Lecture 3 DIALECTICS OF TRANSLATION

1. Inseparability of form and meaning.

A translator is to convey not only the ideas and themes of the source
text (meaning, sense); s/he should also pay attention to the adequate
form to express these ideas. S/he should not become carried away
with a free (loose) form of translation, nor force the target language
by following the source text word for word. A translator always bears
in mind a standard language of the target text, for, as W. Benjamin put
it figuratively, «while content and language form a certain unity in the
original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation
envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds».
2. Social functions.
Translation does not exist outside of society. It appeared in society
when communities began to trade and exchange ideas. At the same
time, translation
helps the world community develop. Nations could hardly have
achieved the technological success as it is in the 20th century if there
had been no translations in electronics, physics, chemistry and other
branches of science and technology. According to the Encyclopedia
Britannica12, in the 20th century most of the world’s people speak
one of about 75 primary languages. A small minority speak one of
450 secondary languages, and more than 4,400 other languages are in
use. Without translation and translators the world would not be able to
progress.
4.Translation and culture are inseparable.
Translation could not have developed without culture. Literature,
science, and philosophy influence translators’ conceptualizations. On
the other hand, culture could not have developed without translation,
since translations enrich nations with the cultural values of other
 nations.
3. Reflection and creativity in translation.
Translation reflects the source text but it does not copy it. To translate
adequately, a translator must do his or her best to find a proper
means of expression. A translator bears in mind that the receptor has a
cultural background other than that of a receptor of the original text;
therefore, s/he has to be very resourceful in producing the same impact
upon the receptor as that of the source text. Special problems arise in
translating dialects, foreign speech, puns, poetry, etc. And a translator
is in constant search for new tools to solve translation problems.
4. Translation is an art and a science.
Translation is dominated by objective, scientific, and linguistic
description and explanation. At the same time, it is a subjective choice
of means preserving stylistic equivalence of the source text.
Lecture 4 TRANSLATION INVARIANT
Many linguistic terms have been borrowed from mathematics.
Translation invariant is one of them. By translation invariant we mean
what is in common between the two expressions, a source one and a
target one, after our manipulations and transformations of variable
phrases.
By translation invariant we should understand the semantic
equivalence of the source and the target texts.13
Some linguists, however, consider the notion to be broader than
this definition. They suppose that it is the real situation described by the
text that brings together the source and the target texts.14 If the situation
is understood differently, it leads to misunderstanding, which can happen
in a monolanguage situation as well, and is often the basis for all sorts of
comical jokes. For example, the situation in the shop:
Покупатель: Я хочу примерить платье в
витрине. Продавец: Пожалуйста, но у нас
есть примерочная.

Customer: I’d like to try on the dress in the

shop window. Salesgirl: You are welcome. But
we have a fitting room.
Different situations verbalized here are caused by different
pragmatic emphasis. The customer presses upon trying on a featured
dress whereas the salesgirl implies the impropriety of using a shop
window.
If the translator of this joke had paraphrased the first sentence in a
different way (I’d like to try on the dress that is in the shop window), the
joke would have been lost, though the meanings of its sentences would
have been equally transferred. Therefore, the invariant of translation is
based not only on semantics (meaning), but also on pragmatics
(communicative intention).
UNIT OF TRANSLATION

Singling out and defining a unit of translation is a problem widely

discussed in Translation Studies.
According to R. Bell, a unit of translation is the smallest segment
of a source language text which can be translated, as a whole, in isolation
from other segments (as small as possible and as large as is necessary). 15
Should we consider a word as a translation unit? Though there exists the
notion of a word-for-word translation, the word can hardly be taken for a
translation unit. First of all, this is because word borders are not always
clear, especially in English. Sometimes a compound word is written in
one element, sometimes it is hyphenated, or the two stems are written
separately as a phrase: e.g., moonlight, fire-light, candle light. On the
other hand, in oral speech it is difficult to single out separate words
because they tend to fuse with each other into inseparable complexes:
[‘wud3э 'ko:lim?] – according to the stress, there should be two words,
while in written speech we can see four words: Would you call him?
Furthermore, it is impossible to consider a phrase (word
combination) as a translation unit, because its boundaries are also vague.
Thus, it is not a language unit that should be considered in
translation, but a discourse (speech) unit. A translation unit is a group of
words united in speech by their meaning, rhythm and melody, i.e. it is a
syntagm, or rhythmic and notional segment of speech.
This definition of the unit of translation is process-oriented. If
considered from a product-oriented point of view, it can be defined as the
target-text unit that can be mapped onto a source-text unit.