II.4. The method of omission

The omission is the phenomenon opposite to addition. During translation the words that are semantically redundant from the point of their semantic content are usually subjected to omission. One of the examples of abundance is the use of the so-called «pair synonyms» that are peculiar to all the styles of the written speech. It is not peculiar to the Ukrainian language, that’s why it is necessary to use omission during translation. For example:

Certainly, the abundant elements in a text don’t come to «the pair synonyms» only. For example:

In the English text the words «left» and «bar» are semantically abundant, as the action defined is implied by the next verb «went out», that’s why the omission is used in the Ukrainian translation (accompanied by the union of a sentence with the previous one). For example:

In the given example the whole English sentence is abundant one from the point of Ukrainian language view. The removal of semantically abundant elements of the source language text give a possibility to a translator to carry out that is called «the compression of a text», i.e. shortening of its general volume.

The omission is caused not only by aspiration to the removal of speech abundance. It can have the other reasons, in particular, the tendency to maximal specification that is typical for English and is expressed in the use of numerals, as well as the names of measures and scales where it is not motivated by the semantic factors, sometimes requires to use omissions. For example: