Concretization
This type of lexical transformations is used in translating words with wide and non-differentiated meaning. The essence of this transformation lies in translating such words of SL by the words with specified concrete meaning in TL. When translating from English into Ukrainian they use it more often in verbs. If English verbs mostly denote actions in rather a vague general way, Ukrainian verbs are very concrete in denoting not only the action itself but also the manner of performing this action as well to go (by foot, by train, by plane, etc.) , , , etc.; to get out , , , , etc. The choice of a particular Ukrainian verb depends on the context. It does not mean, Of course, that the verb to go changes its meaning under the influence of the context. The meaning of to go is the same, it always more or less corresponds to Ukrainian , but the norms of Ukrainian require a more specified nomination of the action.
This transformation is applicable not only to verbs but to all words of wide semantic range, no matter to what part of speech they belong: adverbs, adjectives or nouns.
The noun thing, which has very abstract and vague meaning the same as stuff, point or camp, is used to denote practically anything, often remaining stylistically neutral ( The Shorter Oxford Dictionary denotes the word thing as an entity of any kind, that, which is or may be in any way an object of perception, knowledge or thought ). In Ukrainian, however, nounswith such a general meaning are less universal, besides, theywould belong to colloquial register which often makes it impossible to use them in translation. E.g. thing if translated by way of concretization may have the meanings: , , , , , , , , :
things look promising
how are things? , ?
as things go
take off your things
he is a mean thing
oh, poor thing! !, !
it is just the thing
good things
I am not quite the thing today
near thing ,
no such thing ,
to know a thing or two ;
to make a good thing of smth.
to make a regular thing of smth.
to see things , , etc.
In many cases the words like thing are omitted at all in translation:
She is a pretty thing. .
above all things , , among other things
and things
it amounts to the same thing
At this point she is right
Lets buy bread, vegetables and perhaps some other stuff
, , , .
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In case when such words must be given some Ukrainian equivalent a word with more concrete meaning denoting this particular thing or stuff which is meant by the author, should be found:
Ive bought this stuff in the neighboring grocery.
.
this madman stuff that happened to me
,
all the dispensary stuff
( )
You have never done a single thing in all your life to be ashamed of
.
The verbs of motion come and go are concretized in translating into
Ukrainian, i.e. the way of motion is specified: , , , , , , ; go , , , , , , , .
The concretization of words of speaking: say and tell also takes place , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , :
| So what? I said. | ? . |
| Hello, I said when somebody answered the goddam phone. | ! , . |
| She had said that she was in bed and ill. | , . |
| He told us we should always pray to God. | . |
| He told me to come right over, if I felt like it. | ³ , . |
| Thanks for telling me, I said. | , ! . |
The device of concretization is also used in rendering other words with broad meaning:
Dinny waited in a corridor which smelled of disinfectant (Galsworthy).
ij , .
Disinfectant (the word acceptable in official-scientific genre) in fiction concretization is needed.
The same can be illustrated by the verb to be:
The clock is on the wall.
.
The apple is on the plate and the plate is on the table.
, .
In all these cases, though, to be preserves its general meaning .
| He is at school. | ³ . |
| He is in the Army. | ³ 쳿. |
| He was at the ceremony. | ³ . |
| The concert was on Sunday. | . |
| The book is on the table. | . |
| The picture is on the wall. | . |
| Hes in Holliwood (Sal.) | ³ ( ³ 䳓) |
| I was in his office for about two hours, I guess. | . |
| That was her first summer in Maine. | ... . |
| Then her blouse and stuff were on the seat. Her shoes and socks were on the floor, right underneath the chair, right next to each other. | , , , , . |
| Name something youd like to be. | , . |
| Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the old couple, and they were very good. | ˳ , . |
| He may have to stay in Hollywood and write a picture about Annapolis... Guess whos going to be in it! | ... , ? |
| Like most young Frenchmen of his generation he was athletic. | , . |
| She is in bed. | . |
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The words of general purpose like the man, the woman, the person, the creature are replaced by concrete proper names or nouns: , , , , , .
Concretization is caused by the necessity to complete the phrase, achieve figurativeness and avoid repetition.
| We had strolled over. | . |
| You could hear him putting away his toilet articles (Sal.) | , . |
| I dont know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit (To Kill a Mock...) | , . |
| Mr. Raynold sat up against the tree-trunk. | ̳ . |
It is necessary to take into consideration not only denotative but connotative meanings as well. The verb to employ is usually translated as , . But if Mark Twains character is accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare food for the foundling hospital , of which he is warden, the verb acquires a shade of negative meaning (he is said to have used his position in order to pay money to his relatives for the work which they could not do properly); so it should be translated by a less general verb e.g. , .
The English pronoun you deserves special attention. It can be translated only with the help of differentiation, i.e. either or . The choice depends on the character, his age, social position, relations and the situation in which he speaks. One should remember that the wrong choice can destroy the whole atmosphere of the narration.
Generalization
Generalization is the phenomenon opposite to concretization; the notions with narrow meaning in source language are replaced by the units with broader meaning in target language. We have to resort to generalization when in the target language there are no concrete notions analogous to the ones in source language. In many cases the norms of TL make it unnecessary and even undesirable to translate all the particulars expressed in SL. Englishmen usually name the exact height of a person: He is six foot three inches tall. In Ukrainian it would hardly seem natural to introduce a character saying: ³ ; substituting centimeters for feet and inches wouldnt make it much better: 190,5 . The best variant may be following: ³ .
Generalization is also used in those cases when in SL a word with differentiated meaning corresponds to a word with non-differentiated meaning in TL (a hand , an arm , leg foot, etc.).
The necessity to use generalization may be caused by purely pragmatic considerations. In the original text there may be many proper names informative for the native speakers of SL and absolutely uninformative for the readers in TL. These may be the names of some firms, goods produced by those firms, shops (often bearing the names of their owners), etc. Englishmen know that Tonibell is the name of various kinds of ice-cream produced by the firm Tonibell, while Trebor means sweets produced by Trebor Sharps Ltd and Tree Top designates fruit drinks produced by Unilever. Transcribed in the Ukrainian text these names are absolutely senseless for the reader who would not see any difference between , , or even , which is not eatable since it is petrol. An English reader in his turn can hardly guess what they sell in shops (even if it is spelt Dynamo ) or in (no matter whether it is rendered as Vesna or Spring ). Hardly are more informative such names as (a café or a laundry), (a beverage), (candies), (a cake), etc. Therefore it is recommended to substitute names (unless they are internationally known or play an important role in the context) by generic words denoting the whole class of similar objects:
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³ .
He has his shirts washed at the laundry.
, .
They were eating a cake washing it down with a tonic.
Domes of glass and aluminium which glittered like Chanel diamonds.
, , .
To translate Chanel diamonds as would be a mistake since the majority of Ukrainian readers do not know that this firm makes artificial diamonds. If the text permits a longer sentence it is possible to add this information ( ), which may be useful for the readers scope but absolutely unnecessary for the text itself. However, the generalized translation is quite necessary here.
Here are some other examples with generalization used:
He comes over and visits me practically every weekend. (Sal.)
³ , .
Then his girl gets killed, because shes always speeding.
, .
Who won the game? I said. Its only the half.
? . .
In translation generalization is combined with antonymic translation; verb said is concretized.
... He showed us this old beat-up Havajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencerd bought off some Indian...
³ .
Jane used to drive to market with her mother in this La Salle convertible they had.
.
If I do not sleep I shall tomorrow night get them to give me a dose of chloral.
.
I asked Dr. Seward to give me a little opiate of some kind, as I had not slept well the night before.
, .
Replacement of Effect by Cause and Visa Versa
In the translation process there are lexical replacements, based on cause-effect relations between notions. Thus, word or word combination of SL may be replaced in translation by a word or word combination of TL, which by its logical relations denotes the cause of action or condition denoted by a translated unit of SL. This transformation presupposes semantic and logical analysis of the situation described in the text and consists in semantic development of this situation (in Ukrainian the transformation is called () . If the situation is developed correctly, i.e. if the original and translated utterances are semantically connected as cause and effect, the transformation helps to render sense and observe the norms of TL:
Mr. Keladas brushes would have been all the better for a scrub (S.Maugham).
ٳ .
It may seem that the translation somewhat deviates from the original would have been all the better for a scrub. However, the literal translation is clumsy while is quite acceptable stylistically and renders the idea quite correctly: why would they have been all the better for a scrub? Because they . The example illustrates substitution of effect by cause: the English sentence names the effect while the Ukrainian variant names its cause. The opposite situation may also occur when the cause is substituted by effect:
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I not only shared a cabin with him and ate three meals a day at the same table (S.Maughm)
Three long years had passed since I had tasted ale (Mark Twain)
ֳ
In these examples the English sentences name the cause while the Ukrainian versions contain the effect (I ate three meals a day at the same table with him, so ; three long years had passed since I tasted ale, so ֳ ).
Here are some other examples:
| I dont blame them. () | . () , . |
| Hes dead now. | ³ ( , , ). |
| And they probably came to Pencey that way. | ( , , ). |
| He always made you say everything twice. | ³ . ( , ). |
| A lot of schools were home for vacation already. | ( , ). |
| Maugham Before the Party... If a client went to him with some trouble that was not quite nice, Mr. Skinner would look grave. | ... 볺 , , . ( , ). |
Below there are examples of inverse replacement of Cause into Effect:
| Have a seat there, boy, old Spencer said. He meant the bed. | ѳ , , . ³ (, ). |
| He was the kind of guy that hates to answer you right away. | , , ( , ). |
Antonymic Translation
This type of transformation means that a certain word is translated not by a corresponding word of TL but by its antonym, with negation being added at the same time (or, if there is negation in the original sentence, it is omitted in translation):
It wasnt too far. .
Far is translated as and negation in the predicate is omitted.
The necessity for this transformation arises due to several reasons:
1. peculiarities of the systems of SL and TL:
a) in Ukrainian the negative prefix coinsides in its form with the negative particle , while in English they differ (un-, in-, im-, dis-, mis-, ir-, etc., and the negative suffix less on the one hand and the particle not on the other); so it is quite normal to say not impossible, not misunderstand, not unnecessary in English, while in Ukrainian , , is bad;
b) groups of antonyms in SL and TL do not necessarily coincide: in English the word advantage has an antonym disadvantage , while in Ukrainian the word has no antonym, English has antonyms to arrange to disarrange , while Ukrainian has only , etc.
2. contextual requirements:
Sometimes antonyms become the most adequate way of rendering the contextual meaning: a murderer is only safe when he is in prison , 쳔.
In a particular context this transformation may help to render emotional and stylistic coloring of the text: Hes probably thirsty. Why dont you give him some milk? , . , ? Direct translation ? is not colloquial, while the heroes of P.G.Wodehouse speak in a highly informal way.
3. traditional norms of TL:
I only wish I could. I wish I had the time (S.Leacock) , . , .
The variant , ( ) is not Ukrainian.
Antonymic translation allows the translator to create a more natural grammatical structure in TL in cases, when the grammatical form comes into conflict with the rules of lexical compatibility and deprives the target text its expressiveness and clarity.
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The following complex lexical-grammatical replacement is broadly spread: affirmative construction is transformed into a negative one and visa versa:
| Sal.: Stradlater didnt say anything. | . ( ) |
| Im not kidding. | . ( ) |
| I meant it, too. | . |
| That doesnt happen much, though. | . |
| She wasnt looking too happy. | . |
| I dont hate too many guys. | . |
| I dont believe this is a smoker. | , , . |
| They all had on the kind of hats that you knew they didnt really live in New York. | , . |
| I couldnt think of anybody to call up. | , . |
Typical is the use of antonymic translation in rendering English construction not... (un)til... into Ukrainian; (un)til being changed into , (), , which to some extent may be considered its antonyms:
| He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camelia bush Mrs. Dubose owned (To kill...) | ³ , . | ||
| They gave me the wrong book, and I didnt notice it till I got back to my room. (Sal.) | , . | ||
| I didnt think of it till we went half-way through the park. | , . | ||
| He didnt believe it until he saw the ruined farm. | ³ , . | ||
It should be kept in mind, that negation in English is not necessarily expressed by the particle not, but other devices as well, e.g., with the help of preposition without:
| He never met him afterwards without asking him. | ϳ . |
| The Radley-house had no screen doors. | . |
Antonyms exist among such auxiliary parts of speech, as prepositions and particles:
| Keep the child out of the sun. | . |
| Keep off the grass. | ! |
| Not tooloud, please! | , -! |
Replacement of adjective or adverb in comparative or superlative degree by an adjective or adverb in neutral or zero degree or visa versa, which is followed by changing the construction sign + ð -; - ð + is a special type of antonymic translation:
| She paid Riris parents the proper visit of condolence, but she neither ate less heartily nor slept less soundly. (Maugham. A man with a Conscience) | , , г, . , . |
| Im the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life (Sal.) | . |
| It wasnt as cold as it was the day before. | , . |
The example of transforming affirmative construction into a negative one, is not accompanied by an antonymic replacement, but replacement of a compound sentence by a simple one and by the change of a syntactical function of the word before :
| It will be February 8 before they return to Earth. | () 8 . |
If there are two negations present in one sentence, then the translation is made according to mathematical principle, i.e. when minus plus minus in sum give plus:
| When does she want to go? ASAP, but she cannot book a flight until after the FAX comes that will help her get her visa. | ? , , , . |
| Once your hard disk is installed it should not be removed unless it is damaged or you upgrade to a larger disk. | , , . |
| But he was no outfielder as Ikey was. | , . (³ , .) |
| A Forsyte, replied young Jolion, is not an uncommon animal. | , , . |
Double negation frequently occurs in scientific-technical literature and colloquial expressions:
| If I dont misunderstand you | |
| Not infrequently | |
| Not disconnected with | () |
| Not without reason | ( ) |
| Not inconsiderable | |
| This may not seem unusual except we are on an enormous hill and it was blizzard conditions out. | , , , |
| Nothing is impossible for him | ³ ( ) |
| He doesnt want to disobey you. | ³ |
| We cannot (help) but hope he is right | , |
Antonymic translation is sometimes caused by lexical differences:
Snowdrifts three feet deep.
.
The city is built on terraces rising from the lake.
̳ , .
LECTURE 19. Lexical Replacements (continued)
Compensation
The essence of compensation is clearly revealed in F.V.Fyodorovs book Basics of general theory of translation: , , , , , ,
. , , , , , , . , ; , , , , , (Fyodorov: p.p. 169-170).
Compensation is not as much a transformation but rather a general principle of rendering stylistic peculiarities of a text when there is no direct correspondence between stylistic means of SL and TL. This transformation is widely used to render speech peculiarities of characters, to translate puns, rhyming words, etc. Its essence is as follows: it is not always possible to find stylistic equivalents to every stylistically marked word of the original text or to every phonetic and grammatical irregularity purposefully used by the author. Therefore a general stylistic balance based on compensating some inevitable stylistic losses by introducing stylistically similar elements in some other utterances or employing different linguistic means playing a similar role in TL, should be kept. Let us take some examples:
1. Suppose a character uses the word fool-proof which is certainly a sign of the colloquial register. In Ukrainian there is no colloquial synonym of the word or . So the colloquial fool-proof is translated by the neutral and the characters language loses its stylistic coloring. This loss is inevitable, but we have to find a way of compensating it. It is quite possible to find a neutral utterance in the same characters speech that can be translated in a colloquial manner, e.g.: I got nothing . Taken separately it is translated or , but it allows to make up for the lost colloquial marker: , , or at least , etc. In such a way the number of neutral and colloquial utterances both in the original and the translated texts is preserved.
2. In political language of the USA the phrase selling candidates like soap is well known. Literally it means: . Where has this comparison come from? There was a period in the USA when some sorts of soap disappeared from the counters. This phrase may be translated: .
Compensation is often used where purely linguistic peculiarities of original must be rendered (dialectal words, individual peculiarities of speech, incorrect language forms, pun, play upon words, etc.), which not always have direct correspondence in translation language.
When translating contaminated speech, translator should not be bound to the same translation devices, which are used by a foreign author. Translator has full right to replace language devices by others (grammatical into lexical, phonetic grammatical, etc. according to the norms of contamination in Ukrainian or Ukrainian).
Thus, when in the original text language is contaminated by a foreigner, then traditional ways of rendering foreigners speech in Ukrainian may be applied. It is well known that foreigners, even living for long in Ukraine, experience difficulties in correct expression of the aspect of verbs in Ukrainian: they replace synthetic form of Future by analytical ( instead of ).
Compensation is one of the ways of gaining equivalence in translation. It is used when we have to restore (compensate for) semantic loss, caused by the fact, that some unit remains un-translated fully or partially, and a translator renders the same information in another way, and not necessarily in the same place of the text, as in original:
My parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.
, , , .
At the first sight one may have an impression that this translation is not quite equivalent, because the words parents and tell have neutral stylistic character (colouring), and Ukrainian () and belong to unceremonious and casual register:
He made a speech that lasted about ten hours.
³ .
However this example as well as all other similar cases should be considered as equivalent. The point is that the use of stylistically marked words ,, instead of neutral parents, tell, make a speech are here nothing else but compensation, which compensates for or restores the loss of corresponding stylistic characteristics in other places of the text translated:
If here is one thing I hate, its the movies ( the word appeared later).
, .
She had on those damn falsies that point all over the place.
... , .
English words movies, falsies belong to unconstrained register; however in Ukrainian there are no such words, which would coincide with them stylistically. Therefore the translator had to render them with the help of neutral words , . This loss of information (replacement of stylistically marked words by the neutral ones) takes place repeatedly through the whole translated text and requires compensation. One more example:
Why dont you write a good thrilling detective story? she asked. Me? exclaimed Mrs. Albert Forrester for the first time in her life regardless of grammar (S.M. The Creative Impulse).
, , ? ? , .
Here in original Mrs. Forrester in elliptical sentence uses the form of so called objective case of the pronoun Me instead of I, which many people consider grammatical carelessness (without sufficient reason, by the way, as the form me in such cases has long ago become the norm in colloquial literary language). Since in Ukrainian the system of personal pronouns has nothing of this kind, the translator compensated this loss through culturally incorrect pronoun form . (In Ukrainian translation grammatically incorrect form of the pronoun was used).
Compensation clearly illustrates one of the basic statements of the translation theory the adequacy of translation is gained not in separate elements of a text, but in a text as a whole. In other words, untranslatable details do exist, but there are no untranslatable texts.
In translation practice cases are known when the description of absolutely different situations becomes equivalent in original and translation. Such replacement of situation in translation may be stipulated by various reasons. It can be connected with differences of cultural traditions and life experience of recipients. Thus, in translation of the phrase from A. Cronins The Citadel it turns out, that the procedure of preliminary official announcement of the names of the people going to get married (banns) is unknown to contemporary Ukrainian reader:
Dont stand there like a Presbyterian parson about to forbid the banns.
Word-for-word translation seems strange for our ear and sounds as follows:
, .
The equivalence of the translation may be rather secured by mentioning a different church custom (another situation), having the same color in Ukrainian, i.e. unpleasant for those, against whom it is exercised, e.g., ():
, .
The full or partial change of the situation described may also touch upon its separate elements. This phenomenon is very often found in translating contaminated speech, used by the author in original for characterizing a speaking character. Thus, one of the heroines of G. Galsworsys The End of the Chapter Jin Tesbury is constantly compared with leopardess. The absence in Ukrainian and Ukrainian of a special name for a female leopard made translators (Y. Korneev and P.Melkov) replace it by .
The she-servant of little Davy in Ch. Dickenss novel David Copperfield often pronounces English words incorrectly. In some cases this feature of her language may be considered insignificant and resign to the fact, that it becomes not rendered in translation. However, in the next sentence this peculiarity becomes the aim of the utterance:
I ought to have made it, perhaps, but I couldnt azackly, that was always the substitute for exactly, in Peggottys militia of words bring my mind to it.
The phonetic form of all possible Ukrainian equivalents for exactly is too simple to be pronounced incorrectly by illiterate people. The more important here not the meaning of this word but the fact, that Peggotty pronounces incorrectly difficult words. By compensation the translator refuses to render directly the meaning of this unit in original, but compensates for this loss by using absolutely another word, which is natural for a person of little education to pronounce incorrectly from the view-point of translation:
, , , . (. . . ).
There is one more example translation of the abstract from Jack Londons novel Martin Eden by S. Zayanitsky. Little educated sailor Martin Eden is talking with highly educated girl Ruth:
| It was just an accident, he said, putting his hand on his cheek. One night, in a calm, with a heavy sea running, the main boomlift carried away, annext the tackle. The lift was wire, an it was threshinaround like a snake. The whole watch was tryin to grab it, an I rushed in an got swatted. | , , . , , . , , , , . . , , . |
