forms. Some­times students at the initial stage of learning a foreign language may employ this way of translation even when dealing with seemingly com­mon phrases or sentences, which are structurally different from their equivalents in the native tongue. Usually the students employ word-for-word translation to convey the sense of word-groups or sentences which have a structural form, the order of words, and the means of connection quite different from those in the target language. To achieve faithfulness various grammatical transformations are to be performed in the process of translation and in the translationc itself word-for-word variants are to be corrected to avoid various grammatical violations made by the inexperienced students. Cf. You are right to begin with* ви маєте рацію, щоб почати з instead of Почнемо з того/припустимо, що ви маєте рацію/що ви праві.

3. The interlinear way/method of translatingis a con­ventional term for a strictly faithful rendering of sense expressed by word-groups and sentences at the level of some text. The latter may be a passage, a stanza, an excerpt of a work or the work itself. The method of interlinear translation may be practically applied to all speech units(sentences, supersyntactic units, passages). Interlin­ear translation always provides a completely faithful conveying only of content, which is often achieved through various transformations of structure of many sense units. For example, the sentence Who took my book? admits only one word-for-word variant, namely: Хто взяв мою книжку?

In interlinear translation, however, the full content of this sen­tence can be faithfully rendered with the help of two and sometimes even three equivalent variants: У кого моя книжка? Хто брав/узяв мою книжку? The choice of any of the transformed variants is prede­termined by the aim of the translation, by the circumstances under which the translating/interpreting is performed or by the requirements of style (for example, in order to avoid the unnecessary repetition of the same form of expression/structure close to each other).

Interlinear translating is neither bound to nor in any way restricted by the particularities of word forms, by the word order or by the struc­tural form of the source language units, which are usually word-combi­nations or sentences in the passage/work under translation.

Transformations are also inevitable when there exists no iden­tity in the form of expressing the same notion in the source language and in the target language: a trip коротка подорож; їздити на лижах to ski; to participate брати участь; овдовіти to become a widow/ widower, знесилитися to become/grow weak (feeble).

Very often transformations become also necessary in order to overcome divergences in the structural form of English syntaxemes which are predominantly analytical by their structural form, whereas their Ukrainian word-groups of the same meaning are mostly syn­thetic and analytico-synthetic by structure: books of my fatherзнижки мого батька; Kyivstreet traffic regulations правила дорожнього руху міста Києва; but: a task for next week завдання на наступний тиждень.

Interlinear translating is widely practised at the intermediary and advanced stages of studying a foreign language. It is helpful when checking up the students' understanding of certain structurally peculiar English sense units in the passage under translation. Interlinear translations of literary works, when perfected by regular masters of the pen, may become good literary variants of the original. But interlinear translations do not convey the literary merits/artistic features and beauty of the original. While performing the interlinear translation the student tries to convey completely the content of a source language sentence, stanza or passage. He quite subconsciously analyses the passage, selects in the target language the necessary means of expression for the allomorphic and isomorphic phenomena/sense units unknown to him and only after this he performs the translation. The interlinear method of translating helps the student to obtain the necessary training in rendering the main aspects of the foreign language. Thus, he masters the means of expression pertained to the source/ target language. In the example below, taken from P.B.Shelley's poem The Masque of Anarchy, the interlinear translation conveys only the main content of the poetic stanza:

Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Люди Англії, спадкоємці слави,

Heroes of unwritten story, Герої (ще) не написаної історії,

Nurslings of one mighty mother, Сини однієї'могутньо)'матері-вітчизни,

Hopes of her and one another! її надії і надії кожного з вас!

From this interlinear translation the reader can obtain a fairly correct notion of what the poet wanted to say in the stanza as a whole. But this translation does not in any way reflect the artistic beauty of Shelley's poem, i.e., the variety of its tropes, the rhythm and the rhyme, the musical sounding of the original work. Despite all that it still ranks much higher than any word-for-word translation might ever be, as it faithfully conveys not only the meaning of all notional words but also the content of different sense units, which have no structural equivalents in Ukrainian. Due to this the method of interlin­ear translation is practically employed when rendering some passages or works for internal office use in scientific/research centres and laboratories, in trade and other organizations and by students in their translation practice; it acquires some features of literary translation.

4. Literary Translatingrepresents the highest level of a trans­lator's activity. Any type of matter skilfully turned into the target lan­guage, especially by a regular master of the pen may acquire the faithfulness and the literary (or artistic) standard equal to that of the source language.

Depending on the type of the matter under translation, this method of performance may be either literary proper or literary artistic.

Literary artistic translation presents a faithful conveying of con­tent and of the artistic merits only of a fiction/belles-lettres passage or work. The latter may be either of a prose or a poetic genre (verse).

Literary proper translation is performed on any other than fic­tion/belles-lettres passages/works. These may include scientific or technical matter, didactic matter (different text-books), business cor­respondence, the language of documents, epistolary texts, etc. In short, any printed or recorded matter devoid of artistic merits (epi­thets, metaphors, etc.). But whether literary proper or literary artistic, this translation provides an equivalent rendering not only of complete content but also of the stylistic peculiarities of the passage/work and its artistic merits/beauty, as in belles-lettres style texts.

Literary translations are always performed in literary all-nation languages and with many transformations which help achieve the ease and beauty of the original composition. The number of phrases and sentences in a literary translation is never the same as in the source language passage/work, neither are the same means of expression or the number and quality of stylistic devices per paragraph/syntactic superstructure. All these transformations are made in order to achieve faithfulness in rendering content and expressiveness of the passage/ work under translation. Transformations are also used to convey the features of style and in still greater measure the genre peculiarities of the works/passages under translation.

Literary proper/literary artistic translation of a larger passage/ work often requires linguistic, historical and other inquiries in order to clarify the obscure places (historic events, notions of specific national lexicon, neologisms, archaisms, etc.). Sometimes even the title of a work may require a philologic or historic inquiry. So, «Слово о полку Ігоревім» in a verbal or word-for-word translation would be *A Word about Ihor's Regiment which does not in any way correspond to the real meaning of this title, since the author meant under «Слово» story, tale, saga, song. The word полк did not mean the military unit of today's armies (regiment) but troop, host, army. Therefore, the mean­ing of полк would be in Ukrainian дружина and the whole title would sound in contemporary translation as The Tale of the Host of Ihor, which corresponds to the real meaning of the title (оповідь, повість, пісня про Ігореве військо, i.e. дружину). That is why there exist today different translations of the title of this brilliant work. Among them are the following: 1) The Tale of the Armament of Igor. Edited and translated by Leonard Magnus. Oxford University Press, 1915. 2) The Tale of Igor. Adapted by Helen de Verde. London, 1918.3) Prince Igor's Raid Against the Polovtsi. Translated by Paul Crath. Versified by Watson Kirkonnell. Saskatoon. Canada, 1947. 4) The Song of Igor's Campaign. Translated by Vladimir Nabokov. New York 1960. As can be seen, none of these titles conveys the meaning of the title fully, completely equivalents and faithfully, though some are close to it, especially that one suggested by Paul Crath (Prince Igor's Raid against the Polovtsi) and the V.Nabokov's variant The Song of Igor's Campaign.

In Soviet times this old Ukrainian literature masterpiece had an unchanged title The Lay of Igor's Host (suggested by a Georgian lin­guist). This translation does not differ greatly from the two mentioned above for «lay» is the Middle English poetic word for «song».

A similar approach aimed at a possibly fullest expression of the poetic content, i.e., flavour of the title can be seen in S.Garry's translation of M.Sholokhov's novel «Тихий Дон» sounding in English as rhythmic lines of a song - And Quiet Flows the Don or The Don Flows home to the Sea. The former title was used in the New York publication of the novel (1944) and the latter in its London publication that same year. It goes without saying that a verbal or word-for-word translation of the title as *The Quiet Don or *The Still Don would not convey the poetic flavour of the original title, which is strongly felt in its source language variant.

This poetic subtext of the Russian title is really expressed only in each of the two S.Garry's variants which could have been sug­gested by the translator only after a deep inquiry into the novel's content, into its main idea, and into the whole system of literary im­ages of Sholokhov's work (as with the work mentioned before). It is no less difficult to convey the meaning and functions of colloquial, conversational, dialectal and other kinds of lexical units often used by many authors in their belles-lettres works. To translate them faithfully, one must consult reference books, dictionaries and often even the native speakers of the language, e.g.: dafosfer-dialectal for знавець/ фахівець; daisy-slang for something or somebody nice, beautiful, first-rate (першосортне); put up (adj.) is colloquial for задуманий зазделегідь; спланований; ab ovo- Latin for від самого початку (Горацій), букв, «від яйця». Constant inquiries of all kinds are also necessary to convey the expression side of the source language mat­ter. It becomes especially imperative in versification which is explained by the condensed nature of poetic works in which thoughts and ideas are often expressed through literary means. To achieve the necessary level of faithfulness the translator has to render fully the picturesqueness, the literary images, the rhythm and the rhyme (vocalic or consonantal), the beauty of sounding of the original poem, etc. An illustration of this may be D.Palamarchuk's versified translation of W.Shakespeare's sonet CXV:

Those lines that I before have write do lie, (10) Even those that said I could not love you dearer: (11) Yet then my judgement knew no reason why (10) My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. (11) Збрехав мій вірш, колись тобі сказавши: (11) «Моїй любові нікуди рости». (10) Я думав - ріст її спинивсь назавше, (11) Найбільшої сягнувши висоти. (10)

The Ukrainian variant of the stanza reveals its almost complete identity with the original in the rhythmic and rhyme organization and in the number of syllables in each line. Though in the original their number alternates in reverse order (from 10 to 11) and in the translation - from 11 to 10. But this is in no way a rude violation, since the interchange takes place within the same stanza, though the translator could not fully reproduce the alternate (acbd) rhyme, which is feminine in the first (a) and third (c) lines and masculine in the second (b), and in the fourth (d) lines.

Most striking, however, are the syntactic alternations, there being no single line structurally similar to that of the original verse. All that becomes necessary because of the predominantly polysyllabic structure of Ukrainian words the number of which in the translation is only 19 as compared with 35 words in the source language. Besides, the Ukrainian stanza consists of notional words only, whereas in the original work there are also functionals (have, do, that, most, not, etc.). The notionals form the artistic images and ideas the number of which is somewhat larger in English. Since it was next to impossible to overcome the «resistance» of the source language verse, some losses in translation became inevitable. They are the result of the existing divergences in the grammatical structure or in the means of expression in the two languages, first of all in the greater number of syllables in the same words in Ukrainian, which is a tangible obstacle for the translators of poetry. That is why in order to maintain the poetic metre of the lines in the original stanza above the translator had to transform them. As a result, the number of inevitable losses in versifications is always larger than in prose translations. Nevertheless, D.Palamarchuk's versification is considered to be highly faithful and artistic, because it conveys, in the main, the following aspects of this Shakespearian sonet: its content, partly its types of rhythm and rhyme, its artistic images and tropes, as well as its picturesqueness and the pragmatic orientation/toning of the original sonet, nothing to say about its main content.