There is a distinct group of words which constitute a special difficulty for the translator, the so-called pseudo-international words. International words are mostly words of Greek, Latin and French origin which have a more or less similar phonetic form in many languages. They express not only scientific, social and political notions but everyday things and notions as well: electronics ; dynamic ; calorie ; elegant . These words have become an indispensable part of the vocabulary of different languages. Their referential meaning is in most cases identical. But there is another category of international words which as part of the lexical system of different languages have acquired in these languages novel semantic features different semantic structures, additional lexical-semantic variants, different connotations and different usage. The Russian language borrows these words most often as terms and they tend to be monosemantic while in the English language they are usually polysemantic. Although warned against them translators are often deceived into making errors by purely formal resemblances.
The rabbit was lying in a depression between two clods. (F. Norris)
gives the following meanings of the word depression: 1. , ; 2.. , ; 3., ; 4., , .
This sentence was rendered in a translation published in the late twenties as - .
There were attempts to sabotage key services in Santiago.
.
The meaning of the Russian word is narrower.
We are told that BBC television this autumn will give a massive coverage to the general election.
, -- .
Sometimes the referential meanings of international words coincide, while their contextual meanings do not.
Britains world wide exploitation was shaken to the roots by colonial liberation movements.
- .
The contextual meaning of the word exploitation is metonymical the power of colonial systems was based on exploitation. A similar metonymic transference of the word is rendered to in the Russian translation.
Benches gleamed empty and crimson under the light, their occupants haveng gone to tea. (C.P.Snow).
, .
The Russian loan word is used only in a special sense as a military term with negative connotations whereas the English word is polysemantic. The addition has been made for pragmatic reasons.
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Sometimes pseudo-international words may have different connotations in spite of practically identical referential meanings. Thus the word has usually only positive connotations while the word progress has a wider range of connotations positive, neutral and negative.
For instance, the title of John Bunyans book The Pilgrims Progress is an allegory depicting mans progress towards perfection. The Russian traditional translation is ( ) positive connotations.
Her progress about London during that first week was one thrilling adventure. (H.Walpole).
. (neutral connotations).
Hogarths series if engravings Rakes Progress has distinctly negative connotations. The traditional translation is .
Different usage of pseudo-international words is often a stumbling block to translators, e.g.
Once upon a most early time there was a Neolithic man. R.Kipling).
, , . (translated by K.Chukovsky).
The adjective Neolithic has its counterpart in Russian , but its use is confined to scientific prose. It would not be suitable in a tale for children. So the translator introduced a traditional combination , resorting to a redistribution of semantic components.
Non-Equivalents
Non-equivalents are SL words which have no corresponding lexical units in the TL vocabulary.
The absence of equivalents may be explained both by extralinguistic and linguistic reasons. Accordingly, non-equivalents may be divided into two groups. The first group consists of words denoting referents unknown in the target language things, objects, notions, features of national life, customs, habits, etc. the words of this group bear a distinctly national character and are tied up with the history of the people speaking that language, the growth of its culture, its way of life and traditions. Cultural discrepancy accounts for the appearance of words which are untranslatable in the literal sense of the word. Yet there are different ways of rendering these words in translation and of overcoming the so-called barrier of untranslatability (cultural untranslatability). The words belonging to this group cover a wide range of denotata, e.g. speaker, parliament, public school, landslide, coroner, teach-in, drive-in, know-how, striptease, brain drain, backbencher, grill-room, as well as titles of politeness, etc.
The second group embraces words which for some linguistic reason have no equivalents in the target language, the so-called linguistic lancunae, e.g. privacy, involvement, glimpse, conservationist, environmentalist, oralist, readership, riser, bedder, vote-getter, statehood, etc.
It should be stressed that the term non-equivalents merely implies the absence of a word or a word-combination in the vocabulary of the target language but does not exclude the possibility of rendering non-equivalents in translation, usually by descriptive translation.
