Введение в теорию и практику перевода (на материале английского языка)

Besides purely linguistic difficulties, translation involves a great number of problems caused by numerous extralinguistic factors. The content of any text is based upon extralinguistic reality, the text itself reflects the cultural background of the author and of the whole people speaking the language, it also reflects the history of the people, their habits and traditions, a peculiar national way of thinking, etc. All these things should necessarily be taken into consideration in order to translate the text adequately. One must know much more than the lexical meaning of the words to translate the following:

"What will you have?" he asked me. I looked at him doubtfully. Prohibition was in force and to all appearance the ship was bone-dry.

(S.Maugham)

First of all it is necessary to know that the formula "What will you have?" has a conventional meaning of an invitation to choose some liquor. Besides one should know what "Prohibition" is meant here (the eighteenth amendment to the US Constitution) not to translate it as "запрет". Only in this case there may appear a correct version:

"Что Вы будете пить?", спросил он. Я посмотрел на него с недоверием: сухой закон был в силе, и на корабле, судя по всему, не было ни капли спиртного.

It is also most essential to remember that nations speaking different languages have different experience, and things naturally known to one nation are quite unknown to another. To see it one may try to translate into English the title of the film "Петровка, 38", making it as informative for Englishmen or Americans as it is for us because we know perfectly well what office is situated there.

One of the main demands upon a person translating any text is that they should be well acquainted with its subject matter. It certainly requires some knowledge of physics to decide if the word "power" in a particular context means "сила" or "мощность", which is not the same thing.

If all these principles are taken into consideration there will be no danger of so-called "literal" translation, which means a word-for-word translation. This type of translation with all its seeming accuracy ignores both linguistic and extralinguistic factors discussed above. It leads to preserving the meanings of separate words and at the same time it distorts the meaning of the whole text (or sentence), thus often creating an undesirable comic effect. The reader is sure to be surprised at such a sentence:

…в гостиной стояли одиннадцать кресел, диван, три столика, две этажерки, …и часть большого рояля

.

The phrase "part of a large grand piano" does not mean that the grand piano was divided into parts, just as the Russian expression "четверть скрипки", denoting a special little violin for children, does not mean that the violin is broken into four parts. So the phrase should be translated as "небольшой рояль", which differs from "part of a large grand piano" in structure, but conveys the same meaning.

These are the main principles one should follow in the process of translating.

Translation of lexical units

Types of correlation between words in source language and target language

There are different types of correspondences between the elements of the SL and TL lexical systems.

I. A word of SL and a word of TL may be identical in their meaning. Such words are called equivalents (the corresponding Russian term is эквиваленты). To this group usually belong proper names such as "London – Лондон", "Galsworthy – Голсуорси", etc.; terms such as "a morpheme – морфема", "logarithm – логарифм", etc.; names of the months, days of the week; numerals. Equivalents are usually monosemantic words and they are easily translated.

II. The meanings of a SL word and a TL word may coincide partially (частичные, или вариантные соответствия). There are three variants within this type.