Translation ranking

The lecture deals with:

• various ranks of translation;

• means to ensure adequate translation which have been suggested by dif­ferent scholars and translation ranks;

• fields of application and hierarchy of transformational, denotative and communicational approaches depending on type of translation;

• priorities in training translators;

• meaning, equivalence and extralinguistic information as three basic com­ponents of translation;

• the use of different approaches depending on translation variety.

Even in routine translation practice one can see that there are differ­ent ranks of translation, that one rank of translation consists of rather simple substitutions whereas another involves relatively sophisticated and not just purely linguistic analysis.

Several attempts have been made to develop a translation theory
based on different translation ranks or levels as they are sometimes
called. Among those one of the most popular in the former Soviet Union
was the «theory of translation equivalence level (TEL)» developed by V.
Komissarov.:

According to this theory the translation process fluctuates passing I from formal inter-language transformations to the domain of conceptual interrelations.

V. Komissarov's approach seems to be a realistic interpretation of; the translation process, however, this approach fails to demonstrate when and why one translation equivalence level becomes no longer ap­propriate and why, to get a correct translation, you have to pass to a higher TEL.

Ideas similar to TEL are expressed by Y. Retsker who maintains that any two languages are related by «regular» correspondences (words, word-building patterns, syntactical structures) and «irregular» ones. The irregular correspondences cannot be formally represented and only the translators knowledge and intuition can help to find the matching formal expression in the target language for a concept expressed in the source language.

According to J. Firth, in order to bridge languages in the process of translation, one must use the whole complex of linguistic and extralin-guistic information rather than limit oneself to purely linguistic objects and structures.

J. Catford, similar to V. Komissarov and J. Firth, interprets transla­tion as a multi-level process. He distinguishes between «total» and «re­stricted» translation - in «total» translation all levels of the source text are replaced by those of the target text, whereas in «restricted» transla­tion the substitution occurs at only one level.

According to J. Catford a certain set of translation tools characteris­tic of a certain level constitutes a rank of translation and a translation per­formed using that or another set of tools is called rank bound. We have borrowed this terminology and call the theories that divide the transla­tion process into different levels theories with translation ranking.

Generally speaking, all theories of human translation discussed above try to explain the process of translation to a degree of precision required for practical application, but no explanation is complete so far.

•► The transformational approach quite convincingly suggests that in any language there are certain regular syntactic, morphological, and word-building structures which may be successfully matched with their analogies in another language during translation.

Besides, you may observe evident similarity between the transforma­tional approach and primary translation ranks within theories suggesting the ranking of translation (Komissarov, Retsker, Catford and others).

As you will note later, the transformational approach forms the basis of machine translation design - almost any machine translation system uses the principle of matching forms of the languages involved in trans­lation. The difference is only in the forms that are matched and the rules of matching.

The denotative approach treats different languages as closed sys­tems with specific relationships between formal and conceptual as­pects, hence in the process of translation links between the forms of different languages are established via conceptual equivalence.

This is also true, especially in such cases where language expressions correspond to unique indivisible concepts. Here one can also observe similarity with higher ranks within the theories suggesting the ranking of translation.

•► The communicational approach highlights a very important as­pect of translation - the matching of thesauruses. Translation may achieve its ultimate target of rendering a piece of information only if the translator knows the users' language and the subject matter of the translation well enough (i.e. if the translator's language and subject thesauruses are sufficiently complete). This may seem self-evident, but should always be kept in mind, because all translation mistakes result from the insufficiencies of the thesauruses.

Moreover, wholly complete thesauruses are the ideal case. No trans­lator knows the source and target languages equally well (even a native speaker of both) and even if he or she does, it is still virtually impossible to know everything about any possible subject matter related to the translation.

Scientists and translators have been arguing and still do about the priorities in a translators education. Some of them give priority to the linguistic knowledge of translators, others keep saying that a knowledge­able specialist in the given area with even a relatively poor command of the language will be able to provide a more adequate translation than a good scholar of the language with no special technical or natural science background.

In our opinion this argument is counter-productive - even if one or another viewpoint is proved, say, statistically, this will not add anything of value to the understanding of translation. However, the very existence of this argument underscores the significance of extralinguistic informa­tion for translation.

Summing up this short overview of theoretical treatments of transla­tion we would again like to draw your attention to the general conclusion that any theory recognizes these three basic components of translation, and different approaches differ only in the accents placed on this or that component. So, the basic components are:

Meaning of a word or word combination in the source language (concept or concepts corresponding to this word or word combination in the minds of the source language speakers).

Equivalence of this meaning expressed in a word or word combina­tion of the target language (concept or concepts corresponding to this word or word combination in the minds of the target language speakers).

Extralinguistic information pertaining to the original meaning and/or its conceptual equivalent after the translation.

So, to put it differently, what you can do in translation is either match individual words and combinations of the two languages directly (transformational approach), or understand the content of the source message and render it using the formal means of the target language (denotative approach) with due regard of the translation recipient and background information (communicational approach).

The hierarchy of these methods may be different depending on the type of translation²⁰. Approach priorities depending on the type of trans­lation are given in Table below.

TranslationType	Translation Method Priorities
Oral Consecutive	Denotative, Communicational
Oral Simultaneous	Transformational, Communica­tional
Written (general & technical)	Transformational
Written (fiction & poetry)	Denotative

Thus, in oral consecutive translation priority is given to denotative method, because a translator is first listening to the speaker and only after some time formulates the translation, which is very seldom a structural copy of the source speech.

In simultaneous translation as opposed to consecutive priority is given to direct transformations since a simultaneous interpreter simply has no time for conceptual analysis.

In written translation, when you seem to have time for everything, pri­ority is also given to simple transformations (perhaps, with exception of po­etic translation). This is no contradiction, just the path of least resistance in action - it is not worthwhile to resort to complex methods unless simple ones fail.

It should be born in mind, however, that in any translation we ob­serve a combination of different methods.

From the approaches discussed one should also learn that the matching language forms and concepts are regular and irregular, that seemingly the same concepts are interpreted differently by the speakers of different languages and different translation users.

Now, having discussed briefly the main theoretical treatments of human translation, we pass over to basic translation parameters being the subject of the following lectures.

Література:

1. Комиссаров В.Н. Современное переводоведение. Учебное пособие. – М.: ЭТС. – 2002. – 424 с.

2. Комисарова В.Н., Кораллова А.Л. Практикум по переводу с английского языка на русский. - М., 1990.

3. Комиссаров В.Н. Лингвистика перевода. - М, 1981.

4. Корунець І.В. Теорія і практика перекладу. - Вінниця, 2003. - 448 с.

5. Мірам Г.Є. Дейнеко В.В. Основи перекладу. - К., 2003.

6. Мирам Г.Е. Переводныe картинки. Профессия: переводчик. - К., 2001.

7. Мирам Г.Е. Профессия: переводчик. - К., 1999.

8. Нелюбин Л.Л. Переводческий словарь. - М., 1999.

9. Федоров А.В. Основы общей теории перевода. - М., 1975.

Questions

1. What is the main idea of Komissarov’s theory of ‘translation equivalence level’?

2. What is translation according to Retsker, Catford and Firth?

3. What is translation ranking?

4. What translation ranks do you know?

5. What relationship is there between the approaches translation and types of translation?