INTRODUCED/CONTEXTUAL TRANSFORMATIONS
OF LANGUAGE UNITS
As has been shown, there may be two types of transformations resorted to in the process of translation: 1. objectively required/ conditioned by the peculiarities of the target language, i.e., inevitable, and 2. subjectively introduced at the translator's own will and therefore not always unavoidable. Either of them requires structural/ outer alterations of the source language units in the target language. Moreover, each type of these transformations may be realized both on the syntactic as well as on the lexical level units. Cf. His holidays had been spent at Robin Hill with boy friends, or with his parents. (Galsworthy) - . Here the passive voice syntaxeme had been spent must have been changed in Ukrainian into the active voice form. Objectively predetermined are also transformations of the objective with the infinitive or participle constructions/complexes, gerundial and nominative absolute participial constructions, national idioms, etc. In these cases a simple English sentence may turn into a complex sentence. Cf.:
It (music) seems to be right ,
in them. (D.Parker) ⳻.
When do you want me to do ,
it? (Maugham) ?
The outer form/structure of the language unit may be deliberately changed in the target language, when it requires a concretiza-tion. As a result, the structure of the sense unit is often extended or shortened in the target language without changing its proper meaning. For example, the personal pronoun it and the auxiliary verb do, when concretized in the Ukrainian translation may be substituted for a noun phrase and an objective word-group:
Why did you do it? the/she-
riff said. I didn't do it, Johnny ? - . -
said. (Saroyan) . -
.
the predicative word-groups and become necessary in Ukrainian in order to explicate prop-
erly the meaning of the verb do arfd the pronoun it, which can be achieved only in a descriptive way, i.e., through transformation.
Also semantically and stylistically predetermined are all translator's transformations through addition, which are resorted to with the aim of achieving the necessary expressiveness. Additions become necessary in the target language either in order to express more clearly the content of the source language unit, or for the sake of achieving some stylistic effect. Cf.:
When a girl leaves her home
at eighteen, she does one of two ,
things ~ (Dreiser) ...
I'm so glad you've asked me. ,
darling. (Maugham) . .
The additions made in the first and in the second Ukrainian sentences are both lexical and syntactic, since the first of them completes the sentence through the formation of the attributive word-group ( ), and the second complements the objective verb and forms an objective word-group, which completes the object clause and the sentence as a whole ( ).
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A semantic or syntactic addition used with the aim of concreti-zation may become necessary in the target language in order to maintain the peculiar way of expression or to complete the structure of the sense unit in the language of translation. For example:
There was just enough room
for us two in the crate, and if the ,
straw was not evenly strewn, it
made lumps under our backs, ,
(Caldwell) .
The objective word-group is a semantically stable expression in Ukrainian and it can not exist without the verb , which functions as its syntactic head. Similar additions for the sake of concretization become inevitable in the target language when dealing with local place names and specifically national notions of the source language. For example:
³ , .
lives in the Podil district of Kyiv and works there in the Syrets' residential area of the city.
There is no mention in the -
Home Office list of any such irt
dustrial desease. (Cronin) -
().
The Home Office (list) has been concretized by way of an explicatory translation, i.e., by adding the word (noun) which is contextually required in the Ukrainian translation.
Often occurring among various translators' transformations are also omissions, which may be of two types: a) objectively required, i.e., inevitable and b) casual or subjectively introduced. The former are conditioned by the grammar phenomena which are not available in the target language. Thus, objectively omitted are auxiliary verbs, determining articles or pronouns (cf. he has his. hands in his pockets ), individual barbarisms, as in the sentence below:
Oh, I like them. I really do. , .
(D.Parker) .
Goodness, I'm so crazy ,
abou t music and everything. ,
don't care what colour he is. , ()
(Ibid.) .
Here the sentence "I really do." is reduced to one-word sentence "." The word everything in the second sentence is a barbarism of a character in the story, which the translator found obsolete, of no need to transplant it to the Ukrainian translation of this sentence.
Very often, however, a sense unit may be omitted in the language of translation for stylistic reasons, when it is necessary, for example, to avoid a repeated use of the same sense unit in adjacent sentences, as in the following sentence:
She turned aghast towards the /
bed. (Salinger) .
Since the noun bed was already mentioned in the preceding sentence of the passage, the translator found it necessary to omit it in the Ukrainian version, which could not be made, naturally, if the sentence were singled out (separated) from the text and translated as a separate language unit.
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Casual subjective omissions of this kind usually do not change the general content of the sentence/passage, though they may alter
to some extent the author's emphasis made in the sentence of the source language, as can be seen in the following translation:
/ was learning fast, but ,
learned not fast enough to real- ,
ize then the peril of our position, ,
(London) .
The omitted adverbial modifier then in the Ukrainian translation changes the temporal emphasis of the author in his original version of the sentence where he pointed out the time (then) of the peril.
A somewhat similar (and also deliberate) omission of the adverbial modifier, though for the sake of achieving faithfulness, can be observed in the Ukrainian sentence below:
Tamales are very good when (
the air grows chilly at night. ') - ,
(Ibid) (...)
.
The translator (O.Senyuk) found the specifying adverbial modifier alnight not explicatory enough for the Ukrainian reader or stylistically aggravating for the structure of the target language sentence. This way of economizing the lexical means on account of the original content could not, naturally, be justified, as the content of the Ukrainian version would be simplified. To avoid it, the translator employed an extension ( ). Hence, the deliberate omission of the part of the sentence (at night) was made for the sake of achieving a more exhaustive faithful rendering of this English sentence. Reduction is often employed for stylistic reasons, especially in translations of belles-letters texts, when there exists an incompatibility between the structural forms of the syntactic units of the source language and their semantic and structural equivalents in the target language. The forms of reduction depend on the peculiarity of the language units under translation, on the means of expression or units to be reduced, and sometimes on the aims persued by the reduction1. The most often occurring reductions are the following:
1 See about various transformations in the process of translation also ... . - .: , 1974, p.p. 38-63, 80-113; . . . . - .: , 1975, .191-231.
1) Changing of an extended word-group into a simpler sense
unit (reduction or contraction):
She gave him a little smile and
took his hand. (Ma ugham) .
The objective verbal word-group gave him a little smile may also be transformed in Ukrainian into other word-groups: 1) () 2) () . Each of these two variants, naturally, would be quite acceptable, but the translator avoided them as stylistically and semantically less fitting in this particular sentence.
Shortening of syntactic units in the target language is often conditioned by the stylistic aim of individualizing the speech of some literary character as in the sentences below:
What politics have you? ? - .
asked, l am without politics. he . -
said. (Hemingway) .
Instead of the direct translation of the underlined English sentences and the translator used a more natural for the old and seemingly uneducated shepherd, a shortened and an elliptical sentence characteristic of colloquial Ukrainian: ?" and logically natural .
2) Transformation of an English complex sentence into a simple
one in the target language because of the structural incompatibility of
the former in the Ukrainian language:
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That's what I say. she said. . -
That's the way I feel. she said, .
(D.Parker) , - .
The first complex sentence with its predicative clause and the second complex sentence with its attributive clause have both been transformed into simple extended Ukrainian sentences and thus changed their outer structure and syntactic nature ( , , ).
3) Merger of two separate sentences into one composite sen
tence in the target language. This type of reduction may be required
by the content, as well as by the national Ukrainian way of expression
(and by the style of the text). For example:
1. Every once in a while Dave(1)
got on his hands and knees and
turned the straw over. 2. It was (2) ,
the banana straw, and it was (),
soggy and foul-smelling, .
(Caldwell)
It is easy to assert that each sentence in the source language is semantically and syntactically highly relevant. Nevertheless, only the first sentence can be completely transplanted to Ukrainian: no . The second sentence, however, when transplanted unchanged, would be structurally and stylistically irrelevant, i.e., not fit in the style and for the Ukrainian way of expression in this particular context. Cf.: , .
avoid literalism and structural/syntactic awkwardness in Ukrainian, the translator reduced the second sentence or rather changed it into an attributive subordinate clause, which made the Ukrainian variant sound stylistically and semantically quite natural: , .
One more example of contextual reduction (or extension) of English sentences through their merger in Ukrainian can be seen below. The only difference between this and the above-given sentence lies in the placement of the second English sentence, which in the Ukrainian translation is moved to the front position. This is required by the peculiarities of the Ukrainian way of expression and by the semantic/logical structure of its communicative units. Cf.:
Oh, we have more argu- , -
ments about colored people. .
I talk to him like I don't know ,
what. I get so excited. (D.Parker) ,
, .
These and the like purely subjective, at first sight, transformations are absolutely necessary in order to achieve a faithful expression of content of the English sentences and maintain the logical flow of thought characteristic of the natural Ukrainian speech. It goes without saying that such kind of transformations through reduction, extension or replacement can not always be treated as deliberate or exclusively subjective, because they are objectively required by the peculiarly national ways of expression in the target language.
Always subjective, however, is the approach of the translator to the choice of some semantically and syntactically equivalent versions of the source language units as in the following sentence:
They gave me a wrong book, and I didn't notice it, till I got back to my room. (Salinger) This sentence can have two equally faithful versions in Ukrainian, each of which fully expresses its content:
1) 2) ,
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, , .
. .
The subjective transformations in the left hand Ukrainian definite personal clause is transformed into the indefinite personal sentence ,
2) the second co-ordinate clause is changed into the antonymic affirmative clause , and the adverbial subordinate clause is changed into an affirmative clause (antonymic again) .
These subjectively introduced by the translator transformations have not in any way changed the syntactic nature or content of the English composite (compound-complex) sentence as a whole. Neither have they changed the order of words, though the plane of expression has undergone some alterations, the main of which is the employment of the antonymic device. It is expedient to term such kind of alterations in the structural plane of syntactic units as inner transformations as well. The latter involve only minor structural or lexico-semantic alterations without causing any cardinal changes in the structural form of the sense units under translation.
These were by far all the possible objectively required or deliberately introduced transformations of lexical and syntactic units called forth in the process of translation by the existing divergences between the means of expression in the source language and in the target language on one hand, or due to the translator's subjective approach to some types of sense units on the other.
