LITERATURE
1. . . - .: .2001.
2. .. - . . - - .: , 1997,1999.
3. .. . - .: ѻ,2001.
4. .. . - .: , , 1982.
5. .. . - .: , 1986.
TRANSLATION AS A NOTION AND SUBJECT
Translation as 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 translation in 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 Translation by 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: Kyiv, Brovary, Lviv, Bila Tserkva, Poltava, Zghurivka, Medvyn, algebra , geographer , computer ', opera , telephone (v) , ignore , historically . 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 , Robert Frost , Ottawa , NickHfc, Susan , Helmut Kohl , shilling 1, pizza , therapeutic , 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 ; faithful (or realistic) translation, / ; faithfulness of translation/interpretation, / / ; fidelity (or faithfulness) of translation/interpretation , ; equivalent translation/interpretation ; free interpretation , ; free adaptation , ; free interpretation , ; free/loose translation , ; consecutive interpretation , ; off-hand translation/ interpretation / ( ); rehash ( ) ; sight translation/interpretation (translation at sight) / /; simultaneous translation/ interpretation ; rough translation , and some others.
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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 , to work hard , take part , throw light , between Scilla and Charybdis , Ukraine celebrated her fifth anniversary in August 1996 ' 1996 .
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) , , .
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 , to take measures , little bird (), live in the street , one's sands are running out (idiom) / , same here (colloq.) ( ) ( ), / or: . 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 /- (); the land of golden fleece ; red blood , , (); let George do it ( ); agonic () , 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 tree in the middle... It could bark... It says Bough-wough... That's why its branches are called boughs. (L.Carrol, Alice in Wonderland). In Ukrainian: Գ !.. Գ-, . It goes without saying that the lexical meaning of tree is not Գ and Bough-wough or boughs do not correlate with which they were substituted for in this Ukrainian translation by H.Bushyna.
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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 / , baby-snatcher , , the Square Mile ѳ ( ), the Square Mile of Vice (Cora, ), soft head (), 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 , director , region 崳, hotel/motel / , hydrometer , Tom , 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 -, es-cort -, direct-or -, ex-presid-ent --).
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 , music , constitution , zoology , atomic weight , chemical process , national opera theatre .
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. atomic --, alcoholic --).
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 , card /, European , Muscovite / , organized , stylized , therapeutic .
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 , (rarer ); decoration , (and not ); matrass (and not ); replica (and not ), 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.
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2. Verbal translating is 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 , fearless , helpless , incorrect , mistrust ' (), superprofit , non-interference , weightlessness 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 -, mis-trust-\', super-profit -, 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 , bank (), cliff (, ), myself , /; automatic machine/rifle, high/tall, writer (author), 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 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. (); 2. ; 3. /; 4. ; 5. ; 6. , (.); 7. ( ). The literal variant/equivalent of the noun ban/fin Ukrainian can be, naturally, 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 but ; never say die is not but ; to grow strong is not but ; to take measures is not but ; first night is not but ', 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 / ? What is the English for /, ? What is the Ukrainian for cranberry/mistletoe? etc.
3. Word-for-word translation is 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* , instead of /, / .
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3. The interlinear way/method of translating is 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: ?
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: ? / ? 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 ; to ski; to participate ; to become a widow/ widower, 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 father ; Kyivstreet traffic regulations ; but: a task for next week .
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, 볿, ,
Heroes of unwritten story, () ,
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Nurslings of one mighty mother, ')'-,
Hopes of her and one another! 䳿 䳿 !
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 Translating represents 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, 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 story, tale, saga, song. The word did not mean the military unit of today's armies (regiment) but troop, host, army. Therefore, the meaning of would be in Ukrainian 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 (, , , i.e. ). 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 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 / ; daisy- slang for something or somebody nice, beautiful, first-rate (); put up (adj.) is colloquial for ; ; ab ovo- Latin for (), , . 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) , : (11) . (10) - , (11) . (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.
