Semantic Competence

& Translation
TRANSLATION STUDIES
Goal of Semantics
TO PROPERLY CHARACTERIZE SEMANTIC COMPETENCE
 The ability to judge which strings of words form
grammatical sentences

The ability to determine the meaning of a

Semantic particular string of words
Competence The ability to determine the meaning of a
particular syntactic structure

The ability to determine the relationship between

the meanings of distinct syntactic structures
 Entailment
Syntactic
Semantic
Relationships
Equivalence

Contradiction
Semantic Entailment
The truth of a sentence ensures the truth of another sentence
Also called strict implication. Logical analysis and semantic consequence
For example, Alan lives in Toronto Alan lives in Canada.
Ben has been murdered. Ben is dead.
Semantic Equivalence
Two data elements from different vocabularies contain data that has similar meaning
i) Class or Concept Equivalence: two high level concepts have similar meaning.
ii) Property or Attribute Equivalence: Two properties, descriptors or attributes of classes have
similar meaning.
iii) Instance Equivalence: Two instances of data are the same or refer to the same instance.
Contradiction
Necessarily false as a result of the senses of the words in it.
For example, Elephants are not animals.
A man is a butterfly.
MEANING
MEANING IS WHAT MEANING DOES. ( DAVID LEWIS)
 Is like mathematical objects
that provide us information
about the world.
MEANING
Essentially the truth
conditions of a sentence to
reason about its meaning.
 Is just knowing the meaning of the words in a sentence the
same as knowing its meaning?

How is Jim saw Bill/ Bill saw Jim.

meaning learnt? Gina saw the girl with a telescope

The role played by the syntactic structure in the construction

of meaning is important!
Semantic Competence
Thus, consists of
Knowledge of the meaning of the lexical items
Knowledge of how the syntactic structure guides the construction of sentence (and phrase-level)
meaning from the meaning of individual lexical items and of the operations by which meaning is
constructed.
Both knowledge are finite
Since any language has only a finite no. of lexical items and the number of rules that guide the
construction of meaning is also finite.
However, the knowledge (ii) allows us to compute the meaning of an infinite no. of arbitrary complex
syntactic structures.
In both directions, we make appeal to our intuitions about sentence meaning. These intuitions
concern relations of
implication,
ambiguity,
synonymy,
contradiction,
anomaly ( a bit of language that does what it is meant to do but is abnormal. For example; troblem =
trouble+problem), and
appropriateness (linguistic appropriations: the extent to which an utterance is perceived as suitable
in a particular situation)
The Role of Semantics in Translation
Main objective of translation: to transfer the meaning from the SL to TL
A good translator must have semantic competence in both languages.
Meaning Semantics
Semantics study provides theories, approaches or methods in understanding “meaning” that are
very useful in translation.
Catford (1905): “untranslatability occurs when it is impossible to build functionally relevant
features of the situation into the contextual meaning of the target language text.”

difficulty is linguistics
Difficulties in Linguistics
Ambiguity ( due to shared exponents of 2 or more SL grammatical or lexical items and polysemy)
Oligosemy (a term whose range of meaning has been semotactically (modification of the
meaning of a word by interaction with the surrounding words) restricted the quality of having a
few meanings as opposed to having a single meaning or many meanings.
Methods of Analyzing Meanings of
Words Helpful in Translation Studies
Ogdan & Richard’s
Triangular Concept Componential Natural Semantic
of Meaning/ Triangle Analysis Metalanguage
of Reference

Hermeneutics Lexical Semantics

 1. Ogden & Richard: Triangular Concept of
Meaning/ Triangle of Reference/ Semiotic Triangle
Thought/reference

Connect/symbolizes Adequate (refers to other causal (a causal relation)

relations)

Symbol stands for Referent

(an imputed
relation)
Subject/ speaker

Concept/object referent

Designation/ sign/ symbol

Thus, Semantics is related to Semiotics, Pragmatics & Discourse.

2. Componential Analysis/ Features
Analysis/ Contrast Analysis
Description of the meaning of words through structured sets of semantic features which are
given as “present”, “absent” as “indifferent with reference to features”.
It analyzes the structure of a word’s meaning.
Thus, reveals the culturally important features by which speakers of the language distinguish
different words in the domain.
3. Natural Semantic Metalanguage
(NSM)
Proposed by Anna Wierzbicka (1996)
Employs simple culturally-shared meanings (semantic primes) as its vocabulary of semantic and
pragmatic description.
Based on evidence supporting the view that despite their enormous differences, all languages
share a small but stable core of simple exponents as words or word-like expressions in all
languages, and that they share a universal grammar of combinations, valency &
complementation.
Semantic Valency: Valency is related to the no. of participants or arguments in the clause that
are controlled by the verb, that is, determined by the verb.
She told me a joke.
Semantic valency = 3 participants
3- S, O(i), O(d)
It rains.
Syntactic Valency = 1
Semantic Valency = 0
“It” is a dummy it, not a participant.
Semantic primes can be combined according to grammatical patterns which also appear to be
universal (People think that this is good…..)
The words and grammar of the natural semantic metalanguage jointly constitute a surprisingly
flexible and expressive “mini language”.
4. Hermeneutics ( Interpretations of
specially literary text or bible)
There is no translation without understanding and interpreting texts.
Inappropriate interpretation invariably results in inadequate translation, if not absolutely wrong
translation.
Hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else’s point of
view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook.
It also interprets or inquires into the meaning and import of these phenomena, through
understanding the point of view and ‘inner life’ of an outsider, or the first person perspective of
an engaged participant in these phenomena.
5. Lexical Semantics
Synonymy, antonymy, polysemy & hyponymy
Its analyses necessarily involve, more or less, explicit considerations concerning the number of
interpretational variants of a word form i.e. identifying the lexical items associated with a
lexeme.