Семинар №5 ТЕМА:Переводческие трансформации.

Для самостоятельного изучения:

1. Комиссаров В.Н.Теория перевода (лингвистические аспекты). гл. 7
2. Алексеева И.С. Введение в переводоведение. Ч. 2, гл.5
3. Богатская Е.Ю., Невольникова С.В.Курс лекций по теории перевода. Лекция №8.

Задания

I.Изучите теоретический материал и ответьте на вопрос: Что такое переводческая трансформация?

(Фирсов О.А. Перевод c английского языка на русский и его комментарии. С.6-12)
      В современной теории перевода переводческие трансформации определяются как преобразования, с помощью которых переводчик осуществляет переход от единиц оригинала к коммуникативно равноценным им единицам перевода при невозможности использования в конкретном контексте регулярных соответствий для данных единиц оригинала.
В зависимости от характера единиц языка оригинала, которые рассматриваются как исходные в операции преобразования, переводческие_трансформации_подразделяются_на грамматические и лексические.
Переводчик производит трансформации на основе использования переводческих приемов, позволяющих за счет преобразований перейти к контекстуальным соответствиям. Перечень переводческих приемов рассматривается ниже в разделе "Переводческие приемы".
Итак, под переводческой трансформацией следует понимать действия переводчика по реализации его решения по преодолению контекстуального несоответствия, обнаруженного в тексте оригинала по отношению к тексту перевода. Эти действия включают в себя:
— оценку характера и классификацию явления (конструкции, оборота, выражения и т.д.) в тексте оригинала, которое вызвало контекстуальное несоответствие по отношению к тексту перевода;
— выбор такого преобразовательного способа (т.е. одного или нескольких переводческих приемов), который позволяет адекватно перевести единицу текста оригинала, вызвавшую контекстуальное несоответствие.
      Таким образом, переводческая трансформация — понятие более широкое, нежели переводческий прием, который является лишь ее составной частью.
      Исходя из вышеприведенной трактовки понятия "переводческая трансформация", вполне понятно, что традиционный перевод языковой единицы (оборота, конструкции, термина, идиомы, фразеологизма и т.д.) с помощью использования единицы перевода, учтенной либо как регулярное соответствие, либо как общее несоответствие в соответствующих грамматических и лексических справочниках, не может считаться переводческой трансформацией, поскольку такой перевод не учитывает контекстуальных несоответствий. А это значит, что традиционный перевод в комментарии не нуждается.
      Следовательно, комментируя перевод, необходимо обосновывать переводческие решения по преодолению только контекстуальных несоответствий, которые либо не могут быть учтены нормативными справочниками, либо учитываются ими в недостаточной мере для конкретного контекста.

II. Изучите теоретический материал, выпишите термины

Приемы перевода ( В.Н. Комиссаров A Manual of translation from English into Russian)

Lexical Transformations
The first group of operations (or transformations).

      is characterized by imitation of the form of a word or of a collocation. In the first case the translator tries to represent the pronunciation or the spelling of the foreign word with the TL letters. Thus we get such translations as «битник», «стриптиз», «эскалация», etc. This method is usually called translational transcription. A number of rules have been formulated as to the choice of Russian letters to represent the English sounds or letters, and the translator is expected to observe them in his work.
      In the second case the translator creates a blueprint collocation in TL by using a loan translation. This results in such forms as «мозговой трест» (brain trust), «работа по правилам» (work-to-rule), «люди доброй во¬ли» (people of good will).
      The second group of operations includes all types of lexical trans¬formations involving certain semantic changes. As a result, the meaning of a word or word combination in ST may be made more specific, more general or somewhat modified as a way to discovering an appropriate equivalent in TL.
      The choice of a more specific word in translation which gives a more detailed description of the idea than does the word in SL is a very common case in the English-Russian translating process. English often makes use of general terms to describe very definite objects or actions. The following sentence refers to a frightened woman trying to hide from an intruder who had suddenly burst into the room where she was pensively looking into the fire:
      My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the corner. (Ch. Dickens)
      An attempt to use regular Russian equivalents for such general English verbs as "to leave" and "to go" will produce a ludicrous Russian phrase like this: «Матушка оставила свое кресло и пошла за него в угол».
      То соре with the problem a contextual substitute may be created by using the detailing technique, i.e. by describing how the woman performed those actions instead of just naming them, e.g.:
      Взволнованная матушка вскочила со своего кресла и забилась в угол позади него.
      One more example. Coming home after a long absence a young boy finds everything changed and no longer his own:
      My old dear bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off.
      A blueprint Russian translation of this sentence would be hardly intelli¬gible. Why should anyone "lie a long way off' from a bedroom? Obviously, "to lie" means "to go to bed" and "a long way off is in some other part of the same house. If so, why not say it in so many words? This is just the way to produce a contextual substitute:
      Моей милой старой спальни уже не было, и я должен был спать в другом конце дома.
      The opposite procedure, i.e. the use of an equivalent with a more general meaning, is not so common in translations from English into Rus¬sian, e.g.:
      I packed my two Gladstones.
      Я упаковал свои два чемодана.
      For obvious reasons the translator preferred a generic name to the spe¬cific name of the kind of suitcase that the Russian reader is unfamiliar with (generalization). Another type of lexical transformations is often called "modulation". It involves the creation of an equivalent by replacing a unit in SL with a TL unit the meaning of which can be logically deduced from it and which is just another way of referring to the same object or an aspect of the same situa¬tion. Consider the following sentence:
      It confronts the translator with a number of problems. First, what should be said in Russian for "to sling a bag up"? Second, in Russian it seems so obvious that one gets into a gig behind and not in front of the horse that any mention of the fact is preposterous unless it is implied that the horse was in the gig, too. Third, "an angular horse" cannot be either «уг¬ловая» or «угловатая лошадь».
      All these translation problems can be solved with the help of contextual substitutes. "Slinging the bag up" evidently implies that the bag was placed into the gig, "climbing into the gig behind the horse" certainly means that this horse was harnessed to the gig and "an angular horse" is probably a horse with bones sticking out at angles, i.e. a bony or skinny animal. The Russian translation can therefore express these derived ideas to describe the identical situation, e.g.:
      Мэнсон поставил свой чемодан и влез в расхлябанную двукол¬ку, запряженную крупной костлявой черной лошадью.
      In such cases the substitute often has a cause-and-effect relationship with the original:
      The window was full of clothes I wouldn't want to be seen dead in.
      В витрине были выставлены платья, в которых я не хотела бы даже лежать в гробу.
      A dead person is usually put in a coffin and "to be seen dead in a dress" logically implies lying in the coffin in such a dress. One more example.
      People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented. (J.K. Jerome) A direct translation of "who have tried it" is hardly possible. But if somebody has tried something he has some experience about it. So, the translation may run as follows:
      Некоторые люди, ссылаясь на собственный опыт, утверждают, что чистая совесть делает человека веселым и счастливым.

Grammatical transformations

      The third group of translating procedures comprises all types of transformations involving units of SL grammar. The translator may solve his problems by preserving the syntactic structure of the source text and using the analogous TL grammatical forms or "a word-for-word transla¬tion". This may be called "a zero transformation" and can be easily exempli¬fied, e.g.:
      John took Mary by the hand. Джон взял Мери за руку.
      In other cases the translator may resort to various types of grammatical substitutes.
      First, we may mention two types of transformations which change the number of sentences in TT as compared to ST.
      As a rule, the translator renders the original text sentence by sentence and the number of sentences remains the same. However, it may so happen that the structural and semantic problems of a translation event can be best solved by breaking an original sentence into two parts, i.e. translating it with two sentences in TL. Another type of such partitioning is to replace a simple sentence in the original with a complex one in the translation, comprising one or several subordinate clauses.
      The problems that can be solved through this technique are varied. First of all it may come handy in dealing with the English syntactic complexes which pack in two subject-predicate units, each unit making up a sentence or a clause in the Russian translation, e.g.:
      I want you to speak English.
      Я хочу, чтобы вы говорили по-английски.
      She hates his behaving in this way.
      Ей очень не нравится, что он так себя ведет.
      The partitioning of sentences in translation can also be used to over¬come the difficulties caused by the idiomatic semantic structure of the original text, e.g.:
      This was a man to be seen to be understood.
      Чтобы понять этого человека, надо было его увидеть.
      Sometimes the translator can prefer partitioning to the other possible methods of translation, as producing a variant more suitable stylistically or emotionally. Consider the following examples:
      The annual surveys of the Labour Government were not discussed with the workers at any stage, but only with the employers.
      The contrast in the last part of the sentence can be best reproduced in Russian by making a separate unit of it, e.g.:
      Ежегодные обзоры лейбористского правительства не обсуждались среди рабочих ни на каком этапе. Они обсуждались только с предпринимателями.
      And this is how this procedure can be used to reproduce the emotional implications of the original:
      How well I recollect it, on a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain. (Ch. Dickens)
      Как хорошо помню я наш приезд! Вечереет, холодно, пасмурно, хмурое небо грозит дождем.
      The opposite procedure means integrating two or more original sen¬tences into one or compressing a complex sentence into a simple one. This technique is also used both for structural and semantic reasons.
      Sometimes one of the sentences is grammatically too incomplete to warrant its separate reproduction in translation:
      It is not possible to do the work in two days. Nor is it necessary. Выполнить эту работу за два дня нет ни возможности, ни необ¬ходимости.
      The integration procedure may be necessitated by close semantic ties between adjacent sentences:
      We did not want scenery. We wanted to have our supper and go to bed. Мы не хотели красивых пейзажей — мы хотели поужинать и лечь спать.
      The partitioning and integration procedures may be used together, re¬sulting in a kind of syntactic and semantic reshuffle of sentences in transla¬tion. Here is an example:
      But occasionally an indiscretion takes place, such as that of Mr. Woodrow Wyatt, Labour M.P., when Financial Secretary to the War Office. He boasted of the prowess of British spies in obtaining information regarding armed forces of the USSR. (J. Gollan)
      The end of the first sentence is replaced by the personal pronoun in the second sentence. The sentence can, therefore, be broken into two and its last part integrated with the second sentence, e.g.:
      Однако по временам допускается нескромность. Так, например, лейборист, член парламента Вудро Уайтт в бытность свою финан¬совым секретарем военного министерства хвастался ловкостью, проявленной английскими шпионами в деле получения сведений о вооруженных силах СССР.
      Another type of grammatical transformations is characterized by the translator's refusal to use analogous grammatical units in TT. He tries to render the meaning of SL units by changing the grammatical form of a word, the part of speech or the type of the sentence. Such changes are very common and the translator should never hesitate to use them whenever necessary. Here are some examples:
      We are searching for talent everywhere.
      Мы повсюду ищем таланты.
      I am a very rapid packer.
      Я очень быстро укладываюсь.
      It is our hope that an agreement will be reached by Friday.
      Мы надеемся, что к пятнице будет достигнуто соглашение.
      Не does not mind your joining our group.
      Он ничего не имеет против того, чтобы вы присоединились к нашей группе.
      Finally, there is a group of transformations which ensure the required degree of equivalence by a number of changes of both lexical and gram¬matical nature (lexical-grammatical transformations). They involve a different arrangement of ideas, a different point of view and other semantic modifications whenever a direct transla¬tion of a SL unit proves impossible. A typical example of such a procedure is the so-called antonymous translation describing the situation, as it were, from the opposite point of view and rendering an affirmative SL structure by a negative TL one or vice versa:
      The door was not unbolted. Дверь была на засове.
      A complex change also occurs in explicatory translations in which a SL unit is replaced by a TL word combination describing or defining its meaning:
      A demonstration of British conservationists was held in Trafalgar Square yesterday.
      Вчера на Трафальгар-сквер состоялась демонстрация англий¬ских сторонников охраны окружающей среды.
      In conclusion, we should mention one more specific procedure which may come handy to the translator when he is baffled by an apparently un-solvable translation problem. It may be called the compensation technique and is defined as a deliberate introduction of some additional elements in translation to make up for the loss of similar elements at the same or an earlier stage. For instance, Eliza in B. Shaw's 'Tygmalion" makes a mistake typical for the speech of an uneducated person: 'Tm nothing to you — not so much as them slippers." And Professor Higgins corrects her saying: "those slippers". The linguistic error in the episode is untranslatable and its loss makes this dialogue meaningless. But the loss can be compensated for by introducing a mistake - and its correction - at a point where everything is correct in the original but where an uneducated Russian speaker is likely to make it. As a result in the translation Eliza says: «Я для вас ничто, хуже вот этих туфлей»; And Higgins can self-righteously correct her: «ту¬фель».
      The compensation method is often used to render the stylistic or emo¬tional implications of the original. Consider the following example.
      They had reached the mysterious mill where the red tape was spun, and Yates was determined to cut through it here and now. (S. Heym)
      "Red tape" is translated as "bureaucracy" but the latter cannot be spun at a mill. And the translator invents his own figure of speech to compensate for the loss:
      Они уперлись в стену штабной бюрократии, но Йейтс твердо ре¬шил тут же пробить эту стену.

III.Проанализируйте перевод текста с английского языка на русский. Обратите внимание на лексические и грамматические приемы перевода.

THE ROLE OF THE WORLD BANK IN BELARUS
(предоставлено представительством Всемирного банка в Беларуси, 1998 г.)