Unit 14

The Translator's Informational Capacity (информационная емкость, информационный запас)

What is meant by "knowing" a word? It is a well-known fact that the translator always works with particular word-senses highlighted by particular contexts. But the level of his or her awareness of the seman­tics of even one word-sense may vary considerably. It is useful to dis­tinguish five different levels of "knowing" a word-sense, or five differ­ent levels of the translator's informational capacity.

Level 1. The translator is able to associate a word-sense with some general field of human knowledge or practical activity, i. e. with a certain very wide class of things or ideas. E.g. hydrophobia - an illness -болезнь. (Информационная емкость первого уровня - способность отнести понятие к общему широкому классу понятий.)

Level 2. The translator is able to refer the word-sense to a particular genus of things or ideas. E. g. hydrophobia - an affliction of the nervous system - поражение, заболевание центральной нервной системы. (Информационная емкость второго уровня -способность отнести понятие к общему роду понятий.)

Level 3. The translator is able to refer the word-sense to a particular species of things or ideas. E. g. hydrophobia - tech. rabies - a disease that kills animals and people, that you can catch if you're bitten by an infected dog, etc. (LDCE) - бешенство. (Информационная емкость третьего уровня - способность дать понятию определение, указав его родовую принадлежность и выделив его существенные видовые признаки.)

Level 4. The translator possesses encyclopedic details of the phenomenon described by the concept in question. E. g. rabies - an acute, infectious, often fatal viral disease of most warm-blooded animals, especially wolves, cats, and dogs, that attacks the central nervous sys­tem and is transmitted by the bite of infected animals (AHD). (Информационная емкость четвертого уровня - обладание энциклопедическими знаниями о данном явлении или понятии.)

Level 5. In addition to the encyclopedic knowledge, the translator possesses a scientific knowledge of the concept in question. Scientific knowl edge allows a systematic description of the essential qualities of a thing or idea, their connections with other things and ideas, and the way they have developed up to now and are expected to develop in the future. E. g. the translator knows in what essential ways hydrophobia is different from other viral diseases that attack the central nervous system, when it was first identified, how it was treated in the past and how it is treated now, and what the prospects are of eliminating the risk of this disease altogether. This is scientific knowledge. (Информационная емкость пятого уровня - обладание научными знаниями о данном явлении или понятии.)

Bilingual dictionaries do not define, they give cross-language transla­tion synonyms. They provide the translator with the outward shape of the word-sense without describing its inner content.

To translate effectively one has to have at least a level 3 informational capacity. Level 4 and in some cases level 5 informational capacities are strongly advisable, especially in translation for specific purposes.

Unit 15

"Semantic Engineering" and Levels of Translation Approximations ("Семантическая инженерия перевода" и уровни переводчеких соответствий)

As has been demonstrated in this course, full matches of source and target language word-senses are rather the exception than the rule. As a result, the translator habitually has to resort to contextual "con­structing", "generating", or "engineering" both denotative and connotative aspects of word-senses in the target language that would match, as closely as possible, those in the source language. Even at word level, translation is a constant process of "semantic engineering." This "semantic engineering" of translation results in translation approximations of different levels.

These levels are as follows:

1) close approximations (equivalents) - близкие соответствия (approximations that, for all intents and purposes, may be considered equivalents): e. g. монтировка - a tire iron, торт-наполеон - a napoleon;

2) acceptable approximations (near equivalents)- практические соответствия (approximations with slight differences in their connotative and/or denotative meanings: e. g. кинуть кого-л. - to stiff smb.обуть кого-л. - to shaft smb);

3) functional-communicative analogues - функционально-коммуникативные аналоги (products of contextual "engineering" of senses, or "semantic engineering of translation"): e. g. авось – blind trust in sheer luck / divine providence / faith in serendipity;

4) interpretations or descriptive definitions/translations - толкования, или описания-дефиниции (when it is impossible to produce translations proper): e. g. голубой огонек - a popular New Year's Eve TV show;

5) loan translations - переводы-кальки (whereby the semantic components of a given lexical item are literally translated into the target lan- guage): e. g. бизнес по-русски - business Russian-style, "новые русские" - "new Russians";

6) phonetic transcriptions/transliterations - переводы-транскрипции/транслитерации: (whereby the translator tries to convey the soundof the lexical item in the source language using the letters of the target language): e. g. notebook - ноутбук, Дума - the Duma, крыша - krisha;

7) reproductions of words in their original script – беспереводные заимствования: е. g. VIP, VISA, Mastercard, disk-jockey, PIN-код,Windows 98.