Differences in the Semantic Structures of Source Language and Target Language

Translation is one of the most important aspects and methods of comparative study of languages. One of the obstacles to a ready equivalence between the 2 languages is the difference in their semantic structures. Apart from few specific areas, different speech communities have approximately the same experience of extralinguistic reality, that is, human experience in general is common to all humans. However, in language this common experience finds different expression. For example, Russian квитанция has the following parallels in English: receipt, luggage, baggage ticket (check), pawn???????? ticket, acknowledgement etc. The point which we are trying to make is that national PECULIARITIES of general semantic segmentation manifest themselves in a specific grouping of notions, in the way these notions are arranged and result in specific semantic structures of words. Thus, some notions can be expressed by one word in some language and by different words in another. For example, дерево and tree are partial equivalents because дерево as building material corresponds to the words “wood” and “timber”.

Extralinguistic reality is the basis of something which may be called an invariant meaning, variantly expressed in different languages: кожа – skin, leather. Actually, in a confrontation of a word in one language with what is usually considered its parallel in another we do not deal with words as a global semantic structure, that is lexemes. An English lexeme finds a parallel in a Russian lexeme only if it is a monosemantic word. Thus, the English word “valour” corresponds to the Russian доблесть. In most cases no correspondence between a lexeme in one language and a lexeme in another can be established. Rather we have a lexeme in one language and elements of different lexemes in the other. For example, “strange”: чужой, неизвестный; странный, необыкновенный; непривычный; сдержанный, холодный; “pattern”: образец, пример; модель, шаблон; выкройка; рисунок, узор; стиль, характер литературного произведения; отрез, купон на платье. One of the most important principles in the study of languages is the principle of equivalence. It implies a special sort of correspondence between the words of the two languages rather than absolute identity. The degree??????? in lexical and grammatical systems of the language. In such a case as the Russian рука and the English “hand” and “arm”, the degree of equivalence of the nominative meanings is somewhat different. We speak of the absolute equivalence of the Russian word to the English words and partial equivalence of each of them to the Russian word: сломать руку – break one’s arm; обжечь руку – burn one’s hand (arm); пожать друг другу руки – shake hands; протянуть руку – stretch one’s arm, give smb one’s hand, reach out; держать ребёнка на руках – hold the child in one’s arms; wave one’s hand. Russian phraseological units are parallel in English in this way: под рукой – at hand; приложить к чему-либо руку – to have a hand in smth; прибрать к рукам, завладеть – lay hands on upon smth; с пустыми руками – empty-handed; это дело его рук – that’s his work; это мне на руку – that fits right in with my plans; нам не хватает рабочих рук – we are short-handed; сидеть сложа руки – doing nothing; работать не покладая рук – to work one’s head off; его здесь на руках носят – they make a big fuss over him here; без вас я как без рук – I’m lost without you; всё из рук валится – I’m all thumbs today.

As we can judge from the examples, the Russian word рука can be rendered either by English words “hand”, “arm” or by means of other words, especially in phraseological units. As analysis of equivalence of separate words, that is a paradigmatic approach to the problem, proves once again that the polysemy of a word is best and most thoroughly shown in speech, oral or recorded. The word’s paradigmatic features are most readily discoverable in the syntagmatic relationships. Translation, therefore, is of special interest for a bilingual lexicographer, because a dictionary entry must give not only a direct equivalent to the word in the source language but also indicate some peculiarities of the source words usage, correspondingly translation. A translator is uniquely placed to decide which of the source language meanings can be used to render them in translation.

Human Translation Theories – Современные теории перевода

Roughly, the human translation theories may be divided into 3 main groups which quite conventionally may be called transformational approach, denotative approach, and communicative approach. This group of translation theories consists of many varieties which may have different names but they have one common feature: the process of translation is regarded as transformation (Бархударов, Латышев, Рецкер, Марчук, Комиссаров etc.). According to transformational approach, translation is viewed as the transformation of objects and structures of the source language into those of the target one. Transformation in translation is any replacement of a source language unit by its equivalent in the target language one. There can be distinguished 3 levels of substitutions: morphological substitutions, lexical and syntactic substitutions. At the morphological level morphemes of the source language are substituted for those of the target one. English word building suffixes -tion, -sion may be transformed into Russian suffixes: -ание, -ение, -ация. At the lexical level words and word combinations are substituted for those of the translation: space (пространство, космос), in blue mood (не в духе, в плохом настроении). At the syntactic level sentence structures of the source language are transformed into those of the target one. The syntactic transformations comprise a broad range of structural changes in the target text, starting with the reversal of the word order in a sentence and finishing with the DIVISION of the source sentence into 2 or more target ones. The above examples of transformations at various levels are the simplest. Real translation transformations are more complex. Every now and then a syntactic pattern in the source language is transformed into its equivalent in the target language at the morphological level and vice versa. This kind of transformation is especially frequent when translation involves an analytical and a synthetic language. For example, Russian case forms are rendered in English by means of relevant prepositions: to dig with a spade – копать лопатой. Hence, in such instances we observe transformation between different levels (morphological -> lexical and syntactic). According to the transformational approach, translation is a set of multilevel transformations of a text in one language into a text in another governed by specific transformation rules. Of course, there are dictionaries, grammars of the languages involved, perhaps, some matching word building patterns. They are helpful, all translators use them to a greater or lesser extent but the question is whether they are sufficient.

In accordance with the transformational approach, they are both primary and deduced observed events (language forms) in translation. Word forms are primary observed events, whereas lexical meanings and grammar rules are those deduced from the primary ones. The observed events are interrelated – words and word forms of different languages are experimentally interrelated through the equivalence of their concepts and the relations are shown in bilingual dictionaries; the interrelation of grammar forms and rules is also established in experiments and shown in the relevant translation manuals. The selection of equivalence of words and grammar rules is governed by the context (text environment) which is also a set of events. All this means that within the framework of the transformational approach one may build up a formal model of translation using observed events and rules for their interrelation and a formal model makes the translation problem a well-defined one.

The transformational approach has been confirmed by the operation of machine translation systems. In some cases, the transformational approach may come handy, but sometimes it is not appropriate for translation; for instance, the translation of almost every piece of poetry or high style prose cannot be explained by mere substitution of source language unit by a target language one.

According to the denotative approach, during translation we deal with similar objects, events (word forms of the matching languages) and concepts deduced from those observed events, however, as opposed to the transformational approach, the relationship between the source language and target language word forms is occasional rather than regular. To illustrate this difference, let us consider the following examples: The sea is warm tonight – Сегодня вечером море тёплое; A stitch in time saves nine – Дорога ложка к обеду. In the first sentence the equivalences are regular and the concept pertaining to the whole sentence may be divided into those relating to its individual components (words and word combinations). In the second instance, however, equivalence between the original sentence and its translation is occasional, that is worth only for this case; and the concept pertaining to the whole sentence cannot be divided into individual components. The indivisible nature of the concept characteristic of the second example may be proved by literal translation of the sentence: стежок, сделанный вовремя, экономит девять. It is much more difficult to model translation based on denotative approach. Conceptual (semantic) models are more ambiguous than those based on verbal equivalences. There is only one case where denotative theory does explain translation: that of occasional verbal expressions related to indivisible concepts, such as idioms, poetry etc.

Communicational Approach to Translation. The communicational theory of translation was suggested by O. Kate (?) and is based on the notions of communication and thesaurus. Communication may be defined as an act of sending and receiving some information which is called a message. It is necessary to distinguish between two kinds of thesauruses: language thesaurus and subject thesaurus. Language thesaurus is a system of our knowledge about the language which we use to formulate a message, whereas subject thesaurus is a system of our knowledge about the content of the message. It’s very important to understand that thesauruses of message sender and recipient may be different to a greater or lesser degree and that is why we sometimes do not understand each other even when we think we are speaking one and the same language. In monolingual communication there are 2 actors: sender and receiver, and each of them uses 2 thesauruses. In bilingual communication we have 3 actors: sender, recipient and intermediary. The translator has 2 language thesauruses: source and target one, and performs 2 functions: decodes the source message and encodes the target one to be received by the end user of the translation. The following sentence can have different translation versions depending on translation situation: Several new schools appeared in this area – В районе появилось несколько новых косяков рыбы; В районе появилось несколько новых школ.

Let us assume that the message sender being a fisherman and using relevant subject thesaurus, by “schools” meant a large number of fish swimming together rather than institutions for educating children, and the correct translation had to be 1. Whereas the translator who presumably didn’t have relevant information in his subject thesaurus translated “schools” as institutions for educating children which naturally led to miscommunication. The above example shows a case of miscommunication based on the insufficiency of extralinguistic information. However, there are also cases of miscommunication caused by the insufficiency of linguistic information. These are inadequate translation of verbal tenses, incorrect choice of lexical equivalence and other errors well represented in translation manuals. This example is of course an exaggeration but it clearly illustrates a dividing line between linguistic and extralinguistic information in translation as visualized by the communicational approach.

The communicational approach to translation: translation is a message sent by a translator to a particular user and the appropriateness of the translation depends on sufficiency and similarity of their background information rather than only on linguistic correctness.

Generally speaking, all theories of human translation try to explain the process of translation to a degree of precision required for formalization but no explanation is complete so far.

The transformational approach quite convincingly suggests that in many languages …regular, syntactic, morphological and word building structures which may be successfully matched with their analogies in another language. The transformational approach forms the basis of machine translation design. Almost any machine translation system uses the principal of matching the observed events (language forms) of the languages involved in translation. The denotative approach treats different languages as closed systems with specific relationships between formal and conceptual aspects, hence, in the process of translation links between the forms of different languages are established via conceptual equivalence. The communicational approach highlights a very important aspect of translation – the matching of thesauruses. Translation may achieve its ultimate target of rendering a piece of information only if the translator knows the user’s language and the subject matter of the translation well enough. That is: if the translator’s language and subject thesauruses are sufficiently complete. Any theory recognizes 3 basic components of translation and different approaches differ only in the accents placed on this or that component. So, basic components are:

1. meaning of a word or word combination;

2. equivalence of this meaning expressed in a word or word combination of the target language;

3. extralinguistic information pertaining to the original meaning and to its conceptual equivalent after the translation

The hierarchy of this method may be different. Thus, in oral consecutive translation the priority is given to denotative method. …formulates a translation which is very seldom a structural copy of the source language speech. In simultaneous translation, as opposed to consecutive, priority is given to direct transformations since a simultaneous interpreter simply has no time for conceptual analysis. The matching language forms and concepts are regular and irregular; that seemingly the same concepts are interpreted differently by the speakers of different languages and different translation uses.

The Denotative Meaning of a Word and How to Convey It in Translation

The most essential feature of a word is that it expresses the concept of a thing, process, phenomenon, naming them. Concept is a logical category, its linguistic counterpart is meaning. Meaning, as the outstanding scholar Vygodskiy put it, is the unity of generalization, communication, and thinking. As entity of extreme complexity, the meaning of a word is liable to historical changes and which are responsible for the formation of an expanded semantic structure of a word. The structure is constituted of various types of lexical meanings, the major one being denotative, which informs of the subject of communication. Practically, any kind of information can be conveyed, since language has names for all objects, phenomena, and actions; it is capable of expressing human reactions, feelings, states of mind and judgment. Units of communication, that is linguistic units of words, denote concrete things, actions etc., as well as concepts of things and actions. These meanings, which directly refer to things in extralinguistic reality, that is the nominative meanings of words, may be viewed as denotative meanings of any notional words. Denotative meaning is the basic or literal meaning of any notional word. Denotative meaning is referential, objective, and cognitive. At first sight, it may appear that the rendering of denotative meanings does not present a problem for translation. However, when we deal with the immediate denotative meaning of the original word or utterance and the problem of its transference into another language, we have to face the fact that it is the exception rather than the rule that a specific form evokes only one precise meaning.

It is a well known fact that some scholars who deal with Shakespeare’s originals, for example, are still not clear as to the meaning of certain words and phrases in his work. Shakespeare’s commentators are still doubtful about the word “questionable”. Some of them interpret it as “capable of answering questions”, others – as “wishing to ask questions” or “provoking questions”. Here, the denotative meaning of the word presents difficulties for translators because it is impossible to determine and understand the actual meaning of the original word as it was intended by the author and not because of the impossibility of finding an equivalent in the other language.

To translate is to understand when it is hard to say what the author wanted his word to denote or mean, the translator has to rely only upon his individual understanding and linguistic experience. It must not be forgotten that even in everyday speech an utterance may be ambiguous, may have a number of readings or meanings. In actual speech it is the context of situation that indicates quite clearly which of the meanings of a polysemantic word is intended.

In works of literature the situation is different. Contextual specification of the word’s denotation is not always possible. The role and relevance of the surrounding context is rather limited, hence, the difficulty of interpretation and, consequently, translation.

Connotative Meaning of a Word and How to Convey It in Another Language

The denotative meaning of a word, while it is the basic meaning of a word, is not its only or whole meaning. Besides denoting a concrete thing, action or concept, a word may also carry some additional overtones, generally described as connotations.

They are made up of additional components: those that express one’s attitude to the thing spoken about (this is called an emotive component of meaning). All those that indicate the sphere in which the discourse takes place (this is known as the stylistic reference of a word): “father”, “dad”, “daddy”, “pope”, “old man” – all have the same denotation, that is they are synonyms but they have certainly different emotive meanings. The same can be said about the Russian words: отец, папа, папуля, папочка, батя, старик, предок etc.

In the combination “feminine logic” the word “feminine” acquires a slightly pejorative connotation while separately both “feminine” and “logic” are stylistically neutral (feminine helplessness, feminine charm, beauty).

These additional meanings or components of the general meaning may be part of the word’s dictionary meaning, that is they may be present in the word when it is taken in isolation. They may, on the other hand, be part of the word’s contextual meaning, that is, they may appear as a result of the word’s correlation with other words.

Connotation is one of the keys to the power of words. Once we see there is a hidden power in the most innocent looking word, that almost every word has a certain tone that colors the basic meaning, we realize that it’s rendering into another language can present the greatest difficulties for translation. As for the recognition of connotations, there is a case when emotional overtones find linguistic expression. For instance, nearly all Russian nouns can have diminutive forms. Often this has nothing to do with size, rather with affectionate feelings of the speaker. The diminutive suffix is capable of transforming even a vulgar word into a term of endearment: рожа – рожица, морда – мордашка. If we were to translate both Russian words into English, where no parallel diminutive forms exist, we would have to find other means to render the emotive meanings and stylistic reference which is not a very easy thing to do as can be seen from the following example: Опять те же брючки одел! – You put on the wrong trousers again!; Это Варин женишок – He’s Varia’s fiancé; That’s Varia’s suitor; He’s Varia’s precious fiancé; He’s Varia’s young man.

The diminutive form embraces different connotation. This phrase conveys the connotation of contempt which is obvious to any Russian in respective of whether the word is taken separately or in context. Connotative potentialities of different suffixes are extremely wide. The suffixes of the so-called subjective evaluation (глаза – глазки, глазоньки, глазёнки, глазочки, глазища) add a specific emotional coloring to speech by reflecting the speaker’s perception of reality. In Dostoevsky’s novel “Бедные люди” the use of various suffixed is a powerful device of characterization that is bringing out the main character’s social and individual features revealing his humbleness and humility: Положите так, для карманных денег – всё сколько-нибудь требуется – ну, сапожишки какие-нибудь, ну платьишко – много ли останется? – And if you put some many aside for emergencies, for shoes or some bit of clothing, what will remain?

The connotations of extreme poverty, humiliation are superimposed on the direct denotative meaning of the words сапоги and платье, whereas in English translation these connotations are hardly recognizable. The English reader encounters a certain matter-of-factness. The subtle overtones add implications expressed in the Russian language by means of various suffixes are much harder to convey than the straightforward meanings of words. To produce the same or nearly the same effect upon the foreign reader, the translator has to find emotive words of striking stylistic reference. In other words, to achieve adequacy in style, the translator is obliged to make certain changes, that is to resort to notional compensation. There are even words of purely emotive character, such as interjections or forms of address (увы, ба!, dear me, alas; душенька, голубчик, дружок, ducks???, love, honey). The connotations of other words are not almost easily recognizable. Sometimes dictionaries give hints as to their emotive values, labeling them as poetic, vulgar, colloquial, slang etc. Indeed, almost the only way in which emotive meanings can be properly determined is through contexts, linguistic and extralinguistic. The necessity of checking connotative power of words against their extralinguistic context is obvious even when the word’s stylistic reference is labeled in dictionaries. This is, unfortunately, sometimes overlooked. Thus, the significance for the purport of “Вишнёвый сад” of Varia’s remark “благолепие” thrice repeated in the play is lost on the reader of most English translations (how lovely! Magnificent! A beautiful life! – convey to a certain extent only the denotative meaning, whereas the value of the word for the play lies in its being a subtle device which serves as the key word to the girl’s pious and sentimental character. From this point of view, the words which best convey the implications of благолепие are “grace” or “bliss”. They cannot be said to denote exactly the same concept as the Russian word but they at least connote similar attributes of favor of God and blessedness.

The Principal of Notional Compensation

When we see how the same thought is expressed in one way in Russian and in another – in English, we get a vivid picture of the delicate shades or variation in the 2 languages. Any comparison of languages implies an examination of their mutual translatability. What is done by a translator to overcome differences in semantic structures, cultural diversities, national characteristics, differences in syntactic structures and combinability of words. If two purely informative sentences in English and in Russian, such as “Wet paint” and “Осторожно, окрашено” are compared, we cannot fail to notice that they are not identically phrased, though they contain identical advice. Осторожно is not the word for the English verb, but when the Russian phrase is translated into English in this way, it will undoubtedly be correctly understood by all listeners or readers or passers-by whoever they may be. An Englishman and a Russian react to this phrase in the same way and possibly with the same sensations. In translating artistic prose, the principal remains the same as can be illustrated by the following. Once upon a most early time there was a Neolithic man. – Давным-давно, ещё в каменном веке, жил да был один человек. The word combination “a Neolithic man” would sound very strange if translated literally, word for word, therefore, the translator, in order to produce a semantically equivalent structure, rearranges the words in his own characteristic fashion and provides, instead, the combination “в каменном веке”. The translator used one of the techniques he has at his disposal to help him recreate the original.

This most common technique of adjustment which consists in the redistribution of semantic components is in fact the simplest way of realizing notional compensation. Another very common technique of adjustment employed by the translator in order to reproduce more fully and more precisely the denotation of the original word is that of addition. Here very much depends on those to whom translation is addressed. For instance, if it is for those who have little or no background knowledge concerning the subject matter, then the additions are fully justified. It is interesting to compare the following passage from a peasant’s speech with the English translation. Я ходоком в Сибирь ходил, и на Амуре был, и на Алтае, и в Сибирь переселился, землю там пахал. – I went as a delegate from my village to Siberia and I have been to the Amour river, and the Altai mountains, and I settled in Siberia; I worked the land there. What happens here may be called specification – “the Amour river” and “the Altai mountains” were necessary in a translation made at the beginning of the century. The translator took it upon himself to guide the foreign reader round an unknown country. Sometimes the original text is expanded in order to make explicit what is implicit. There are the following interpretations of the word ходок – I walked on foot over the whole of Siberia; I was in Siberia as a village delegate; I went to Siberia as a pioneer on foot; I went as a scout from my village to Siberia; I went on foot all the way to Siberia. All the cases show expansion, the necessity of which is obviously caused by the too folk character of the word’s denotation of its semantic contents. On the one hand, it denotes somebody who walks on foot, on the other – it denotes a scout – a person who is sent by the community to look for a suitable place for the village to resettle. Lexical expansion is sometimes determined by differences in combinability of words in English and Russian. One and the same verb, the verb “to fail”, for example, in combination with different nouns should be translated differently, although its denotative value hardly changes. His friendship will not fail me, nor his council, nor his love – Его дружба мне не изменит, его советы меня не обманут, его любовь меня не предаст. Using almost the same syntactic structure, the translator added new verbs to stress the denotative meaning of the original verb. The instances of lexical reduction which are also called subtractions are not as numerous and varied as those of lexical expansion but they are nevertheless highly important. He jerked away in fear and dismay – В страхе он попятился. So we can conclude that the translator resorts to different translation techniques in order to overcome a variety of differences between the two languages.