TECHNIQUES OF TRANSLATION

The study of the linguistic machinery of translation makes it possible to outline the main principles of the translator’s strategy.

When confronted with the text to be translated, the translator’s first concern is to understand it by assessing the meaning of language units in the text against the contextual situation and the pertaining extralinguistic facts. At the same time the translator must take care to avoid “thinking into” the text, i.e. adding the information which is not, in fact, present in ST.

Let us illustrate this procedure by a few examples. Suppose we have the following sentence: ‘The Union executive committee passed a resolution advising the workers to “sit-out” elections where neither party offers a candidate whom labor could support.” Translating this sentence the translator has to solve a number of problems, trying to get to the meaning of some words or word combinations. He has two main pillars to sustain his judgements: the basic meaning of the unit and the contextual situation. Consider the phrase “to sit out the elections”. The basic meaning of “to sit our” is clearly the opposite of “to sit in”. One can obviously “sit in the house, the car, the shade”, etc. or to “sit out of them”, i.e. to be or stay outside some place or space. On the other hand, “to sit out a dance” means not to dance, that is, not to take part in this kind of activities. True, it often implies that you do it unwillingly, that you are just not invited to dance. In our case the workers are recommended to sit out elections by their own will, to show their disapproval of the candidates offered by the two parties. We may conclude that the workers are advised not to go to the polls or to boycott the elections.

Now what is the “Union executive committee” that made the recommendation? Theoretically speaking, any kind of union may have done it. But for practical purposes the translator will take into account the following considerations. First, it is clear that it is some kind of labor organization. Second, it is a union whose activities are directed by an executive committee. Third, the word “union” is often used as a short form for “trade-union” (cf. “a union card”, “a union member”, etc.). All these facts fit well together, while other possible meanings of “union” (cf. “Union Jack”, “union suit” and the like) are obviously out of place. Thus it can be safely concluded that the translation should be «исполнительный комитет профсоюза».

Such conclusions are often made by the translator. What are “out-of-this-world meat prices”? “Meat prices” are prices you buy your meat at, but what is “out of this world”? Evidently, such prices are not “in this world”, i.e. they are not found in it or not common to it. Thus the phrase implies “uncommon prices”. But the major and perhaps the only characteristics of any prices is that they are either high or low. “Uncommon prices” can be either uncommonly high or uncommonly low. Now if the original runs: ‘The people are worried on account of the out-of-this-world meat prices“, the choice is clear. Coming back to the linguistic form, the translator may observe that “out of this world” is a stronger way of putting it than is “uncommon”. It is closer to “extraordinary”, “fantastic”, “unheard of, etc. Accordingly, the translation will be «непомерные (баснословные, неслыханные и пр.) цены на мясо».

Of great importance is the translator’s ability to draw a line of demarcation between the exact information that can be really deduced from the text and the presence of several alternatives between which he cannot choose with sufficient certitude. Suppose a man is referred to in the original as “Price Stabilizer E. Arnall”. The words ‘Trice Stabilizer” are obviously used here as a sort of title. This can lead to a number of important conclusions. “Stabilizer” is obviously not an electrical appliance but “a man who stabilizes”. Since it is not an honorary title it should refer to the man’s position or occupation. The conclusion is that the man is concerned with the problem of price stabilization by virtue of his official duties. As these duties are mentioned as his personal title (observe the capital letters and the absence of the article), he cannot be an insignificant employee but is a man of high standing. He may be even the head of an office dealing with price-stabilization problems. But this is as far as our guesswork can go. We do not know the name of the office (a board, a committee, an agency, etc.) or whether its head (if E. Arnall is one) was referred to as director, manager or superintendent. Therefore we cannot use in the translation the words: «директор, управляющий, руководитель», etc. Nor can we give the name of his office. Unless we can find a way of getting the required information from some outside source, we shall have to stick to some noncommittal variant, e.g. «Э. Арнал, ведающий вопросами стабилизации цен».

In our previous discussions we have noted that the semantic analysis of the text must take into account both the immediate surroundings, i.e. the meaning of other words and structures in the same sentence, and the broad context which comprises the contents of the whole original text, whether it is a small extract, an article or a large book.

The information that can be gleaned from the original text should be supplemented by the translator’s knowledge of the actual facts of life. The words “out of this world” were translated above as «непомерно высокие» as we know that people are not ordinarily worried by prices being reduced.

Analyzing the contents of the original the translator makes the assessment of the relative communicative value of different meaningful elements. In most cases his professed aim is to achieve the closest approximation to the original, i.e. to reproduce its contents in all the details. As long as the linguistic or pragmatic reasons make it impossible and the translation involves a certain loss of information, the translator has not infrequently to choose between several evils. As often as not, one meaningful element of the original can be retained in translation only at the expense of omitting some other part of the contents. The translator has to decide what bits of information he is prepared to sacrifice and what elements of the original meaning are of greater communicative value and should be rendered at any cost.

The choice of the dominant aspect of meaning usually depends on the type of the text and the prevailing pragmatic considerations. While translating, for instance, figurative set expressions the translator may try to preserve their basic metaphorical meaning at the expense of other parts of the contents including the figure of speech that makes up the metaphorical structure of the collocation. In most cases the purport of communication is, first and foremost, to express a certain idea while the figurative way of expressing it is a kind of embellishment, a nice and pleasant luxury which can be dispensed with, if necessary. When “a skeleton in the family cupboard” becomes “a shameful family secret” in translation, there is certainly a loss in expressiveness, but the basic sense is well preserved. The metaphorical meaning will be chosen as the dominant part of the contents in most translations.

In a literary text the poetic or stylistic effect is no less important than the ideas conveyed. The same is true whenever the translator has to deal with a play on words or a sustained metaphor. In such cases the loss of the figurative element may make at least part of the text quite meaningless and it is often considered as the dominant component to be preserved in translation.

By way of example let us discuss the problems involved in the translation of a play upon words. Consider the following sentences:

“He … said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page.” “Go “long,” I said, “you ain’t more than a paragraph.” (M. Twain)

It is clear that the second sentence would be meaningless but for the play upon the words “page” and “paragraph”. The same is true about its translation which will be unintelligible unless the play on words is duly reproduced in TL. This is the dominant goal which should be achieved at all costs even though it might involve some inaccuracies in the translation of other elements.

This is not an easy task but it is not impossible, either. Here is how it was done by N. Chukovsky:

Он сказал, что послан за мною и что он глава пажей, — Какая ты глава, ты одна строчка! — сказал я ему.

It is worthwhile to observe the method that is used to overcome the difficulty. The Russian equivalent for a page boy has no other meaning (or homonym) which is associated with any part of a book or other printed matter. So the translator introduces another word «глава» and on its basis recreates the original play upon words. It does not matter that in doing it he makes the boy the head of the pages which he was probably not. The accurate information about the boy’s official standing has obviously received a lower rating in the translator’s assessment than the preservation of the stylistic effect. This inaccuracy seems to be a lesser evil, since the dominant aspect of the original contents is duly rendered in translation.

Assessing the relative communicative value of various elements in the original, it should be borne in mind that translations are made at different levels of equivalence reproducing different parts of the original contents. The identification of the situation and especially the purport of communication are indispensable and are preserved in practically all translations. Naturally, it is these components that usually make up the dominant sense to be reproduced, if necessary, at the expense of the rest of the contents.

The purport of communication and the identification of the situation are not, as a rule, expressed by some particular words or structures but by the whole unit of speech. Therefore it is often the case that the general sense of the unit as a whole is of greater communicative value than the meaning of its individual elements. The translator is thus prepared to sacrifice the part to the whole, the meaning of an element to the meaning of the whole.

This predominance of the whole makes an imprint upon some of the techniques used by translators both for understanding the original text and for establishing a kind of semantic bridge to the translation. It can be observed that the translator first tries to get the most general idea of what is said in the original, to find out, so to speak, “who does what and to whom”, to understand the general semantic pattern or framework of the sentence and then fill in the particular details.

The translator may first resort to the word-for-word translation imitating the syntactic structure of the original and using the most common substitutes of all words. The same method can be used to facilitate understanding if the general meaning of the original text eludes the translator.

Thus the translating may begin with an imitation of the original structure in TL to see whether a word-for-word translation is possible or should be replaced by a different structure. In this way the translator decides upon the syntactic framework of his future translation. This technique is not infrequently used as the choice of lexical units may depend, to a large extent, on the syntactic pattern they fit into.

Let us give an illustration. Suppose the original sentence runs as follows: ‘The computer and the man-made satellite were, by all rules of heredity, conceived in the small Northern towns of England, the seat of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century.”

The general idea is dear. The sentence implies that the Industrial Revolution initiated the technological progress which is today characterized by such outstanding achievements as computers and artificial satellites. The first step will be for the translator to try a parallel structure in Russian: «Компьютеры и тд. были созданы (зародились, появились, возникли и пр.) по всем законам наследственности…». It appears that no matter what lexical units are used within the structure, the Russian sentence will somehow imply that modern computers actually were built, invented, or at any rate thought of, in Britain as early as in the 18th century. Now the translator’s technique will be to draw up a list of Russian structures used to convey the idea that something which exists today can have its origin traced to much earlier time. He may think of such structures as «X уходит своими корнями в …», «Y положил начало X», «Здесь находится начало пути, который привел к X», «Здесь были посеяны семена, всходы которых привели к X», etc. Trying to fit the Russian variant into a meaningful whole with the phrase “by all rules of heredity”, the translator will probably choose the expression «X ведет свою родословную от Y».

The choice of the structure in translation often calls for a good deal of ingenuity and imagination on the part of the translator. He should be able to make an accurate assessment of the semantic possibilities of the given syntactic structure in order to see whether the latter can be used to convey the original meaning.

Suppose the English sentence is structured with the help of the verb “to add”, e.g.: “A new excitement was added to the races at Epsom Downs last year.” The problem is to decide whether in Russian it is possible to express this idea in a similar way, that is by saying that a feeling is added to a competition. If the translator finds it unacceptable as being alien to the semantic structure of the Russian language which seems to have less freedom in joining heterogeneous ideas within a syntactic structure, his second problem will be to think of the acceptable Russian way to say “the same thing”. Russian would reject “excitement added to the race”, but it permits such structures as “the race evoked a new excitement”, or “the race was more exciting”, or “the race was watched with greater excitement”, etc. Thus the translator can make his syntactic choice and then look for appropriate substitutes for “excitement”, “race” and other lexical units in the original.

A word of caution may be in order here. In the practical course of translation great pains are usually taken to teach the future translator to replace the original syntactical structures by using appropriate transformations which produce acceptable TL structures without any great loss of information. As a result, some translators get into the habit of turning every original structure inside out syntactically, irrespective of whether it serves any useful purpose.

It should be borne in mind that parallel TL structures are as good as any and they should by no means be avoided or considered inferior. On the contrary, the practical rule that the translator will do well to follow is that he should use the parallel structure whenever possible, and resort to syntactic or semantic transformations only if it is unavoidable.

Thus in all cases the translator makes a choice between a parallel structure and a transformed one in TL. Selecting the transformation to be used in a particular case he draws upon his knowledge of syntactic equivalents and the theory of equivalence.

The choice of the syntactical structure of the translated sentence often depends on the TL co-occurrence rules. The problem of co-occurrence is one with which the translator has not infrequently to come to grips in translating different word combinations, as the rules of combinability in SL and TL do not dovetail. This lack of correspondence limits the freedom of the translator’s choice and compels him to employ special techniques to overcome this barrier.

Translations from English into Russian give ample proof of the significance of this difference in co-occurrence. Just try to render into Russian such combinations as “a hopeful voice”, “a successful leader”, “a cooperative assistance”, etc. and you will see that they are easy to understand but cannot be translated “as they are” since the corresponding Russian words do not come together.

Dealing with such problems translators use one of the following methods: they either replace one or both members of the original combination to make possible the same type of structure in translation, or they transfer the dependent member to another structure, or they introduce some additional elements (words) through which the members of the combination can be joined syntactically.

Let us give examples.

- Some of these countries have established new constitutions.

In Russian constitutions cannot be established but they can be adopted. Therefore:

Некоторые из этих стран приняли новые конституции, (or: В некоторых из этих стран были приняты новые конституции.)

- The AFL leaders have a corrupt alliance with the employers.

Since in Russian the usual correspondence to “corrupt” (продажный) can be applied only to human beings, we can have either «преступный союз» or «преступный сговор» or something like that. But we can also preserve the meaning of “corrupt” by referring its Russian equivalent to another word in the sentence:

Продажные лидеры АФТ вступили в преступный союз с предпринимателями .

The country had sincere and successful leaders. В стране честные руководители, добившиеся значительных успехов.

After all, successful leaders are those who have achieved good successes and the original meaning is fully preserved in the translation, though in a rather long-winded manner.

An additional way to deal with the problem of co-occurrence is through a choice of different parts of speech. “A cooperative assistance” is difficult to translate into Russian where «сотрудничающая помощь» is an unacceptable combination. But if both words were translated as nouns the problem would be solved:

We owe this success to the cooperative assistance of the Soviet Union. Мы обязаны этим успехом сотрудничеству и помощи со стороны Советского Союза.

The change in the parts of speech is a common procedure in translation. It often enables the translator to modify his variant to improve its stylistic or emotional effect. So, for ‘The wind was becoming stronger” the translator has the choice of «Ветер дул все сильнее» and «Ветер крепчал», for “I didn’t mean to be rude” he may choose between «Я не хотел быть грубым» and «Я не собирался вам грубить».

Sometimes, the use of a different part of speech is unavoidable: “He was furious” — «Он был в бешенстве»

The elements of the translator’s techniques described above give only a general idea of his professional strategy. Translation is a creative process of search and discovery and it takes much ingenuity and effort to apply the general principles of the translation theory to the practical problems.