Generalization as a method of lexico-semantic transformations. Concretization - what is it? Meaning, interpretation of the word Reception of concretization in translation
With lexical substitutions, individual specific words or phrases of the source language are replaced by words or phrases of the target language that are not their dictionary counterparts, that is, they have a different lexical meaning than the words of the source language.
Features of the context may force the translator to refuse to use even variant correspondence in translation, not to mention equivalent correspondence.
In such a case, he looks for a translation option that is suitable only for this particular case. This type of translation is called contextual substitution.
The nature of the contextual replacement depends entirely on the characteristics of the individual context, and the translator has to look for special ways of translation each time. This task requires a creative solution, and in most such cases, the translator can only be guided by general principles translation. However, there are a number of translation techniques used mainly to create contextual substitutions. There are six such methods:
1) acceptance of concretization;
2) reception of generalization;
3) reception of antonymic translation;
4) acceptance of compensation;
5) reception of semantic development;
6) the reception of a holistic rethinking.
Reception of concretization
Concretization is the replacement of a source language word with a broader meaning by a word of another language with a narrower meaning.
IN English language many words with a common broad meaning, which are always specified in one way or another during translation: violence, nation, element, effort, failure, facilities; come, go, have, leave, etc.
In Russian, this use of words with a common broad meaning is extremely rare. Therefore, the translation uses words with a more specific meaning. The verb come, for example, is translated differently in different contexts: arrive, arrive, come, approach, fly in, etc. The verb go is translated by the words: go, walk, swim, fly, go, go, go, go, etc. The verb leave is also translated in different ways: leave, leave, leave, leave, fly away, fly out, etc.
The role of the context in the translation of desemantized words, that is, words that have acquired a very wide, vague meaning, due to the fact that they are used in a wide variety of lexical combinations (thing, point, matter, case, etc.), should be specifically mentioned.
The examples with the word thing show that this word in different contexts is specified each time during translation.
1. "You poor old thing," she said. (poor thing)
2. It means a lot to her to have fresh, pretty young thing like Mary about the house. (creature)
3. I want to look into the thing myself. (case)
4. Things look promising. (position)
5. How are things? (success)
Reception of generalization
Generalization is the replacement of a word with a narrower meaning by a word with a broader meaning. This technique is directly opposite to the technique of concretization. For example:
Some 40,000 mourners from all over the United States marched through the streets of Memphis in tribute to memory of Martin Luter King, shot down in the city last Thursday.
When translating this sentence, it would hardly be appropriate to say: shot in this city. The verb shoot means "to kill with a firearm". The translator needs to make a replacement using the generalization technique: killed in this city. The verb to kill is broader in meaning than to shoot.
One more example:
It was a stiff pull, but their weariness fell from the m as they crouched low to the snow, whining with eagerness and gladness as they struggled upward to the last ounce of effort in their bodies.
It was not easy to pull the sled onto the steep bank, but the dogs forgot their fatigue and, sprawling on the snow, with an impatient and joyful screech, climbed up with their last strength.
The phrase the last ounce effort in their bodies is narrower in meaning than the Russian equivalent of the last forces.
The use of numerals is very typical for the English language, as well as the indication of exact measures and weights for greater specification of the description.
In the Russian translation, the preservation of measures of length and weight - inches and ounces - would be literalism and would violate the stylistic norms of the Russian language.
Therefore, when translating in these cases, you need to use the method of generalization.
Note of antonymic translation
The essence of the method of antonymic translation is that the translator replaces the affirmative construction with a negative one or vice versa, which is accompanied by the corresponding lexical replacement of the source language unit by its antonym in the target language.
If you want to cross the street remember to look at the traffic lights first.
The sentence, affirmative in form, is translated as negative, since in Russian the verb remember is not combined with the infinitive. It is impossible to translate this phrase without an antonym for stylistic reasons:
"...remember to look at the traffic lights." The stylistic norms of the Russian language do not allow such a heavy, foreign construction.
I did not belive it until I saw it with my own eyes.
I only believed it when I saw it with my own eyes.
The negative form of the sentence with the union until is translated as affirmative. Of course, here it is possible to translate the verb in the negative form: "I did not believe this until I saw it with my own eyes." However, this option is more cumbersome.
He was a trifle excited - but that is not unusual with him. He was somewhat agitated, but he is almost always like that.
Here we have a litote (an affirmative statement in a negative form). Litota is very common in English due to the large number of negative prefixes. It does not always lend itself to literal translation, since in Russian the negation not and the negative prefix non- coincide in sound.
Words with a prefix are often combined in Russian with a negative particle, not because of the dissonance of such a combination.
Acceptance of compensation
The method of compensation is used in the case when a particular linguistic phenomenon cannot by itself be conveyed in the target language. In this case, compensating for the loss arising from the fact that one or another unit of the source language has remained untranslated adequately, the translator conveys the same information by some other means, and not necessarily in the same place in the text as in the original.
Compensation is used especially often where it is necessary to convey the purely linguistic features of the original (dialectisms, individual characteristics speech, irregular language forms, puns, puns, etc.) that do not always have direct correspondences in the target language.
When translating contaminated, that is, incorrect speech, the translator should not be bound by the use of exactly the category of means used by a foreign author. The translator has the right to replace one language means with another ( grammatical - lexical, phonetic-grammatical, etc. in accordance with the norms of contamination of Russian speech).
So, if a foreigner contaminates the speech in the original, then you can use the traditional methods of transmitting the speech of foreigners in Russian. For example, it is well known that for foreigners, even those who have lived in Russia for a long time, the most difficult category is the form of the Russian verb. The Germans replace the synthetic form of the future tense with the analytic one ("I will die" instead of "I will die").
The method of compensation is indicative in that it clearly illustrates one of the provisions of the theory of translation - not individual elements of the text are adequately translated, but the entire text as a whole. In other words, there are untranslatable particulars, but there are no untranslatable texts.
"This man Swineburne," he began, attempting to put his plan into execution and pronouncing the "i" long.
"That... Swinburne," he began, carrying out his plan, but making a mistake in pronunciation in the process.
A different length of a vowel sound is conveyed by a different transliteration of the proper name.
Acceptance of semantic development
The semantic development in translation is that the translation uses a word or phrase, the meaning of which is logical development the value of the unit to be converted.
It must be borne in mind that semantic development always refers not to one single word, but at least to a phrase or semantic group.
Most often, the meanings of such words and phrases in the original and in translation are connected by causal relationships.
For example:
And he noticed with sour disfavor that June had left her wine-glass full of wine.
And he noticed with irritation that June had not touched the wine.
A contextual replacement was found in the translation using the method of semantic development. The translator replaces the effect with the cause and does so on the grounds that the literal translation "left her glass full of wine" is unacceptable for stylistic reasons. The glass remained full because June did not touch the wine.
In the process of translation, if it is dictated by the context, an object, process or feature expressed by a certain English word (or a combination of words) can be replaced by another object, process or feature logically related to the one being replaced. At the same time, it is possible to replace any of these categories with any other category, that is, it is quite natural to replace a word denoting an object with a word denoting its attribute, an object - a process, a process - an object or a sign, etc. It is clear that these replacements are associated with the replacement of grammatical categories, that is, simultaneously with grammatical transformation. However, each grammatical transformation is based on the necessity or expediency of moving away from lexical dictionary correspondence, that is, the inexpediency of literal translation.
Acceptance of a holistic rethinking.
When, when translating a phrase, semantic group or sentence, it is not possible to start from dictionary correspondences or contextual meanings of individual words, but it is necessary to understand the semantic meaning of the entire translated whole and express it in Russian in words, sometimes very far from the words of the original, we resort to the reception of a holistic rethinking.
This technique finds the widest application in the translation of phraseology, which reflects the specifics of the English living spoken language.
For example, help yourself, please, the English say, and we translate: help yourself, but do not help yourself.
The English say mutual admiration society when they want to talk about someone who praises another just because he praises him. This is expressed in our catchphrase by the cuckoo praises the rooster.
English Good riddance! as an emotional exclamation, of course, it will not just be a "happy deliverance", but will be replaced by the Russian idiom "tablecloth path!"
In the reception of a holistic rethinking, two stages can be distinguished. Meaning first English expression is clarified through interpretation, descriptively, and then by finding a Russian figurative correspondence.
The transformations built on hyponymic and hypernymic relations are based on the pattern according to which language units of a narrower, specific meaning - hyponyms and units of a broader, abstract meaning - hypernyms can be used to designate the same object. For example: a tree is a hypernym, an apple tree is a hyponym to a hypernym tree. Similarly, in cross-language comparison: Old birds are not to be caught with chaff (English) - You can’t fool an old sparrow on chaff.
The transformations included in the group characterized by the relationship between hyponyms and hypernyms differ in direction. So, in the above example, when translating from English, the hypernym is replaced by a hyponym
old birds- old sparrow). This transformation is called specification. Transformation in the opposite direction (from hyponym to hypernym) is called generalization: An apple does not fall far from an apple tree -As the tree, so the fruits(English).
Concretization (narrowing) the replacement of a word or phrase FL with a broader subject-logical meaning by a word and a phrase FL with a narrower meaning is called. As a result of applying this transformation, the created correspondence and the original lexical unit find themselves in logical inclusion relations: the FL unit expresses the generic concept, and the TL unit expresses the species concept included in it.
Value specification is used when the original unit has a high degree information uncertainty and largely depends on the context. At the same time, not only the word itself is practically translated, but a specific version of its meaning in a certain context.
Dinny waited in a corridor which smelled of disinfectant (Ding-ni was waiting in the hallway, which smelled of carbolic acid.
For example, the Russian term fittings translated into English can be specified as fittings(a set of fasteners and parts for any apparatus or structure); How re- bar or reinforcement metal(steel frame to reinforce reinforced concrete structures); How valve(a device mounted on pipelines and tanks designed to shut off, distribute and regulate the discharge of media flows). The choice of the appropriate particular term will depend on the context.
For example, English word commitment has a fairly wide range of meanings that require special clarification in Russian translations in terms obligation, obligation, decision, choice, orientation, policy, intention, line, course
of the year.
I have made a commitment to this program -I decided support
this program.
Generalization is called the replacement of a IL unit, which has a narrower meaning, by a TL unit with a broader meaning, i.e., a transformation inverse to concretization.
Sometimes the specific name of an item does not tell the Translation Receptor anything or is irrelevant in the given context:
Jane used to drive to market with her mother in their La Sane converti-ye(English.) - Jane went co his mother on market V their car. One of the frequent motives for hyponymic and hypernymic transformations is the presence in one of the languages contacting with each other in the process of translation of the so-called wide-meaning words, i.e. words with a wide, undifferentiated meaning, which, as a rule, have a number of foreign language correspondences denoting more specific , private concepts. Thus, in English, the broad-meaning verbs get, take, give, have, make, do play an important role in the semantic organization of the utterance (similarly with the French verbs avoir, être, faire, aller, mettre, prendre etc.). Their money has gone- They ran out of moneyI can’ t get the car to go- I can't start the carThe path goes to the village-The road leads to the villageThe milk can go to the fridge- Milk can be refrigerated
Her voice has gone - She lost her voice, etc.
Concretization is a very common phenomenon when translating from English (French) into Russian. So, the English verbs have, take, get, give in the meanings take/give food/drink are replaced in translations by verbs of a more specific meaning, i.e. undergo hyponymic transformation. At the same time, the choice of a specific verb in Russian is determined by the rules of semantic agreement: Getthosesome coffee- Make me some coffee.
The choice of a name in a Russian utterance largely depends on the contextual environment. The so-called semantic agreement Russian word in the context, "in which one should see the reflection of the same feature of reality in two related names" . The Russian language is characterized by the semantic agreement of a verb with a noun (subject and object), agreement of a verb with an adverb, a noun with an adjective and an adverb is less common.
Semantic agreement is one of the main reasons specification, adding elements in the Russian translated text.
Are you hungry? You can have oneEnglish.) - You hungry? Can
eat a piece.
Jolie sonette de cuivre, bien astiquee. Tire- la done! (fr.) - Look,
what a lovely copper call how neat it is. Well,
call same! (V original - pull for him).
In the examples above, the choice of the verb is determined by direct addition: coffee - brew, a piece - eat, call - call, etc.
The transformations of the next group are based on semantic relations metonymy. Metonymy a trope is called, consisting in the fact that instead of the name of one object, the name of another is given, which is with the first in an association relationship by contiguity (relationships of process and result, material and product, part and whole, objects united by spatial links, etc.)
Unlike a metaphor aimed at comparing, likening objects to each other in order to identify essential similarities, the use of metonymy in any language is aimed at individualizing an object by highlighting some characteristic feature and bringing it to the fore in the way of naming. For example, the expression the white collars(English), so called White collars, used to individualize office workers, employees, a the blue collars(blue collar) used to refer to workers in production.
Modulation or semantic development
The transformation, which consists in replacing a word or phrase FL with a TL unit, the meaning of which is logically derived from the value of the original unit, is called modulation or semantic development.
Let us give examples illustrating the use of modulations based on various metonymic relations.
Relationship Based Modulation part - whole (synecdoche) For example, in the statement At 5:30 all hands gathered in the manager’ s of fice to discuss current issues(English) phrase all hands used instead all employees. When translating into Russian when using the correspondence all hands the meaning of the whole sentence is lost. Thus, the translator follows the path of modulation: At 5:30 a.m., all employees gathered in the manager's office to discuss current tasks.
The following example illustrates cause-and-effect modulation. The original text says that the girl blushed and the young man understood the reason for her redness, but in Russian the redness of the face is a sign of illness or alcohol abuse. To say that the girl has a red face would be to give the text undesirable associations. The translator resorts to modulation, moving from the consequence - redness, to the reason - embarrassment:
EPeavait rougi;elle songeait aux inventions abominables de Margueriteet de Clara. Sans doute, Mouret comprit la cause de sa rongeur ( fr .) - Deniz blushed, remembering about disgusting fiction Clara And margaritas. Mouret apparently understood the reason for her embarrassment(E. Zola).
Relationship Type Modulation product - the material from which product is ready , widespread in the scientific, technical and industrial fields:
Required metal structures must be on the buildersite at the exact time -The required steel should be on the construction site on time(English).
In the system of social and industrial relations, a transformation based on the relation social event - event participants:
The Quarterly meeting approved a new Construction Schedule (English) -The participants of the quarterly meeting approved the new construction schedule.
The transition from the name of the event to the real participants as the subject of the action is very typical when translating from English, where syntactic personification is common - attributing to inanimate objects and phenomena the ability to act like a person.
Relationship Type Modulation organization or institution - the totality of its employees:
Tonight I am having a teleconference with Slavela (eng.) - I'm having a teleconference with Cleveland tonight. Often, modulation in translation goes along the path of replacing a common noun with a proper one, or vice versa, while a proper noun is used in the meaning of a common noun. So when translating the statement I took Kerzner from the shelf(English) the translator must take into account the fact that Harold Kertzner is the author famous book"Project Management", which is studied by managers of leading foreign and Russian companies and clarify it in translation: I picked up Kerzner's book on project management from the shelf.
The breadth of the use of metonymy of this type is observed in the field of product names by the name of the owner of the company, which is not so often used in the Russian speech tradition. Expression to get some K1eepeh (English) can be transferred get napkins, because company name Kleenex, says little to a Russian person.
One of the varieties of modulations is antonymic translation. Antonymic translation - this is a lexico-grammatical transformation, in which the replacement of the affirmative form in the original with the negative form in translation or, conversely, the negative with the affirmative, is accompanied by the replacement of the lexical unit of the FL with the unit of the TL with the opposite meaning:
Nothing changed in thathome town(English) - Everything remained the same in
my hometown.
Elle n "allait pas a Paris tous les jours (fr.) - She went V Paris Not
every day.
Very often, the relationship between the units of the original and the translation in antonymic translation is based on the same metonymic relations, which makes it possible to attribute antonymic translation to the category of semantic modulations. / don" t blameJet (English) - I understand them. The cause has been replaced by the effect: I don't blame them because I understand them. The same change is made in the following example: Notalways made you say everything twice(English) - He always asked again.
In English-Russian translations, this transformation is used especially often when in the original the negative form is used with a word that has a negative prefix:
She is not unworthy of your attention (English) - She deserves your attention.
So, when using lexico-grammatical transformations, the translator carries out a more complex restructuring of the original message than when using grammatical transformations. Restructuring concerns not only grammatical structures and syntactic constructions. The very way of describing the situation is subjected to modulation. Due to semantic reasons, the situation in the translated text is a transformation of the original situation, its vision from other positions, as if from a different angle of view.
The use of lexico-grammatical transformations indicates translation within the referential sublevel of semantic equivalence (according to A.D. Schweitzer), since it not only leads to the rejection of the syntactic structure of the original, but also makes adjustments to the semantic structure. The situation in the text of the original and the translation is described in different ways, with the help of different sets of semes.
Lexical transformations
Often, differences in the semantic organization of languages push the translator to deeper changes in the structure of the text than those that we have seen in cases of grammatical and even lexical-grammatical transformations. In search of ways to preserve the influencing force of the original, its adequate reproduction in translation, the translator is forced to make adjustments to the text: explain incomprehensible phenomena, fill in gaps, replace or remove completely details that interfere with understanding, etc. The next level of transformations - lexical transformations - includes in functional substitutions, explications (descriptions), translation comments.
Transformations of this level can no longer be reduced to rearrangements and replacements that affect the grammatical and semantic organization of the text. The use of lexical transformations characterizes the pragmatic level of equivalence (according to A.D. Schweitzer), in which the translation is carried out at the level of the goal of communication.
The most complex procedure in the process of solving lexico-semantic problems is functional replacement. The need for this technique arises when none of the matches offered by the dictionary fits the given context.
The search for functional correspondence is especially relevant in the case of the so-called non-equivalent vocabulary, that is, words that for some reason are not recorded in bilingual dictionaries. Most often, this category includes newly formed and not yet included in the dictionary language units or words denoting objects or phenomena that are not known to the culture of the target language (“realities”, or “culturonyms”). New words in the rapidly developing modern civilization no less rapidly arise and exist to refer to objects and phenomena that individual peoples or entire groups of countries face. Almost every decade, at least 5-6 thousand neologisms are formed in the English and Russian languages, some of which are words borrowed from each other and subjected to rethinking, and, consequently, re-meaning. No new dictionaries or additions and supplements to dictionaries can keep up with such a flow of word formation. And, in essence, it is the translators who are the first to take the "blow on themselves", inventing functional correspondences, which later may turn out to be either successful and enter the dictionary of the translating language, and after that - into bilingual dictionaries, or less successful, suitable only for a one-time use. Yes, a global problem environment enriched dictionaries in different ways different countries both terms and everyday words.
Consider the word exposure. Without context, this word cannot be translated, because in addition to the meaning exposure, exposure, exposition, exposure, it could mean exposure to high or low temperature, danger etc. Consider the following example: Failure to start up turbine 13 has significant exposure to the project(eng.) - Non-completion of work related to the start-up of turbine unit No. 13 has a serious negative impact on the progress of the Project.
Explication (description) It is used in cases where none of the verbal methods of matching matches satisfies the situation. The description of the meaning of the source unit is used in the absence of a regular dictionary match or when the semantic functions of the corresponding units in the source and target languages do not match. It should be extremely concise and ideally bring its qualities closer to a single word or phraseological unit in such a way that it can be used in the text without an artificial unit created in such cases either by transcription or tracing, when it is for some reason out of place within this text. Descriptive translation can be used in parallel with transcription. It is used when translating terms, cultural names, unique objects, etc. Here are examples of descriptive translation of terms: expediter, expeditor(English) - freight forwarder, specialist in providingefficient movement of goods or control over the timing of deliveriesdigital(English) - high-ranking person
The quarterly meeting was attended by several DOE dignitaries (Eng.) - The quarterly report was attended by senior officials from the US Department of Energy. IN this case a translation of a word digital with the help of a word dignitary does not fit contextually and stylistically, so a descriptive translation is used.
If the description as a translation device usually accompanies the word presented in some simpler form, or even is used in the text instead of the word itself, then translation comment, as a rule, it is taken out of the text and falls either in a footnote on the same page, or is given at the end of the text as a note.
Concretization is the replacement of a word or phrase FL with a broader meaning by a word or phrase TL with a narrower meaning. As a rule, the vocabulary of the Russian language is more specific than the corresponding lexical units of the English language. This has been repeatedly noted by linguists. Specification can be linguistic and contextual (speech). In linguistic concretization, the replacement of a word with a broad meaning by a word with a narrower meaning is due to differences in the structure of the two languages - either the absence in the TL of a lexical unit that has the same broad meaning as the transmitted FL unit, or differences in their stylistic characteristics, or the requirements of grammatical order (the need for syntactic transformation of the sentence, in particular, the replacement of a nominal predicate with a verb, examples of which will be given below).
When translating into Russian, verbs of motion and verbs of speech are concretized: be, have, get, take, give, make, say, come, go, etc.:
At the by-election victory went to the Labor candidate.
The by-election was won by Labor (the candidate from the Labor Party won).
The rain came in torrents.
It poured heavy rain.
‘So what?’ I said. (J. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye).
Well, so what? I ask.
Didn't tell me to come right over, if I felt like it.
He told me to come at least now, if necessary.
Here are examples of the transformation of a Russian nominal predicate into an English verb, which usually requires specification of the verb be, for example: Not is at school - He studies at school; Not is in the Army - He serves in the army; The concert was on Sunday - The concert took place on Sunday. (1)
As for contextual concretization, it can be determined by the factors of this particular context, most often stylistic considerations, such as the need for completeness of the phrase, the desire to avoid repetition, to achieve greater figurativeness, visibility, etc. For example:
You could hear him putting away his toilet articles.
You could hear him putting away his soap dishes and brushes.
Among other methods translation transformation many scholars single out concretization. And despite the differences in views on which of the types this technique belongs to and how to call it (not everyone classifies concretization as a lexical transformation, A.D. Schweitzer, for example, called it a hyponymic transformation), the essence of this technique by different authors similar. What is its meaning, and how the technique is implemented in practice, will be discussed in this article.
In the process of translation, one often encounters the fact that the vocabulary of the Russian language is more specific than its similar lexical units in the English language. Therefore, the concretization technique has become widespread, the essence of which is to replace a word that has a rather lengthy meaning in the source language with a word with a more specific meaning.
The prevailing distribution over contextual concretization is linguistic concretization, in which the replacement of a word with a broad meaning for a word with a narrower one is determined by differences in the structure of the two languages. The reasons for these discrepancies may also be the lack of a lexical unit in the target language, the meaning of which is as detailed as in the source language. Differences can also be contained in stylistic characteristics or in the requirements of grammatical order, for example, in the urgency of syntactic transformation in the form of replacing a nominal predicate with a verb.
In most cases, when translating into Russian, English verbs of speech, as well as verbs of motion, such as: say, be, have, get, take, give, make, come, go, etc .:
At the by-election victory went to the Labor candidate. - The Labor Party candidate won the by-election.
The rain came in torrents. - It rained heavily.
"So what?" I said. (J. Salinger "The Catcher in the Rye"). - Well, so what? I ask.
Didn't tell me to come right over, if I felt like it. (J. Salinger "The Catcher in the Rye") - He ordered me to come at least now, if necessary.
Here you can provide examples of changing a Russian nominal predicate into an English verb, which always requires a definition of clarity for the verb be:
She is at school. - She goes to school.
The concert was on Sunday. - The concert took place on Sunday.
Not in the Army. - He serves in the army.
The use of the method of contextual or verbal specification occurs in cases where it is necessary to complete a phrase, when it is necessary to avoid repetition, achieve greater expressiveness, etc. That is, in situations where changes are dictated by purely stylistic considerations. For example:
You could hear him putting away his toilet articles. (J. Salinger "The Catcher in the Rye") - He could be heard putting away his soap dishes and brushes.
Generalization
The exact opposite of concretization is generalization. The essence of this technique is the replacement of a specific concept by a generic one, a particular concept by a general one. Due to the fact that the words of the English language are more abstract than similar Russian words, when translating from English into Russian, generalization is much less used than concretization. However, it is not complete without its use, for example:
The eagle rose higher and again began to circle above the ground. The bird went up and circled again.
...Does not come over and visits me practically every weekend. “…He visits me often, almost every week.
...Didn't show us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he bought off some Indian...
Concretization is the replacement of a word or phrase FL with a broader subject-logical meaning by a word and a phrase TL with a narrower meaning. As a result of applying this transformation, the created correspondence and the original lexical unit find themselves in logical inclusion relations: the FL unit expresses the generic concept, and the TL unit expresses the specific concept included in it:
Dinny waited in a corridor which smelled of disinfectant. Dinny was waiting in the corridor, which smelled of carbolic acid. Was not at the ceremony. He attended the ceremony.
In some cases, the use of concretization is due to the fact that the TL does not have a word with such a broad meaning. So, English noun thing has a very abstract meaning(an entity of any kind) and is always translated into Russian by concretization: “thing, object, case, fact, case, creature”, etc.
Sometimes the generic name in the target language cannot be used due to the divergence of the connotative components of the meaning. English meal is widely used in various styles of speech, and Russian "meal" is not commonly used outside of specialized vocabulary. Therefore, as a rule, when translating meal, it is replaced by a more specific “breakfast, lunch, dinner”, etc .:
At seven o "clock an excellent meal was served in the dining-room.
At seven o'clock an excellent dinner was served in the dining room. It is clear that the choice of a more specific name is entirely determined by the context and in other conditions at seven o'clock (in the evening) dinner could also be served.
Concretization is often used when there is a word in the TL with an equally broad meaning and corresponding connotation, since such words may have varying degrees of usage in FL and TL. Above (see p. 138) we have already noted the great use in the English language of words with a broad meaning. When translating such words, concretization is a very common way of translation. In the novel by Charles Dickens "David Copperfield" the behavior of the hero's mother, frightened by the sudden appearance of the formidable Miss Betsy, is described as follows:
My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the corner.
English verbs with general meaning to leave and to go cannot be translated here using the corresponding Russian verbs "leave" and "go". The unacceptability of the translation "Mother left her chair and went behind him into the corner" is beyond doubt, the Russian language does not describe such a specific emotional situation in a similar way. The best way to ensure the equivalence of the Russian translation is to specify the indicated verbs:
The excited mother jumped up from her chair and huddled in the corner behind him.
Another sentence from the same novel should be translated in a similar way:
My old dear bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off.
Arriving home after a long absence, the boy sees that everything in the house has changed and has become alien to him. The use of direct correspondences would make the translation of this English sentence obscure. Why should someone "lay away from the bedroom"?
The context shows that "to lie" here means "to sleep" and "away" refers to just another part of the house. This is exactly how it should be said in Russian: My dear old bedroom was gone, and I had to sleep at the other end of the house.
Widespread specification English verbs“speaking” to say and to tell, which can be translated into Russian not only as “speak” or “say”, but also as more specific “say, repeat, notice, assert, report, ask, object, command”, etc. P.:
"So what?" I said.
So what? I asked.
language translation linguistic verbal
