ADEQUATE TRANSLATION OF IDIOMS IN LITERARY TEXT
The given article attempts to discuss the main issues of adequate translation of idioms in literary text from English into Kazakh and Russian. The explanation of ‘adequate translation’ concept is given. Possible methods of adequate translation of idioms from English into Kazakh and Russian are analyzed as well. The literary translator can widely bring into use the approaches and methods offered below to achieve adequate and proper translation. The description of phraseological translation and non–phraseological translation is provided. Practical recommendations for usage of particular method in definite situations are offered. The present work is a linguistic study of professional literary translation as a kind of intercultural, interethnical communication, which is the basis of translation strategy.
Key words: idiom, adequate translation, literary translation, phraseological translation, non–phraseological translation, literary text.
The significant importance of literary translation is completely realized around the world. Knowledge of foreign languages gives an incredible opportunity to any educated and spiritually rich person to acquaint with treasures of the world literature. But it is natural that not everyone has opportunity to read masterpieces of Shakespeare, Dante and Goethe in original. The cultural heritage of the European countries, the ideas of east philosophy with their world history, the ancient eposes of all nations of the universe and the works of contemporary writers reflecting the latest trends in art and literature – all this wealth of interlingual communication becomes available to us thanks to activity of writers–translators. Widely literary translation must be considered as an invisible ‘bridge’ between different nations and cultures. Literary translation is a type of language mediation at which the meaning of the original text is transferred by means of another language units in communicatively equivalent way [1, 88].
The translation of literary texts is considered to be the most difficult type of translation. In addition, not every translator can have ability to become a co–author and create a new text on the basis of the original text. Literary translation provides not only excellent knowledge of a foreign language, but also requires the presence of creative intuition. Experienced translator of literature should be able to feel and subtly convey the idea to invest in the text of the author.
Literary translation can be surely considered as invaluable treasure, if it is performed at a high level. A huge number of world’s literature works became known to readers thanks to the creative intuition and skills of translators. Translated masterpieces of world literature became known to the world community.
The main feature of the quality of literary translation is an excellent knowledge of the country, culture and mentality of the source and target languages. In addition, the translator should convey the style of the author, his intent, just display the meaning of the text and keep the harmony of the literary text.
Generally, literary translation is transfer of stylistic harmony from one system into another, stylization, creative imitation. While in narrow sense literary translation is transposition of the literary work from one language into another [2, 303]. Today the issue of the literary translation is widely developed both within the theory of translation, and in literary studies. Literary translation represents a special type of the translation and special form of art as well. The issue of adequate literary translation is becoming actual day after day. Thereby demanding from translator wealth of experience and expertise in the field of literary translation.
It is well known that the very special role is played by idioms in the fundamental works of literature that are popular worldwide. Studying of functional specifics of idioms in the literary text is causing a great interest of linguists all over the world for a long period of time [3, 111].. It is explained by extralinguistic, cultural semantics of idioms. The picturesqueness, beauty and figurativeness created by authors of the literary works by means of idioms affects imagination of the reader. While the translation of idiom causes serious difficulties even for highly experienced translators. A significant amount of the errors, inaccuracies and discrepancies made by translators proves that the issue of translating idioms in literary texts is not studied sufficiently. There is a great number of heated discussions that are taking place all over the linguistic world concerning this issue, various ways of the translation are recommended, there are different opinions as there is no any unambiguous, standard decision and there cannot be any.
Depending on a situation various approaches, various translation methods are required. Because during translation process of the idiom the translator needs to convey its meaning and reflect its figurativeness, having found similar expression in other languages and preserve its stylistic function.
The main task of translator during translation of literary text is to catch the national peculiarities. This goal can be achieved only by adequate translation of idioms, proverbs and culture–specific elements in general. The phenomenon of culture–specific element and its translation is the center of many researches of linguists from different countries during the long period.
The works of V. S. Vinogradov, L. S. Barkhudarov, Y. I. Retsker, L. N. Sobolev, S. I. Vlakhov, S. P. Florin, A. M. Zhantikina, A. S. Ermagambetova and others are devoted to studying of culture–specific elements.
The term «culture–specific element» designates the subject, or thing existing or once existed in the consciousness of people. Explanatory dictionary of L.L. Nelyubin offers four definitions of this phenomenon:
1. The words or expressions designating the objects, concepts, situations that do not exist in practical experience of the people speaking another language.
2. The various factors studied by external linguistics and theory of translation such as state form of government, history and culture of the nation, language contacts of carriers of the language, etc. and their reflection in the language.
3. The objects of material culture forming the basis for a nominative word meaning.
4. The words designating national and specific features of life [4, 178].
The main feature of the literary translation is the relative independence in relation to the original, thus, it becomes a part of the literary and social environment of target language [5, 51–55]. Readers perceive the translation as the original therefore the translator of the work of fiction becomes the coauthor of the translated work. The translator delivers it to other culture in which this translation can be apprehended differently in comparison with initial culture. Culture–specific elements represent special difficulty during translation process as they are absolutely customary for original language, and completely unfamiliar for target language.
The translator has to be able to distinguish сulture–specific elements and explain them in culture of target language. In order to achieve adequate and precise translation the background information deliver must be taken into account by translator. There is not any common and unique classification of сulture–specific elements. The most detailed classification of сulture–specific elements is offered by S. I. Vlakhov and S. P. Florin [6, 175]. Depending on what subject is designated by culture–specific elements, they are divided into three groups:
– geographical culture–specific elements – the words designating objects of physical geography: natural phenomena, species of the plants and animals that can be found in the certain area and also objects connected with activity of people in the certain area;
– ethnographic culture–specific elements designate the concepts connected with culture and life of the people, the names connected with traditions, customs, religion and labor activity of any nation;
– social and political realities are concepts connected with the administrative–territorial structure, bodies and carriers of the power and social structure of society.
S. I. Vlakhov and S. P. Florin define the two main problems of translating culture– specific elements: the absence of correspondence in the target language and deliver of national and historical connotation of culture–specific element. Authors allocate two ways of translating culture–specific element: transcription and translation [6, 120].
In modern theory of literary translation equivalence of the target text and text of the original is considered as adequate information transfer from source language into target language. The problem of adequacy is substantially a problem of the correct, competent use of translation compliances. Adequacy should not be understood in narrow sense. It is rather wide concept, which includes dialectic approach to a question of character of accuracy of the translation and the correct understanding of the concept «accuracy». The concept of adequacy also means a possibility of the replacements (by means of which the original text is recreated in the translated text by means of other language) having the same effect and performing the same function, as in the source text. In other words, the concept «adequate translation» includes three major components:
1) the correct, exact and full transfer of the contents of the original text;
2) transfer of a language form of the original text;
3) respect for all standards of language on which the translation is carried out.
The idiom is set expression that have the inherent categorical or defining features which allow to allocate it as independent unit and separate it from other units of language.
Idioms reflect culture, life and history of the nation.
According to the semantic unity of components idioms can be divided into three groups:
1. Phraseological fusion – steady indivisible combinations the general meaning of which doesn’t depend on meaning of the words: kick the bucket – дүниеден өту – умереть, сыграть в ящик.
2. Phraseological units – steady combinations of words with general figurative meaning but semantic separateness of components remains: to have other fish to fry – маңыздырақ істердің болуы – иметь дела поважнее.
3. Phraseological collocation – the steady forms consisting of words both with free and with phraseologically connected meaning: rack one’s brains – бас қатыру (қатты ойлану) – ломать голову.
The translation of idioms in literary texts from English into other languages causes considerable difficulties. It is connected with the fact that many of them are bright, figurative, laconic, and have multiple meaning. In the process of translation it is necessary not only to convey meaning of the idiom, but also to display its figurativeness and stylistic function. It is also necessary to consider features of a context.
These components of adequate translation make indissoluble unity. According to Levitskaya and Fiterman these components «cannot be separated from each other – violation of one of them inevitably leads to violation of others» [7, 95].
Difficulties of the translation of idioms are caused by the ‘meaning gap’ or those phenomena which are absent in the accepting culture or unknown to translator. An important condition for achievement of the sufficient cross–cultural communication and decrease of inevitable losses in translation process is being extremely careful and accurate with idioms.
So, ways of achievement the adequacy during translation of idioms in the literary text can be divided into two large groups conditionally:
a) phraseological translation;
b) non–phraseological translation.
The phraseological translation assumes the usage in the translated text of steady expressions of various degree of proximity between unit of source language and the corresponding unit of the target language – from a complete equivalent to approximate phraseological compliance.
1. The complete phraseological equivalent represents the idiom in the source language by all criteria equivalent to the translated unit, i.e. it is situation of translation compliance in which idiom in the source language completely coincides with the idiom in target language on denotative and connotative meaning and grammatical structure (the golden calf – ‘алтын байлық (word for word translation)’ – ‘золотой телец’; in the seventh heaven – ‘төбесі көкке жетті’ – ‘на седьмом небе’).
2. The partial phraseological equivalent, or analog, represents type of translation compliance in which meaning of idiom in the target language is adequate to meaning of the idiom in source language, but on a figurative basis, metaphoricity differs from it completely or partially. This way of the translation is applied because of absence in the target language of an identical image in source language. In English ‘to be born with the silver spoon in one’s mouth” is equivalent to the Kazakh ‘жұлдызы оңынан туған’ and Russian “родиться в сорочке’. But such distinction is purely formal as on emotional influence of expression it is comprehended as equivalent». Therefore, the partial phraseological equivalent does not mean any incompleteness in transfer of meaning. It is based only on lexical or grammatical divergences, but with the identical stylistic role.
3. The relative phraseological equivalent differs from partial in lack of coincidence with initial idiom in any of the following features: form, syntactic construction, other morphological compatibility, etc. (a fly in the ointment – ‘бір қарын майды бір құмалақ шірітеді’ немесе ‘бір қасық қара май бір бөшке балды бүлдіреді’ (word for word translation), ‘ложка дегтя в бочке меда’, a feather flock together — ‘балықшы балықшыны күндік жерден көреді’(word for word translation), ‘рыбак рыбака видит издалека’).
4. The phraseological tracing allows to transfer the meaning of idiom which does not have equivalent in the target language with the complete preservation of semantics of source language. The essence of the phraseological tracing consists in creation of the new combination in the translating language copying structure of initial language unit. According to Kunin, phraseological «tracing is a formation of the idiom by the literal translation of the corresponding language unit» [8, 25]. For example: ‘Better a witty fool than foolish wit’ (Shakespeare) – ‘Ақылды ақымақ ақымақ данагөйден гөрі жақсырак’ (word for word translation) – Лучше умный дурак, чем глупый мудрец.
The phraseological translation is mostly applicable to the following groups of idioms:
I. The international phraseology, i.e. idioms which entered language from historical mythological, proximity of separate components of social life, a labor activity, production, development of science and arts.
It is possible to distinguish two groups of idioms based on national feature:
1) the idioms based on the same image (for example, Achilles’ heel – there is no Kazakh equivalent – Aхиллесова пята);
2) idioms based on different images (a carrot and stick policy – ‘қамшылау және арбау саясаты’ (word for word translation) – ‘политика кнута и пряника’) and frequent cases of full discrepancy of metaphoricity.
Non–phraseological translation implicates the translation of idiom in one language by means of separate and independent words, but not idioms, in other language. [9, 25].
1. The descriptive translation that is the translation of the idiom by means of a free combination of words. But in the literary translation this method has a great disadvantage, because such translation cannot impress the reader as the ‘idiom–idiom’ translation. For example, red herring – smth. deliberately distracting attention. The descriptive translation leads to loss of figurativeness and expressiveness of the original text [10, 125]. The descriptive translation of idioms in essence means transmission not of the most idiom, but its interpretation.
2. The transcription and transliteration can also be used for transfer of idioms or their components. In modern literary translation practice preference is given to a transcription in combination with some elements of transliteration.
The transcription is widely applied in literary translation. For example, in the adventure novel the transcribed idiom can be an exotic element. In the author’s speech or the text with detailed descriptions the transcription can be the most successful decision as in such texts ample opportunities for disclosure of meaning of idiom are given.
Disadvantage of transcription and transliteration is that their usage can lead to emergence of unusual and obscure words in the target text.
Important condition of successful work of the literary translator is the understanding of the source text, its general sense, sense of each its element and each word. There cannot be an adequate translation without adequate understanding as well [11, 151]. Rather often, the reason of errors in case of the translation of idioms caused by incorrect or incomplete understanding of initial material.
For achievement of adequacy in case of the translation of the idioms functioning in the literary texts, translator should be able to recognize idioms, to distinguish them from variable phrases [12, 220].
As it has been mentioned before in modern translation theory the special attention is given to literary translation as private theory in which in turn a specific place is given to adequate translation of idioms. The literary translation is special and personal product of translation activities and can be considered on an equal basis with the text of a source language, i.e. original text. Despite a large number of works in the field of the theory of the literary translation in the process of writing the given article we were not succeeded to find theoretical material that would completely reflect a problem of the translation of idioms in the literary text.
Thus, the topicality of the given research can be proved by the fact that the perspective of the translation of idioms, despite actively conducted researches in the field of the literary translation, is insufficiently investigated both generally, and in particular, in relation to texts of English literature and their Russian translations.
References
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2 Комиссаров В.Н. Современное переводоведение: Учеб. пособие. Москва, 2002. –
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3 Маслова В.А. Лингвокультурология. – М. 2001. – 280 с.
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Флинта: Наука, 2003. С. 320
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7 Паршин, А. Теория и практика перевода. Москва, 2008. – C.422 8 Қайдаров Ә. Этнолингвистика// Білім және еңбек, Алматы, 1985.
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Ж.К. Алшинбаева
АДЕКВАТНЫЙ ПЕРЕВОД ФРАЗЕОЛОГИЗМОВ В ЛИТЕРАТУРНОМ ТЕКСТЕ
В резюмируемой статье «Аdequate translation of idioms in literary text», Алшинбаевой Жулдыз Куанышевной предпринята попытка рассмотреть основные вопросы и методы адекватного перевода фразеологизмов в литературном тексте с английского языка на казахский и русский языки. Автор ставит своей задачей рассмотрение сущности адекватного перевода языковых единиц с этнокультурной семантикой. Дается объяснение концепции «адекватного перевода». Предоставляется описание методов художественного перевода. Переводчик осуществляющий художественный перевод может широко использовать приведенные ниже подходы и методы для обеспечения адекватного и правильного перевода. Предлагаются также практические рекомендации по использованию фразеологического и нефразеологического методов перевода в определенных переводческих ситуациях. Настоящая работа представляет собой лингвистическое изучение перевода фразеологизмов в художественном тексте как своего рода межкультурного, межэтнического общения, которое является основой стратегии перевода.
Ж.К. Алшинбаева
КӨРКЕМ МӘТІНДЕГІ ФРАЗЕОЛОГИЗМДЕРДІҢ БАРАБАР АУДАРЫЛУЫ
Берілген мақалада «Аdequate translation of idioms in literary text», Алшинбаева Жулдыз Куанышевна ағылшын көркем мәтіндегі фразеологизмдердің қазақ және орыс тілдеріне барабар аударылуының негізгі мәселелеріне тоқталды. «Барабар аударма» ұғымының түсіндірмесі берілген. Сонымен қатар, жоғары сапалы көркем аударманы жүзеге асырудың әдістері қарастырылған. Аудармашы барабар нәтижеге қол жеткізу мақсатында ұсынылған тәсілдер мен әдістерді кеңінен қолдана алады. Фразеологиялық аударма және фразеологиялық емес аударма әдістерінің сипаттамасы берілген. Бұл жұмыс аударма стратегиясының негізі болып табылатын мәдениетаралық, этносаралық қарым–қатынас сияқты кәсіби әдеби аудармаларды лингвистикалық зерттеу болып табылады. Зерттеу жұмысында көркем мәтінде кездесетін фразеологизмдердің барабар аударылуы, мәдениетаралық, этносаралық қарым– қатынас құралы ретінде қарастырылып отыр.