The Notion of "Gaps" in Perceiving Original Texts

"Gaps" or lacunas (lacunae; лакуни; пропуски) are blank spaces or missing parts in perception of oral and written discourse by the addressee, which may occur both in monolingual and bilingual (multilingual) communication. Potential gaps in perception of fictional texts caused by psychological, national and behavioral specificity of a particular "culture", may be serious challenges ("cognitive constraints") for translators of prose, drama and poetry. However, this Unit focuses on "gaps" in the SL oral discourse, i.e. on the fragments of discourse, which interpreters do not perceive for some reason and, therefore, are not able to render them into the TL. Interpreting practice shows that there may be two major groups of factors, which result in failure to perceive oral messages by the interpreter:

1. Subjective factors: lack of interpreter's cultural, linguistic or subject field competence;

2. Objective factors: various acoustic noises in the SL channel, "interpreter unfriendly" behavior of the SL speaker, who may have a heavy accent, speak indistinctly or too fast, use slang, jargon, highly specific items of national lexicon, incoherent syntax or simply have some speech defects.

There seems to be only one way to minimize "gaps" caused by subjective factors – constant development of interpreter's professional skills which requires improvement of both SL and TL cultural competence, in–depth insight into the subject field of interpretation, keeping personal records, glossaries, vocabularies, training memory, etc.

Gaps caused by objective factors are often beyond interpreter's control, except cases, when the interpreter, working in a consecutive mode, has an opportunity to ask the speaker to kindly repeat what has been said (which often annoys the speaker). There are three types of “gaps”, caused by objective factors: phonological, lexical, and grammatical “gaps”.

10.2. Phonological "Gaps"

Phonological "gaps" are the gaps caused by the failure of the interpreter to differentiate between the SL sounds, which have distinctive function. In their turn, phonological "gaps" may be caused by:

a) dialectal, regional or non–native accent, for example:

East London (cockney) accent: [bə'laɪv] for believe; [kaɪʃ] for case; [k'aɪʃɪʃ] for cases; [m'aɪbə] for maybe; [saɪ] for say; [tə 'daɪ] for today; [laɪt] for late; [ə'waɪ] for away; [æplɪ'kaɪʃnʃ] for applications; [əv'kɔ:ʃ] for of course etc;

Brummy (Birmingham accent, Midlands, England): Go [up] the street till you see street– [lɔɪts ] – Go up the street till you see street– lights (Йдіть угору по вулиці, доки не побачите світлофор):

Francophone accent (Quebec, Canada): The GDP per capita may be compared to the number of eggs divided [per en] –/.../ to the number of eggs divided per hen (ВВПна душу населення можна порівняти з кількістю яєць, поділених на одну курку); І am very [æpɪ] to be [ɪə^r] with you today – I am very happy to be here with you today (Мені дуже приємно бути тут сьогодні з вами);

Indian English accent: [dɪs vaɪə is kənak'tɪt tu dɪ a:rt] This wire is connected to the earth (Цей дріт заземлено):

Japanese accent: [vɪ vɪl nau dɪs'kʌs dɪ sʌld əb dɪ ra:nd] – We will now discuss the sales of the land (Зараз ми будемо обговорювати продаж земельних ділянок);

b) unintentional (or, maybe, intentional) mispronunciation or misuse of words (marked in the text by an asterisk "*"), for example:

General [ du:'deɪev] (instead of Dudaev); the city of [su:tʃi:] (instead of Sochi); [u:kra'ɪnɪə] (instead of Ukraine); [tʃe'tʃenɪa] (instead of Chechnya); * race–horsing stadium (instead of horse–racing stadium); * letigimate (instead of legitimate), * ammunity (instead of immunity), * дискутивний (instead of дискусійний); * провокативний (instead of провокаційний), *ми приносим вам такую глубокую признательность instead of ... выражаем...; не треба тут ставити фіфті на фіфті (misuse of the idiomatic expression), etc;

c) individual speech defects caused by stuttering (stammering), false teeth, nervousness, etc. e.g. [meɪ aɪ ʃɪt hɪə^r] instead of " may I sit here? " – the British Lord was 88 and had false teeth; Rus *э корогия (for э кология): Rus * падкофка пфиф u берак (for подкормка птиц и белок); *на тлапе берачка фифит (for на тропе белочка сидит) – the lady from Novosibirsk spoke Russian "normally" in the corridor but became very nervous when she took the microphone; * сісі–сісі–сісі–сіртифікати (for сертифікати) – the gentleman was suffering from a heavy stutter; * такати–так (for Rus так сказать or так u так) – the gentleman had a speech defect, etc. In all of these instances interpreters should never laugh at people or show their indignation but take things as they are and showing great patience and respect to the speaker try to understand what the utterance is about and then reproduce it in the TL. This is not an easy task, but it is so required by the Code of Ethics and accepted rules of human behavior.

10.3. Lexical "Gaps"

Lexical "gaps" are caused by the use of slang, jargon (including professional jargon), dialectal words, rare professional abbreviations and acronyms, highly specific items of national lexicon or very specific idioms, e.g. flat–top (milit sl) – авіаносець; chopper (milit sl) – вертоліт, гелікоптер; high–fliers (admin sl) – перспективні, талановиті працівники; honky, honkie (Ame sl taboo derived from honkies – Hungarian community in New York City, USA) – білошкіра людина; honky–tonk – дешева музика у барах, білошкіра людина; pot (drug–users' sl) – марихуана; shiv or chiv (criminal sl) – ніж, "перо"; APC (armored personnel carrier, milit) – БТР, бронетранспортер; TY (total yield, milit) – загальна потужність ядерного заряду; вертушка (milit si); – вертоліт; сидушка (drivers' sl) – невеличке сидіння в авто; мочити (criminal sl); (prison sl) – вбивати; жиган – в'язень, позбавлений прав "на зоні", прикид (teenagers' sl) – одяг, мода, стиль, etc.

Some newly coined by the Ukrainian media words as a result of sometimes excessive purist tendency of "ukrainisation" at the beginning of this century are potential gap–makers. Certain professional political, diplomatic, and administrative newly formed slang or jargon words also belong here. Examples of such words (most of them are nonce–words or "fly–by–night" units and not registered by dictionaries) are: автівка for автомобіль, авто; верхогони for змагання на верхових конях; кермувач for водій; далекогляд for бінокль; літовище, літалище for аеропорт; нарід (заст.) for народ; хрестослов for кросворд; лижварка for лижниця; генделик for пивничка, забігайлівка; скринька перемичок for коробка передач; гвинтокрил for вертоліт; штрикавка for шприц; міжповерховий дротохід for ліфт; пупорізка for акушерка; ветувати, заветувати for накладати вето; заангажованість for упередженість; провокативний for провокаційний; заманіфестувати for проголосити; педалювати (питання) for прискорювати (розгляд питання), etc. Only the use (узус) will over time tell whether such words will be accepted by the Ukrainian standard literary language or disappear. Usually newly coined words have a short life. They cease to be nonce–words after being used for more then 5–7 times in print and then they are usually registered by dictionaries.

Another potential group of "gap–makers" makes up words borrowed from other languages and used in the Ukrainian discourse as they sound (or are written) in these languages. The main source of such "borrowings" is Russian language due to its close historical bonds with Ukrainian, as well as because Ukraine is a multinational state, where Russian is widely spoken in the South and East of Ukraine, Kyiv included. In theory and in accordance with the AIIC requirements to holding international conferences speakers should by all means avoid using words from languages, other than the announced official language/languages of the conference. It means that if the source speakers speak Ukrainian, they should not use Russian, English, German or Polish words and expressions. The same holds true for speakers, who speak Russian or any other language for which interpretation is provided at the conference. However, in practice this is not always the case. Quite often, especially at bilateral negotiations, round tables, press conferences, interviews and talk shows interpreters may hear from, for instance, Ukrainian speakers something like: "Ви знаєте, я сейчас скажу это на русском языке ", which would require a very quick "switch" of the language code of the interpreter and may be regarded as interpretation in the environment of complicated communication, this time – multilingual. If the interpreter knows (or at least has some understanding) of such "third" language – then the interpretation is performed successfully. However, imagine that the interpreter doesn't know the "third" intervening language. The result would be obvious – interpretation will fail and the message of the speaker will not be brought to the target audience. Here are some of the examples, which you will most probably hear on the phonograms and which are encountered in interpretation practice: * так сказать instead of так би мовити; *ц e питання стоїть на повестке дня instead of на порядку денному; " палата общин instead of палата громад; * на протязі року instead of протягом року; * оружейний плутоній instead of збройний плутоній; знаєш що, мамо, * Warszawa w por o wnaniu z Kiiowom – to iak mala wioska (from Polish) instead of Варшава у порівнянні з Києвом – це як маленьке село; в Америці дуже багато * шеровців instead of акціонерів; ходімо до *сітінг руми instead of до вітальні; the Gongadze family were not recognized as *la partie civile (from French) instead of the Gongadze family were not recognized as a civil plaintiff (or as the aggrieved side or as a damaged side – родина Гонгадзе не була визнана громадським позивачем; потерпілою стороню; стороною, яка зазнала шкоди).

10.4. Grammatical "Gaps"

Grammatical "gaps" may be caused by:

a) morphological errors, such as misuse of tenses, mood forms, case forms, the use of double (even triple) negation etc. Such gaps seldom occur in "educated discourse" and are usually filled in without great difficulty due to the grammatical redundancy of speech. Thus, yesterday is enough to understand that the reference is to the past, so the Past Indefinite Tense (especially the use of "irregular" forms of verbs with reference to the past) gradually fades away in modern colloquial English, for example:

There is now no, you and me, no not more (Afro–American talk); Yesterday I come home and I see that she is not there (West Midlands talk, Britain);

b) the use of syntactical structures with the reverse word order, which often occurs with the speakers of synthetic languages like Ukrainian and Russian. This may cause a serious problem first of all for simultaneous interpreters, who interpret into English, because they have either to wait for the subject group of the utterance to be pronounced by the speaker (this results in pauses in interpretation often filled in by the "pause filler" sounds – err..., – erm..., etc) or render the utterance word for word (which may mislead the target listeners), for example:

З інвестиційними компаніями роботу проводить розташована у Києві Комісія з цінних паперів та фондової біржі, списки підприємств, що приватизуються, складає Фонд державного майна.