Strategies of translation

The translation's methods of different kinds of literature, their types and the value in life of the humanity. Grammatical, lexical, stylistic and phraseological difficulties of translation of literature, some samples of translation of their expressions.

Рубрика Иностранные языки и языкознание
Вид контрольная работа
Язык английский
Дата добавления 03.08.2010
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4

Plan

Introduction 3

1. Strategies of Translation 5

1.1 Source Text Analysis and Methods of Its Translation 5

1.2 Translation Equivalence and Methods of Its Approaching 10

1.3 Problems of Technical Text Translation 15

2. Literal Translation 22

2.1 Literal Translation of Technical Text 22

2.2 Calque in Technical Text Trasnlation 27

Conclusions 34

References 36

Appendix 1 37

Introduction

In this Qualification Paper we've set forth to study the translation methods of different kinds of literature at a deeper level, their types and ways of their translation of literature, to consider the function of different kinds of literature in everyday life of the humanity.

The object of this Qualification paper can be considered as one that gives the detailed review of the ways foreign literature can be translated into Russian language. It also helps to improve one's understanding of the principal rules of translation which plays leading role while processing translation.

The aim of this work is to introduce the translation approach to foreign literature so that to make it easy to perceive for those willing to keep up their educational and scientific carrier in the science of translation, it was purposed to broaden their view on translation studies and peculiar features while translating any kind of literature.

In this work we set the following tasks:

- to review all the sources of translating literature;

- to reveal the methods of translation of foreign literature;

- to investigate grammatical, lexical, stylistic and phraseological difficulties of translation of different kinds of literature.

We should mention that this research work represents a great theoretical value for those willing to take up their future carrier in the field of translations as invaluable reference to the methods and the ways of translation of literature.

And the practical value of this work involves the idea that translation represents a field aimed at training future translators/interpreters to translate verbal and written materials on Political subjects basing on the study of International politics, economics, finance, banking, etc. to differentiate the language features of English, Russian and other languages as well as specific lexicology, phraseology, syntax and style.

The source information for this research work has been carefully studied and investigated before it was applied to the given work.

The originality of this work is in its creative approach to the study and methods of translation, besides, it contains a detailed review of ways and methods of translation.

The given Qualification paper contains introduction, two chapters, conclusion and bibliography list.

The first chapter gives a detailed review of the study of the theory of translation and also reveals the role of literature and terms in everyday life of the humanity which are believed to be interesting to future translator/interpreters. It also discussed the methods of translation of literature with purpose to make it easier for translator to achieve adequate translation in the target language.

The second chapter deals with the detailed study of grammatical, lexical, stylistic difficulties involved in translation of literature. It also gives some hints on translation of idioms and set expressions and their behavior in literature.

We have also attached some samples of translation of set expressions so that to enable the future translator to benefit from the given paper in their further researches in the fields of translation.

In conclusion we have summed up the results of our laborious investigation translation of foreign literature.

At the end of the research paper we have attached the bibliography list to enable the future translator to use information sources used in this Paper.

1. Strategies of Translation

1.1 Source Text Analysis and Methods of Its Translation

Most translators prefer to think of their work as a profession and would like to see others to treat them like professionals rather than as skilled or semi-skilled workers. But to achieve this, translators need to develop an ability to stand back and reflect on what they do and how they do it. Like doctors and engineers, they have to prove to themselves as well as others that they are in control of what they do; that they do not just translate well because they have 'flair' for translation, but rather because, like other professionals, they have made a conscious effort to understand various aspects of their work.

Unlike medicine and engineering, translation is a very young discipline in academic terms. It is only just starting to feature as a subject of study in its own right, not yet in all but in an increasing number of universities and colleges around the world. Like any young discipline, it needs to draw on the findings and theories of other related disciplines in order to develop and formalize its own methods; but which disciplines it can naturally and fruitfully be related to is still a matter of some controversy. Almost every aspect of life in general and of the interaction between speech communities in particular can be considered relevant to translation, a discipline which has to concern itself with how meaning is generated within and between various groups of people in various cultural settings. This is clearly too big an area to investigate in one go. So, let us just start by saying that, if translation is ever to become a profession in the full sense of the word, translators will need something other than the current mixture of intuition and practice to enable them to reflect on what they do and how they do it. They will need, above all, to acquire a sound knowledge of the raw material with which they work: to understand what language is and how it comes to function for its users.

Translation is a process of rendering a text, written piece or a speech by means of other languages. The difference of translation from retelling or other kinds of transfer of a given text is that that translation is a process of creating an original unity in contexts and forms of original.

The translation quality is defined by its completeness and value.

Translation must take into account a number of constraints, including context, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, their idioms and the like. Consequently, as has been recognized at least since the time of the translator Martin Luther, one translates best into the language that one knows best.

Traditionally translation has been a human activity, though attempts have been made to computerize or otherwise automate the translation of natural-language texts (machine translation) or to use computers as an aid to translation (computer-assisted translation).

Perhaps the most common misconception about translation is that there exists a simple "word-for-word" relation between any two languages, and that translation is therefore a straightforward and mechanical process. On the contrary, translation is always fraught with uncertainties and with the potential for inadvertent "spilling over" of idioms and usages from one language into the other.

The translation process, whether it be for translation or interpreting, can be described as:

Decoding the meaning of the source text; and

Re-encoding this meaning in the target language.

To decode the meaning of a text, the translator must first identify its component "translation units," that is to say, the segments of the text to be treated as a cognitive unit. A translation unit may be a word, a phrase or even one or more sentences. Behind this seemingly simple procedure lies a complex cognitive operation. To decode the complete meaning of the source text, the translator must consciously and methodically interpret and analyze all its features. This process requires thorough knowledge of the grammar, semantics, syntax, idioms, and the like, of the source language, as well as the culture of its speakers.

The translator needs the same in-depth knowledge to re-encode the meaning in the target language. In fact, in general, translators' knowledge of the target language is more important, and needs to be deeper, than their knowledge of the source language. For this reason, most translators translate into a language of which they are native speakers.

In addition, knowledge of the subject matter under discussion is essential.

In recent years, studies in cognitive linguistics have provided valuable insights into the cognitive process of translation.

Translating texts from one language into another is probably the most difficult task.

What is a good translation? Or what would you think if you hear that a text has been translated well, or badly? A definite answer can hardly be found. It's much easier to find a grammatical or lexical mistake in a sentence than to say whether the translation is good, though grammatically or even lexically incorrect. If, for instance, you come across the sentence «I has a interesting book», you will easily understand what it means and correct both mistakes, so, on the one side, the sentence is not correct, but, on the other side, it is understandable and, so to say, correctable. On the contrary, there may be such mistakes that make the contents incomprehensible, or, which is even worse, «lead the user astray».

To approach the problem of translation quality, we should first analyze user subgroups and see who needs what, otherwise we shall hardly be able to distinguish between «good» and «bad» since «good» implies the existence of a user who is satisfied, that is answering the question «Good for whom?».

Direct translation has the word-for-word basis. For example, when translating from Russian into English, the translater substitutes each Russian word or phrase found in the dictionary with its English equivalent. This is called direct translation because the translation system is based on direct correspondence between 2 languages, such as Russian-English, German-Spanish, Dutch-French, etc. It can only translate between the given language pair, and it's not capable of anallyzing the source language sentence for subsequent translation into another target language.

On the contrary, the transfer approach presupposes independent analysis of the source text sentences as well as independent generation of the target text ones. This means that the system, instead of translating word-for-word, first analyzes the source sentence and comes up with a special grammatical representation of this sentence, which (representaton) is then transformed into a sentence in the target language. “Transfer” means the transition to the target language after the first stage of the translation process, the analysis.

Generally speaking, the interlingua philosophy resembles the transfer one. You see, an interlingua is a special artificial language used for making source language sentence representations. The idea is really great! Just imagine that you have to develop a system to translate between 20 languages, which would make 400 language pairs! Which would be easier to make: 400 direct translation programs, or 20 programs for translating from each of the 20 languages into the interlingua plus 20 programs for translating from the interlingua into each of the 20?

This situation is but very well known to practical developers of language engineering systems, who constantly face the «noise/recall(completeness)» dilemma. From time to time, we come across the typical situation: too much analysis causes poorer translation quality than no analysis at all.

So, here is a general outline of the translation procedure in some translation systems.

Stage 1. The system makes what is called word-for-word and phrase-for-phrase translation of the source text, recognizing phrases and single words and extracting the corresponding grammatical data from the dictionary. This is done using the morphological analysis rules. For example, when analyzing English texts, a table of irregular verbs is made use of, as well as a set of rules for recognizing noun plural forms; the German morphological analysis is based on the rules of linking German separable prefixes to their corresponding verbs; Slavonic words are recognized in the source text due to special tables of Russian paradigms.

Stage 2. The system analyzes the resulting text and makes its best to eliminate as many ambiguities as it can. Doing so, it makes use of special contextual rules for grammatical and semantic disambiguation. In this case, contexts of ambiguous words are analyzed.

Stage 3. The system generates the target text. The task consists in making the target sentences look as natural as possible. The system tries to insert articles (which is even a difficult task for some humans, to say nothing of an algorithm), changes word order, etc.

The latter two are very difficult-to-implement stages, and, I as said, `too much analysis' may really turn out to be `too little analysis'. For instance, the system sometimes transposes words in such a way that the resulting sentence seems to make no sense at all.

Let's call a spade a spade: if the grammatical structures of the source and target languages are not so much alike as, for example, this of Russian, the output texts are very far from those made by qualified translators.

Experience shows that the most efficient technology of translating from Russian into English and from English into Russian is using an automatic translation system (PARS or another) and a dictionary look-up system with large professional dictionaries (like Polyglossum) to complement each other, if, and this is important, the translation system dictionaries are not representative enough, that is either they don't contain some specific terms the Polyglossum-like dictionaries have, or the user needs explanations of some terms to choose the most appropriate variants.

The fact is that the Polyglossum system has a program for dictionary look-up, and the word entries in its dictionaries contain numerous explanations and commentaries. That is why, Polyglossum is not only a source of new PARS dictionaries, but it also serves for translating technical terms which PARS fails to translate, or for choosing the most appropriate translation variant if the human translator post-editing the raw machine translation needs an explanation of a term.

1.2 Translation Equivalence and Methods of Its Approaching

If a specific linguistic unit in one language carries the same intended meaning / message encoded in a specific linguistic medium in another, then these two units are considered to be equivalent. The domain of equivalents covers linguistic units such as morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, idioms and proverbs. So, finding equivalents is the most problematic stage of translation. It is worth mentioning, however, it is not meant that the translator should always find one-to-one categorically or structurally equivalent units in the two languages, that is, sometimes two different linguistic units in different languages carry the same function. For example, the verb "happened" in the English sentence "he happens to be happy" equals the adverb "etefaghan" (by chance) in the Persian sentence: "u etefaghan khosh hal ast". The translator, after finding out the meaning of an SL linguistic form, should ask himself / herself what the linguistic form is in another language--TL--for the same meaning to be encoded by.

The analysis of fictional texts reveals some interesting features. The main observation is that the author, not infrequently, resorts to disintegration of the linear chronological sequence of described events. The typical example is given in Ivan Bunin's story "The tender breathing". It starts with the death of Olya Meshcherskaya, the main heroine. Then the author resumes with a depiction of her life in natural temporal order. However, the order is broken several times with a subsequent resumption of the event line. The text has a lot of digressions from the principal thread of narrative, which supply the reader with background information. At the end of the story the author is back to the scene of Olya's death. To explain the author's intentions, we should consider theories of " time ", since causal relations (events) in the text are, in effect, unfolded within the temporal structure.

The structure of poetic texts often has the same characteristics. Consider the following example:

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The sonnet in its core contains the semiotic time model, since the events are represented in space. One can observe the cyclic manner of representation: at first Shelley introduces the scene of Ozymandias's remnants, i.e. death, then animates the king, describes his appearance, manner and habits, i.e. life. Finally the author resumes with the decay of that colossal wreck, i.e. turns to the death. Words like stand, desert, lies, stamped, boundless, stretch play a role as space indicators. In this framework, Shelley's "Ozymandias" shows a resemblance in its time model with Bunin's "The tender breathing". To analyse the poem from the translator's angle let us consider the theory of dynamic equivalence.

In his theory of dynamic equivalence in translation, Eugene Nida (1964) argues that the art of translation had outstripped the theory of translation. His work was written in an effort to provide a theoretical basis for what was already being produced.

Following the dynamic equivalence principle, the target text is considered to be adequate to the original when the reaction of the target text reader coincides with that of the source language reader.

Accordingly, with the aim of revealing the adequacy of translations to the original in terms of the recipient's aesthetic response, we have made an experiment with the application of Osgood's Semantic Differential, a direct associative test and content analysis. The method of the semantic differential, as claimed by Osgood (1957), proves to be universal for speakers of different languages.

As a first step, 33 native English speakers estimated the poetic text (the above-mentioned Shelley's sonnet Ozymandias) on the basis of the factors of evaluation, potency and activity. The three core scales (good-bad, strong-weak, active-passive) exemplify these factors. Each factor contained four seven-point bipolar rating scales, the end-points of which were anchored with antonymic adjectives. Scores ranged from -3 at the negative end of each scale to +3 at the positive end. The subjects were instructed to mark a chosen number. The responses showed the respondents' subjective judgment of the stimulus (text) and reflected their semantic space content.

As second step, 37 native Russian speakers followed the same procedure. As a result, semantic profiles of the original text and its three Russian translations were drawn up. It has been revealed that V. Koptilov's translation is the closest version (translation) of Shelley's sonnet (original) in terms of respondents' semantic space content.

The qualitative content analysis reveals three principal categories in the original text: power, life, death. The results of the associative experiment held with English and Russian speakers demonstrate that in the English speakers' mentality the concept "power" has positive or emotionally neutral associations, for instance, order, president, money, taxes, manager, and the like. The Russian subjects gave primarily negative responses: pocket, Gongadze, oil, magnate, money, to lie, and the like. The word "life" is evaluated positively by English participants, and less positively by Russians. The stimulus "death" shows a cultural paradox: for Russians it is not so bad, and contrasts with English speakers' responses. In a third of the Russians the attitude is neutral, more than a half of respondents evaluate it negatively, the rest - positively.

Content analysis was undertaken to reveal and to compare features of the main categories in the original text and in its Ukrainian and Russian versions. Consider the following example taken from J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" (Salinger 1998):

"Daddy's going to kill you. He's going to kill you," she said. I wasn't listening, though. I was thinking about something else - something crazy.

"You know what I'd like to be?" I said. "You know what I'd like to be? I mean if I had my goddam choice?"

"What? Stop swearing."

"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like-"

"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said.

"It's a poem. By Robert Burns."

"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns." She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.

"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

There are three main categories in the text: DANGER, HUMAN, TIME&SPACE. The first category is represented by the nouns cliff, edge, catcher. The second one contains nouns body, kids, choice. The third one has the nouns rye, field, day (see Table 1).

Table 1: Content analysis of the original and target texts

No

Factor

English

Russian

1.

DANGER

Cliff (2), edge (1), catcher (1)

Propast'/ precipice (3), krai/ edge (1), skala/ cliff (1)

2.

HUMAN

Body (8), kids (2), choice (1), daddy (1)

Vzroslyi/ adult (1), golova/ head (1), dusha/ someone (1), malyshy/ kids (1), rebiatishki, rebiata/ fellows (3)

3.

TIME& SPACE

Rye (5), day (1), field (1)

Rozh/ rye (4), vecher/ evening (3), pole/ field (1)

4.

ACTIVITY

-

Delo/ affair (1), mysl'/ thought (2)

What strikes one here is that in the Russian texts the category DANGER changes: prirva (precipice), krai (edge); propast (precipice), krai (edge), skala (cliff). It doesn't contain the nouns catcher along with choice seen as the key words in the global context of the novel. The translations transform these nouns into verbs: sterehty, sterech, vybrat' (Rus), respectively. Choosing these verbs-equivalents instead of nouns suppresses the right-hemispheric perception of events by Russian-speaking readers. Two other categories contain basically all the functional equivalents of the original nouns.

Table 2: Psycho-graphological analysis of the source and target texts

No

Quotient

English

Russian

1.

Vocabulary variety (per cent)

6

11

2.

Logical cohesion

0.37

0.43

3.

Embolism

0.08

0.05

As is seen from Table 2, the vocabulary variety quotient (VVQ) is substantially lower in the original than in both translations. Although translators attain better formal characteristics of their texts, I treat this deviation from the author's intention as an attempt to disarrange the balance between the form and the content of the text.

The logical cohesion quotient (LCQ) depends upon the number of function words like conjunctions and prepositions used in the text. The LCQ is significantly increased in Ukrainian and Russian texts in contrast to the English original. This non-coincidence means that the former are decoded primarily by the left hemisphere, whereas the former are processed by the right hemisphere.

The embolism quotient (EQ), which shows the portion of words lacking semantic meaning like interjections, vulgarisms, pragmatic markers, unreasonably repeated words, is twice higher in the original than in the translations. The abundance of embolic words shows that the character of the novel is in the state of emotional tension. Basically, this state is closely connected with an altered state of consciousness. Accordingly, the lower rate of embolic words leads to a more rational or logical perception of reality by the reader. On the whole, the deviations mentioned above change the scheme of interpretation, from concrete-imagined to verbal-logical.

1.3 Problems of Technical Text Translation

Every translation activity has one or more specific purposes and whichever they may be, the main aim of translation is to serve as a cross-cultural bilingual communication vehicle among peoples. In the past few decades, this activity has developed because of rising international trade, increased migration, globalization, the recognition of linguistic minorities, and the expansion of the mass media and technology. For this reason, the translator plays an important role as a bilingual or multi-lingual cross-cultural transmitter of culture and truths by attempting to interpret concepts and speech in a variety of texts as faithfully and accurately as possible.

Most translation theorists agree that translation is understood as a transfer process from a foreign language--or a second language--to the mother tongue. However, market requirements are increasingly demanding that translators transfer texts to a target language that is not their mother tongue, but a foreign language. This is what Newmark calls "service translation."

Through experience we have learned that the consequences of wrong translations can be catastrophic--especially if done by laypersons--and mistakes made in the performance of this activity can obviously be irreparable. Just think of what could happen in cases of serious inadequacy in knowledge areas such as science, medicine, legal matters, or technology. There must be thousands of examples, but we find this anecdote worth mentioning here: Lily, a Chilean exile who had been granted refugee status in a non-Spanish-speaking country, was going to undergo surgery for the simple removal of a skin blemish from her face. However, because of a misunderstanding by the translator on duty in the hospital at the moment she was going to be anesthetized, she was about to undergo breast surgery!

It is quite clear that a poor translation can not only lead to hilarity or to minor confusion, but it can also be a matter of life and death. Hence the importance of training translators, not only in the acquisition and command of languages and translation strategies and procedures, but also in specific knowledge areas and, what is equally important, in professional ethics.

If translating is a discourse operation interposing between language and thought, we should accept that in the art or skill of translating we are inexorably going to come across assorted and numerous obstacles.

There are many thorns that can mortify us during the translation process, whatever the nature of the text we face, and translators should be aware of them. The first problem is related to reading and comprehension ability in the source language. Once the translator has coped with this obstacle, the most frequent translation difficulties are of a semantic and cultural nature (Tricas, 1995): "Linguistic untranslatability" (cognates, i.e. true and false friends, calque, and other forms of interference; institutional and standardized terms, neologisms, aphorisms, etc.), and "cultural untranslatability," (idioms, sayings, proverbs, jokes, puns, etc.). One should adopt a very cautious attitude toward these words or expressions so as to avoid interference and/or language misuse (Kussmaul, 1995).

Similarly, we quite often run into those painful "not found" terms, for which not even the best dictionary, an expert in the topic or a native speaker of the source language can provide us with a solution to convey an accurate meaning. We should always bear in mind that one of the greatest virtues of a good translator is what we have called "contextualized intuition," i.e. the ability to find the nearest common sense interpretation of the "not found" element within its context.

Whatever the difficulty in the translation process, procedures must aim at the essence of the message and faithfulness to the meaning of the source language text being transferred to the target language text.

To a great extent, the quality of translation will depend on the quality of the translator, i.e. on her/his knowledge, skills, training, cultural background, expertise, and even mood. Newmark distinguishes some essential characteristics that any good translator should have:

Reading comprehension ability in a foreign language

Knowledge of the subject

Sensitivity to language (both mother tongue and foreign language)

Competence to write the target language dexterously, clearly, economically and resourcefully

In addition, Mercedes Tricas refers to intuition, or common sense as the most common of all senses; in other words, making use of that sixth sense, a combination of intelligence, sensitivity and intuition.

Apart from the previously mentioned aspects, it is relevant to emphasize the necessity for sound linguistic knowledge of both the SL and the TL, an essential condition, yet not the only one, to begin swimming up the streams of professional translation. However, neither knowing languages nor being efficiently bilingual is enough to become a translator.

For more than twenty years, translation theorists have been pointing this out, and yet many people believe and claim that knowing two or more languages is identical to knowing how to translate properly. We must banish this idea.

In addition to reading comprehension ability, the knowledge of specialized subjects derived from specialized training and a wide cultural background, and the global vision of cross-cultural and interlingual communication, it is a must to learn how to handle the strategic and tactical tools for a good translating performance.

Hence the importance of a didactic translation approach: A methodology that allows the development of an effective and efficient transfer process from one language to another. As is widely known by those committed to the field, translation as a formal professional activity with a theoretical background is relatively new. Thus, a number of terms have recently been coined for the subject called Translation Theory.

This discipline being so new, little has been done in terms of academic training in higher education in Chile to devise didactic methods and procedures to teach or learn how to translate.

Cognition sciences have provided us with simple but very useful ideas about meaningful learning, i.e. a positive approach to learning that comes from the relationship between previous knowledge and new knowledge.

This cognitive approach perfectly applies to the transfer process of ideas from one language to another, which obviously implies a lot more than the simple reproduction model. In the preparatory phase of a translation, cognition, in the form of self-consciousness and self-confidence, plays a very important role, inasmuch as this period implies conscious mental activities, where translating problems are detected and analyzed, and information and knowledge are accumulated.

From the psychological and social point of view, the translator, whose profile should be that of an intellectual worker with professional training characteristics such as the above-mentioned, will be more successful if her/his social-affective development is given more emphasis, for s/he may be better prepared for cooperative work, and s/he may reach a higher tolerance level, showing respect, self-criticism and sensitivity.

With regard to the principal approaches to a translation text, the most renowned translation theorists (Delisle, Newmark, Nida, Nord, Kussmaul) are in agreement on the following aspects:

Firstly, there is comprehension and interpretation of texts which implies the management of the approach principles to various types of texts, considering the textual, referential, cohesion and naturalness levels. This competence includes reading comprehension and message interpretation (encoding and decoding).

Secondly, re-wording is also important. It means the application of the various strategies for the restitution process of the message (re-coding) by choosing the appropriate method(s), techniques and procedures. Among the most frequently used procedures for the restoration of ideas contained in a translation unit, a translator may resort to transfer, cultural or functional equivalent, synonymy, transposition, modulation, compensation, reduction and expansion or amplification. These skills constitute the essence of translating competence and should most strongly emphasized in the training prospective translators. For this purpose, it is also indispensable to make effective use of different types of documentation: Parallel texts, monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedias, term data base, informants, other sources.

And thirdly, translation theorists give great importance to the assessment of the result, i.e. evidencing the capacity to confront the translated text with the original text, being able to assess earnings and losses and showing self-correction capacity. It is the accurate revision of the output that will definitely result in a final translation of higher quality.

According to most translation theorists, the specific approaches to text translation tend to be similar. On the one hand, it is necessary to use one or more translating approaches or models. On the other, there is always a way of approaching an SL text, whether the translator chooses the author-centered traditional model, the text-centered structuralistic model or the cognitive reader-centered model. Depending on their training, translators will adopt one model or another, but many will tend to tend to an eclectic integration of the three approaches.

Translators should be aware of the fact that incorrect comprehension of a text considerably decreases the quality of the translation. We must, therefore, use reading comprehension strategies for translation (underlining words, detecting translation difficulties, contextualizing lexical items--never isolating them -, adapting, analyzing, and so on.)

Finding solutions to dilemmas is a constant in the work of the translator. This includes translating problems such as linguistic or cultural "untranslatability," being able to manage losses and gains, solutions to lexical ambiguity, etc., through various mechanisms such as compensation, loans, explanatory notes, adaptation, equivalence, paraphrasing, analogies, etc.

Translators should also be aware that meaning is not only conveyed by words. Hence adequate decoding and re-coding of nomenclatures, figures, tables and charts; standardized terms, acronyms, metonyms, toponyms, etc. is a matter that must be properly considered.

A good translator should define some essential starting-points for the approximation to a text to be translated, such as the author of the text, the aim of the text, the readership, and the standard to be used, for which it is important to identify and categorize the author, the message, the kind of discourse, the translator and the readership.

Another important aspect is the pre-editing of the original text to detect eventual source text defects, on the one hand, and the post-editing of the translated text to verify the use of the most adequate syntactic, semantic and graphemic levels (recognition of the reviser's role), on the other hand.

Among formal matters, translators should be aware of and control the sound effect and cadence of the translated text ("translating with the ear") to avoid cacophonous combinations and calque on the source language.

Regarding the use of translation procedures and strategies, translators must constantly make choices, in each paragraph, sentence or translation unit, so as to decide which of them is the most useful for the transfer of the ideas in the text being translated. It means adapting the most suitable strategies and techniques to the requirements of the text rather than adopting a certain technique and using it for ever.

Last, but not least, translators should observe that the essence--in terms of meaning and sense, register and style, etc.-- and the lay out of the original text-- in terms of format, i.e. sources, paragraphs, indentation, columns, tables, etc.--is properly adhered to in the translated unit.

2. Literal Translation

2.1 Literal Translation of Technical Text

The ESV is an “essentially literal” translation that seeks as far as possible to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each writer. As such, its emphasis is on “word-for-word” correspondence, at the same time taking into account differences of grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. Thus it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and meaning of the original.

In contrast to the ESV, some translation versions have followed a “thought-for-thought” rather than “word-for-word” translation philosophy, emphasizing “dynamic equivalence” rather than the “essentially literal” meaning of the original. A “thought-for-thought” translation is of necessity more inclined to reflect the interpretive opinions of the translator and the influences of contemporary culture.

Every translation is at many points a trade-off between literal precision and read-ability, between “formal equivalence” in expression and “functional equivalence” in communication, and the ESV is no exception. Within this framework we have sought to be “as literal as possible” while maintaining clarity of expression and literary excellence. Therefore, to the extent that plain English permits and the meaning in each case allows, we have sought to use the same English word for important recurring words in the original.

In punctuating, paragraphing, dividing long sentences, and rendering connectives, the ESV follows the path that seems to make the ongoing flow of thought clearest in English. The biblical languages regularly connect sentences by frequent repetition of words such as “and,” “but,” and “for,” in a way that goes beyond the conventions of literary English. Effective translation, however, requires that these links in the original be reproduced so that the flow of the argument will be transparent to the reader. We have therefore normally translated these connectives, though occasionally we have varied the rendering by using alternatives (such as “also,” “however,” “now,” “so,” “then,” or “thus”) when they better capture the sense in specific instances.

In the area of gender language, the goal of the ESV is to render literally what is in the original. For example, “anyone” replaces “any man” where there is no word corresponding to “man” in the original languages, and “people” rather than “men” is regularly used where the original languages refer to both men and women.

The inclusive use of the generic “he” has also regularly been retained, because this is consistent with similar usage in the original languages and because an essentially literal translation would be impossible without it.

In each case the objective has been transparency to the original text, allowing the reader to understand the original on its own terms rather than on the terms of our present-day culture.

A variety of different approaches have been examined in relation to the cultural implications for translation. It is necessary to bear in mind the inevitability of translation loss when the text is culture bound. Considering the nature of the text and the similarities between the ideal source text (ST) and target text (TT) reader, an important aspect is to determine how much missing background information should be provided by the translator using these methods. It has been recognized that in order to preserve specific cultural references certain additions need to be brought to the TT. This implies that formal equivalence should not be sought as this is not justified when considering the expectations of the ideal TT reader.

The aim of any translator is to convey both the semantic meaning of work and cultural component to meet the demands of readers to get acquainted with the world picture of other people through the author's vision. From this point cultural information constitutes the major difficulty in translating, and cultural factors should never be neglected as far as translation is concerned. To succeed in translating culture-bound elements translator can use any applicable strategy or, as they are overlapping with each other, use some of them together.

Technical literature like any other scientific kind of literature have languages items characteristic to them, that requires the translator to be precise and sharp. Most books on general technics are characterized by the passion of expression, polemic style and the specific feature is in blending the elements of scientific speech from one side with different emotionally colored means of expression from another side.

The translation of technical literature can be considered in two ways: as a field of linguistic activity and as a separate field in science. As a field of linguistic activity translation of technical literature represents one of the types of special translations possessing as objects of its activity different materials of technical character.

The technical translation comes out into a special field of study due to its specific features of written and verbal speech on technical topics, which is specified by its essential character and the knowledge of this science. Sometimes these features are so diverse that in order to understand them (Russian and English technics as well) one should have a special knowledge without which it would be very hard to clearly perceive the inner sense on technical subjects or a translated piece.

Therefore, the study of specific features of written and verbal speech acquires great importance to translators (interpreters). To the features mention above belong the following:

1. maximal filling the technical literature with special technical terms, and in verbal speech (among the technicians) - filling it with words of technical jargon - slang.

2. presence of special idiomatic expressions and phraseological units in verbal and written speech that are rarely used in colloquial speech and general literature.

As an example, I should bring the following idioms: blitzkrieg - молниеносная война, Comprehensive Program of Disarmament - Всеобъемлющая программа разоружения, principal powers - крупные державы, status quo - статус кво and many others. We have to mark - if the quantity of some idioms is limited, then the amount of "politically" related phraseological idioms is vast in English and Russian languages.

3. the presence of some stylistic deflection from general literary norms is sometimes very great.

a) wide usage of elliptic constructions, especially in periodically publishing materials, propaganda and other kinds of technically important printing media.

b) the presence of official writing style, mostly in documents of official provisions that cover administrative and technical questions.

c) strictly regulated use of verbal forms and word phrases in special chapters of technical literature and technical documents.

As was told before, while translating a technical character, like doing any other special translation a great importance is given to translation of special terms.

For better functioning, terms must express systematization of notions, express their essence or at least be semantically neutral and at the same time be unambiguous and precise.

The phenomenon of a separate field of science and the terms that fix them should be systemized that offers gender availability around which group notions are formed. Thus an English term representative which presents a group notion and forms a group of notions that belong to this group: representative forum (представительный форум), business world representative (представитель делового мира), representative to the talks (представитель на переговорах), representative to the public (представитель общественности), representative of political circles (представитель политических кругов), representative to NATO (представитель НАТО), representative of various strata or the population (представитель различных слоёв населения).

The capability of a term to express a systematic state of notions and easily merge with new phrases that represent new group notions that consequently appear along with the development of a definite field of science or knowledge maybe called its systematic capability.

The systematic capability of notions helps us to clarify the relation of notions, raise their semantic definiteness and ease their understanding and remembering.

The correct translation of technical literature is a laborious work despite the terms' considerable possession of definite semantic clearness and independence in usage.

While speaking of difficulties of translation, we imply as a matter of the first importance, the translation general technical literature, which either do not yet have any equivalents in the translating language or have several similar notion for the term in question or at least have one equivalent but of doubtful adequacy.

The technical documentation that accompanies your product into your export markets is often your most visible ambassador. It must convey important and often complex technical and procedural information accurately and concisely translated in multiple languages, whilst being delivered in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

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Table 3 - Subject translation specialism

Automotive technical translation

Hydraulics technical translation

Optics technical translation

Avionics technical translation

Marine engineering technical translation

Patents technical translation

Building technology technical translation

Mechanical engineering technical translation

Space technologies

Civil engineering technical translation

Medical (equipment/hardware) technical translation

Telecommunications technical translation

Digital Imaging technical translation

Mobile Radiotelephony (GSM) technical translation

Television (broadcast technology) technical translation

Electrical engineering technical translation

Nuclear Power technical translation

Science and Physics technical translation

Energy conservation technical translation

Oil & Gas technical translation

Water purification technical translation

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2.2 Calque in Technical Text Trasnlation

Calque is a translation procedure whereby a translator translates an expression (or, occasionally, a word) literally into the target language, translating the elements of the expression word for word. For example, the German word "Alleinvertretungsanspruch" can be calqued to "single-representation-claim", but a proper translation would result in "Exclusive Mandate". Word-by-word translations usually have comic value, but can be means to save as much of the original style as possible, especially when the source text is ambiguous, or undecipherable to the translator.

Are social science texts sufficiently distinctive to warrant an approach to translation distinct from that used for natural science texts (texts in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and the like) and technical texts (instruction manuals and the like) on the one hand, and literary texts on the other? We believe they are.

Texts in the natural sciences and technical texts resemble those in the social sciences in that they require of the translator an intimate knowledge of the subject matter at hand.

However, since the natural sciences deal primarily with physical phenomena and their measurement, lexical choices tend to be cut and dried, ambiguities rare. Natural science texts would seem, then, possible candidates for machine translation. Insofar as certain sub-categories of social science texts approach the technical nature of natural science texts - documents issuing from governmental agencies, for example - they too may lend themselves to machine translation.

Editors and translators must agree on the basic strategy for translating a given text. To what extent does the translator need to “acculturate” the original, that is, make its methodological approach, intellectual categories, taxonomy, etc. readily accessible to the target culture by adapting its conceptual lexicon and structures? To what extent should the translator maintain the conceptual lexicon and structures of the source culture, sacrificing smooth diction in order to indicate to readers that they are, in fact, reading a translation from another culture rather than an original document?

Another way of posing the question: To what extent should a technical translation strive to reproduce the distinctive rhetoric and style of the source? Although there can be no absolute answer, the question is central to our enterprise and raises a corollary one, namely: How much of the meaning of a technical text is conveyed by form? If the form is lost, is not something of the content lost as well? Here much depends on the genre and the author. Journalism and popularizations derive much of their impact from their means of expression. But then, in different ways, so do Heidegger and Levi-Strauss. In general, however, the translator will be seeking a middle ground between clarity and distinctiveness of form.


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