Translation IT EN UK Laboratory 1 Words Alan

Translation IT > EN (UK) Laboratory 1 – Words © Alan Taylor 2013

How to start a career Lets start by choosing grandparents of different nationalities, a good school education in which you learn to read, write, spell, construe and love your own language. Then roam the world and make friends, see life. Go back to education and take a technical or commercial degree, not a language degree. Spend the rest of your twenties and your early thirties in the countries whose languages you speak, working in industry or commerce but not directly in the languages. Never marry into the your own nationality. Have your children then go back and do a postgraduate translation course; get a job as a translator and then go freelance. By this time, you are forty and ready to go. Lanna Castellano, 1988

Teaching methodology to be used Hands-on approach; i. e. ‘’learning by doing’’; Focus on certain techniques (e. g. back translation, text analysis, etc. ); Agree on a common terminology; Focus on certain potentially problematic areas (idioms, sectorial language, etc. ); Understanding what we are translating and for whom we are doing it; Handy tips, rules of thumb, hard learned lessons; On-line resources and other bibliographic and reference material.

What is Back-Translation Back translation involves taking a text (original or translated which is written in a language with which the reader is assumed to be unfamiliar and then translating it as literally as possible into our own language Back Translation can give us an idea of the structure if not the meaning of the original text and is a useful exercise. What we will do when practicing translation is the following: 1. one group will translate ITA>ENG (UK) 2. successively, another group will translate ENG > ITA Each group will then compare the two IT translations to see if we still recognise the original text and where there have been evident problems in the translation.

How to define what a “word” is A loose definition of word is “the smallest unit of language that can be used by itself” (Bolinger and Sears, 1968). Many think that the word is the basic meaningful element in a language but this is not accurate; meaning can be carried by smaller units that the word (and sometimes bigger that the single word). For example, inconceivable is one word but composed of three parts or morphemes: “in” meaning “not” “conceive” meaning “think of or imagine” “able” meaning “able to be, fit to be” So a suitable paraphrase for inconceivable could be “cannot be conceived” Some meanings are conveyed by more than one word: e. g. They want to make sure that there is clear blue water between the past and the future. Are you going to watch Big Brother this evening?

Morphemes (1) In order to isolate elements of meanings in words and deal with them more effectively, some linguists have suggested the term “morpheme” to describe the minimum formal element of meaning in language as distinct from words which may or many not contain several elements of meaning. Thus, a morpheme cannot contain more than one element of meaning and cannot be further analysed. Look at the following words and identify the morphemes: dog, elephantine, establishment, childishness, disestablishment, childish, antidisestablishmentarianism, child, recklessness, fish, sheep, exceptional Now try to find the equivalent words in Italian.

Morphemes (2) Some morphemes have grammatical functions such as: Plurality: fund, funds Gender: manageress, actor/actress Negation: likable, unlikable, happy, unhappy Some morphemes can even change the class of the word. e. g. Noun → Verb Like → Likeable But we have also situations whereby a morpheme may contain more than one element such as men where the morpheme contains two elements “man” and “plural”. Try and identify the morphemes of the following words and classify them into the following categories: Pigs, barked, unlikely, motherhood, salty, cherry, taller, hammer, displease, hardship, superheroes, player, payee, coffee Independent or free: they stand on their own Dependent or bound: they most be attached to another morpheme Grammatical: they give grammatical information and mark the role of the word in the sentence Creative or derivational: these form new words

Morphemes (3) Affixes are added to works or lexical roots to form different meanings; affixes can be classified into prefixes (before the root) and suffixes (after the root). English makes great use of affixes: Prefixes: a, ana, hypo, hyper, con, re, un, in, dis, anti, super, supra, Suffixes: tion, sion, able, ly, ey, ish, ee/er, eria, ese, s, ship, hood, e. g. washable, payee, legalese, reiterate, whitish, lovable, unavoidable, ananachronistic, employer……. Ad nauseum Using affixes, create new words from the following: play, hero, neighbour, trust, rent, pay, speed, definite, faith………

The meaning of words (1) For simplicity, we will adopt the classification of Cruse (1986), who proposed the following division of the lexical meaning of words: Propositional: the relation between the word and what it describes in the real or imaginary world Expressive: the word communicates something regarding the speaker/writers feelings Presupposed: the word is subject to a series of co-occurrence restrictions Evoked: the word is related in some way to a dialect or a register

The meaning of words (2) - Propositional The simplest association which is given to a word and usually the propositional meaning can be judged to be true or false. E. g. “shirt” is a garment made of fabric and worn on the upper part of the body. It would be inaccurate to use shirt to refer to a piece of clothing used on the feet. Then we have “blouse” which is a similar garment but with fundamental differences (worn by women, a more feminine cut or style, different fabrics or materials, etc). When a translation is referred to as being “inaccurate” it is often the propositional meaning which is being questioned.

The meaning of words (3) - Expressive The expressive meaning cannot be judged as true or false as it refers to the speakers/writers feelings or attitude. “don’t complain” and “don’t whinge” have the same propositional meaning but a very different expressive meaning. Don’t whinge communicates that the speaker finds the action annoying. The English word “famous” and the French word “fameux” have the same expressive meaning but a “a famous woman” in English becomes “une femme fameuse”, which means, “a woman of ill repute”. The difference can also be in the degree of the expressive meaning. The words “unkind” and “cruel” have the same propositional meaning and expressive meaning but “cruel” is much stronger than “unkind”.

The meaning of words (4) - Presupposed The presupposed meaning involves the existence of co-occurrence restrictions, meaning the words that we expect to be associated with a lexical unit. Selectional restrictions: which are functional to the propositional meaning of the word. We expect a human subject for the adjective “studious” and an inanimate one for “geometrical”. Figurative language can violate the sectional restriction (e. g. poetic licence). Collocational restrictions: are semantically arbitrary collocations which have no logical explanation. For example, in English, teeth are “brushed”, in German, “polished”, in Polish, “washed” and in Russian, “cleaned”. In English, laws are “broken” whereas in Arabic they are “contradicted”.

The meaning of words (5) – Evoked The evoked meaning involves dialect and register. A dialect is a variety of language which is valid in a certain community or group of speakers and can be: Geographical (e. g. Scottish, Boston) Temporal or words used by certain age groups (cool, chill out, etc. ) Social (scent vs. perfume, serviette vs. napkin) Register involves the appropriateness of language and involves the context, the relationship between the speakers and the mode (e. g. public presentation, informal meeting, official document, etc. ).

Semantic Fields and Lexical Sets Sometimes we can view the vocabulary of a language in sets of words which refer to conceptual fields. Examples could be “speech”, “plants” or “vehicles”. The Semantic Field can be divided into subgroups or “lexical sets”. The Semantic Field “speech” can have various lexical sets such as “verbs of speech”, (murmur, mumble, mutter, whisper, stutter, stammer…. ). There is usually correspondence between upper level semantic fields (superordinate) in different languages but as we descend into the lexical sets (hyponym), differentiation starts to appear.

Non-equivalence at word level (1) Sometimes we have to face the problem of the non–existence of equivalence at the word level which can be for many reasons, e. g. Culture-specific concepts: e. g. in English (UK) we have the “Speaker” in the context of the House of Commons, “airing cupboard” or “privacy”. Semantic differences between languages. e. g. Indonesian makes the difference between going out in the rain knowingly (hujan-hujanan) and unwittingly (kehujanan). Arabic has separate words for “hot” for objects and for the weather whereas English uses the same word for both. Lack of Superordinate in one language: e. g. Italian lacks the superordinate “facilities”

Non-equivalence at word level (2) Sometimes we have to face the problem of the non–existence of equivalence at the word level: what does a translator do when there is no work in the target language which expresses the same meaning as the source language word? ENG: ITA: “to type” → “vendemmia” ITA: “battere a macchina” → ENG: “grape harvest” Now find other examples of non-equivalence between Italian and English: e. g. pitch, airing cupboard, Ferragosto, Boxing Day…….

Conclusion Now we understand that the choice of a word when translating depends on a series of factors which must be taken into consideration. Some of these factors are linguistic (collocations and idioms), others are extralinguistic (evoked meanings, etc. ). All of these have to be taken into consideration when translation.

Exercises (1) 1. Comment on the differences in the words of the following lexical sets: car, automobile, motor, limousine, limo, banger, jalopy, estate car, station wagon, comfortable, comfy, homely, cosy, snug, daddy, father, pop, pater, sire, old man, paw house, home, chalet, dwelling, flat, apartment, croft, lodge, hut, villa, manor Make lists in your own language and match the words to make corresponding pairs/groupings in each language. 2. Complete the Semantic Group “Verbs of Speech” in English with other verbs mumble, mutter, whisper, stammer, stutter, say, suggest, reiterate, speak, tell, squeal, grass, riterate Now find the corresponding verbs in your own language.

Exercises (2) 3 Complete the Semantic Group “PUBLICATIONS” in English with other nouns: newspaper, article, magazine, bulletin, pamphlet, journal, book Now find the corresponding verbs in your own language. 4. Write all the affixes that you know in English and try to identify the equivalents in Italian. If there are no equivalents, try to find another way of expressing the concept.