4. Literary Translating represents the highest level of a translator's activity. Any type of matter skilfully turned into the target language, especially by a regular master of the pen may acquire the faithfulness and the literary (or artistic) standard equal to that of the source language.
Depending on the type of the matter under translation, this method of performance may be either literary proper or literary artistic.
Literary artistic translation presents a faithful conveying of content and of the artistic merits only of a fiction/belles-lettres passage or work. The latter may be either of a prose or a poetic genre (verse).
Literary proper translation is performed on any other than fiction/belles-lettres passages/works. These may include scientific or technical matter, didactic matter (different text-books), business correspondence, the language of documents, epistolary texts, etc. In short, any printed or recorded matter devoid of artistic merits (epithets, metaphors, etc.). But whether literary proper or literary artistic, this translation provides an equivalent rendering not only of complete content but also of the stylistic peculiarities of the passage/work and its artistic merits/beauty, as in belles-lettres style texts.
Literary translations are always performed in literary all-nation languages and with many transformations which help achieve the ease and beauty of the original composition. The number of phrases and sentences in a literary translation is never the same as in the source language passage/work, neither are the same means of expression or the number and quality of stylistic devices per paragraph/syntactic superstructure. All these transformations are made in order to achieve faithfulness in rendering content and expressiveness of the passage/ work under translation. Transformations are also used to convey the features of style and in still greater measure the genre peculiarities of the works/passages under translation.
Literary proper/literary artistic translation of a larger passage/ work often requires linguistic, historical and other inquiries in order to clarify the obscure places (historic events, notions of specific national lexicon, neologisms, archaisms, etc.). Sometimes even the title of a work may require a philologic or historic inquiry. So, «Слово о полку Ігоревім» in a verbal or word-for-word translation would be *A Word about Ihor's Regiment which does not in any way correspond to the real meaning of this title, since the author meant under «Слово» story,
tale, saga, song. The word полк did not mean the military unit of today's armies (regiment) but troop, host, army. Therefore, the meaning of полк would be in Ukrainian дружина and the whole title would sound in contemporary translation as The Tale of the Host of Ihor, which corresponds to the real meaning of the title (оповідь, повість, пісня про Ігореве військо, i.e. дружину). That is why there exist today different translations of the title of this brilliant work. Among them are the following: 1) The Tale of the Armament of Igor. Edited and translated by Leonard Magnus. Oxford University Press, 1915. 2) The Tale of Igor. Adapted by Helen de Verde. London, 1918.3) Prince Igor's Raid Against the Polovtsi. Translated by Paul Crath. Versified by Watson Kirkonnell. Saskatoon. Canada, 1947. 4) The Song of Igor's Campaign. Translated by Vladimir Nabokov. New York 1960. As can be seen, none of these titles conveys the meaning of the title fully, completely equivalents and faithfully, though some are close to it, especially that one suggested by Paul Crath (Prince Igor's Raid against the Polovtsi) and the V.Nabokov's variant The Song of Igor's Campaign.
In Soviet times this old Ukrainian literature masterpiece had an unchanged title The Lay of Igor's Host (suggested by a Georgian linguist). This translation does not differ greatly from the two mentioned above for «lay» is the Middle English poetic word for «song».
A similar approach aimed at a possibly fullest expression of the poetic content, i.e., flavour of the title can be seen in S.Garry's translation of M.Sholokhov's novel «Тихий Дон» sounding in English as rhythmic lines of a song - And Quiet Flows the Don or The Don Flows home to the Sea. The former title was used in the New York publication of the novel (1944) and the latter in its London publication that same year. It goes without saying that a verbal or word-for-word translation of the title as *The Quiet Don or *The Still Don would not convey the poetic flavour of the original title, which is strongly felt in its source language variant.
This poetic subtext of the Russian title is really expressed only in each of the two S.Garry's variants which could have been suggested by the translator only after a deep inquiry into the novel's content, into its main idea, and into the whole system of literary images of Sholokhov's work (as with the work mentioned before). It is no less difficult to convey the meaning and functions of colloquial, conversational, dialectal and other kinds of lexical units often used by many authors in their belles-lettres works. To translate them faithfully,
one must consult reference books, dictionaries and often even the native speakers of the language, e.g.: dafosfer-dialectal for знавець/ фахівець; daisy-slang for something or somebody nice, beautiful, first-rate (першосортне); put up (adj.) is colloquial for задуманий зазделегідь; спланований; ab ovo- Latin for від самого початку (Горацій), букв, «від яйця». Constant inquiries of all kinds are also necessary to convey the expression side of the source language matter. It becomes especially imperative in versification which is explained by the condensed nature of poetic works in which thoughts and ideas are often expressed through literary means. To achieve the necessary level of faithfulness the translator has to render fully the picturesqueness, the literary images, the rhythm and the rhyme (vocalic or consonantal), the beauty of sounding of the original poem, etc. An illustration of this may be D.Palamarchuk's versified translation of W.Shakespeare's sonet CXV:
Those lines that I before have write do lie, (10) Even those that said I could not love you dearer: (11) Yet then my judgement knew no reason why (10) My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. (11) Збрехав мій вірш, колись тобі сказавши: (11) «Моїй любові нікуди рости». (10) Я думав - ріст її спинивсь назавше, (11) Найбільшої сягнувши висоти. (10)
The Ukrainian variant of the stanza reveals its almost complete identity with the original in the rhythmic and rhyme organization and in the number of syllables in each line. Though in the original their number alternates in reverse order (from 10 to 11) and in the translation - from 11 to 10. But this is in no way a rude violation, since the interchange takes place within the same stanza, though the translator could not fully reproduce the alternate (acbd) rhyme, which is feminine in the first (a) and third (c) lines and masculine in the second (b), and in the fourth (d) lines.
Most striking, however, are the syntactic alternations, there being no single line structurally similar to that of the original verse. All that becomes necessary because of the predominantly polysyllabic structure of Ukrainian words the number of which in the translation is only 19 as compared with 35 words in the source language. Besides, the Ukrainian stanza consists of notional words only, whereas in the original work there are also functionals (have, do, that, most, not, etc.). The notionals form the artistic images and ideas the number of
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correct literary translation. Hence, the frequent violations of syntactic agreement and government between the parts of the sentence in machine translated texts. Neither can the machine translator select in its memory the correct order of words in word-combinations and sentences in the target language. As a result, any machine translation of present days needs a thorough proof reading and editing. Very often it takes no less time and effort and may be as tiresome as the usual hand-made translation of the same passage/work.1 A vivid illustration to the above-said may be the machine translated passage below. It was accomplished most recently in an electronic translation centre and reflects the latest achievement in this sphere of «mental» activity. The attentive student will not fail to notice in the italicized components of Ukrainian sentences several lexical, morphological and syntactic/ structural irregularities, which have naturally to be corrected in the process of the final elaboration of the passage by the editing translator. Compare the texts below and find the inexactitudes in all sentences of the Ukrainian translation.
1 Марчук Ю.Н. Проблему машинного перевода. - М.: Наука, 1983.
which is somewhat larger in English. Since it was next to impossible to overcome the «resistance» of the source language verse, some losses in translation became inevitable. They are the result of the existing divergences in the grammatical structure or in the means of expression in the two languages, first of all in the greater number of syllables in the same words in Ukrainian, which is a tangible obstacle for the translators of poetry. That is why in order to maintain the poetic metre of the lines in the original stanza above the translator had to transform them. As a result, the number of inevitable losses in versifications is always larger than in prose translations. Nevertheless, D.Palamarchuk's versification is considered to be highly faithful and artistic, because it conveys, in the main, the following aspects of this Shakespearian sonet: its content, partly its types of rhythm and rhyme, its artistic images and tropes, as well as its picturesqueness and the pragmatic orientation/toning of the original sonet, nothing to say about its main content.
MACHINE TRANSLATION
Rendering of information from a foreign language with the help of electronic devices represents the latest development in modern translation practice. Due to the fundamental research in the systems of algorithms and in the establishment of lexical equivalence in different layers of lexicon, machine translating has made considerable progress in recent years. Nevertheless, its employment remains restricted in the main to scientific and technological information and to the sphere of lexicographic work. That is because machine translation can be performed only on the basis of programmes elaborated by linguistically trained operators. Besides, preparing programmes for any matter is connected with great difficulties and takes much time, whereas the quality of translation is far from being always satisfactory even at the lexical level, i.e., at the level of words, which have direct equivalent lexemes in the target language. Considerably greater difficulties, which are insurmountable for machine translators, present morphological elements (endings, suffixes, prefixes, etc.). No smaller obstacles for machine translation are also syntactic units (word-combinations and sentences) with various means of connection between their components/parts. Besides, no present-day electronic devices performing translation possess the necessary lexical, grammatical and stylistic memory to provide the required standard of
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Communications and the EC
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Public relations and telecommunications must work hand in handto enable Europe really to become one community. Martin Bangemann looks to the 21st century.
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«Communications have been the driving force behind the creation and growth of global companies.»
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The European Commission (EC) has expressed one vision for the future of Europe in its White Paper on Growth Competitiveness and Employment-the Challenges and Ways forward'into the 21 st Century.
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This document addresses the
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Повідомлення і EC
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Суспільна інформація] телекомунікація повинні працювати рука в руці, щоб дозволити Європу дійсно стати одною співдружністю. Мартін Бангеман дивиться до 21st століття.
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«Комунікації були рушійна сила ззаду створення і ріст глобальних компаній».
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Европейська Комісія (EC) висловила одне бачення на майбутній час Европи в Білій Книзі на ріст, конкуренто-здатності й Зайнятість Виклики і Шляхи Вперед у 21-го століття.
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Цей документ адресує
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facts that, in the last 20 years, the European economy's rate of growth has declinedirom 4% to 2,5 % per year; unemployment has steadily risen; the investment ratio has fallen by 5%; and Europe's competitive position in relation to USA and Japan has worsened in regard to employment, export market share, research and development innovation and development of new products.
факти, що в останні 20 років норма (розряд) Европейської економіки (економії) росту знизилося від 4% до 2,5% за рік; безробіття постійно зросла; інвестиційне відношення впало на 5%; і конкурентоздатне становище (позиція) Европи відносно США і Японії погіршувалося у відношенні за й нятості, експортної ринково)'частки, дослідження і нововведення розвитку і розвитку нових виробів.
KINDS OF TRANSLATING/INTERPRETING
As has been noted, the sense of a language unit (the content of a whole matter) can be conveyed in the target language either in writing or in viva voce (orally). Depending on the form of conveying the sense/ content, the following kinds or types of translating/interpreting are to be distinguished:
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The written from a written matter translating, which represents a literary/literary artistic or any other faithful sense-to-sense translating from or into a foreign language. It may also be a free interpreting performed in writing. The matter under translation may be a belles-lettres passage (prose or poetry work), a scientific or technical/ newspaper passage / article, etc.
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The oral from an oral matter interpreting, which is a regular oral sense-to-sense rendering of a speech/radio or TV interview, or recording which can proceed either in succession (after the whole matter or part of it is heard) or simultaneously with its sounding. This consecutive interpreting is a piecemeal performance and the interpreter can make use of the time, while the speech/recording is proceeding, for grasping its content and selecting the necessary means of expression for some language units of the original matter. There is also a possibility to interrupt (stop) the speaker/recording in order to clarify some obscure place. As a result, consecutive interpreting can take more or a little less time than the source language speech/ recording lasts. When it takes quite the same amount of time as the
source language matter flows and the interpreter faithfully conveys its content, it is referred to as simultaneous interpreting/translating. Otherwise it remains only a consecutive interpreting. That can be well observed when interpreting a film, each still of which in the process of the simultaneous interpretation takes the time, allotted to it in the source language. In Ukrainian this kind of interpreting is called синхронний переклад. Therefore, simultaneous interpreting is performed within the same time limit, i.e., takes the same amount of time or a little more/less, than the source matter lasts.
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The oral from a written matter interpreting is nothing else than interpreting at sight. It can also proceed either simultaneously with the process of getting acquainted with the content of the written matter, or in succession (after each part of it is first read through and comprehended). The former way of interpreting, if carried out faithfully and exactly on time with the consecutive conveying of the matter, may be considered simultaneous too. Usually, however, it is a regular prepared beforehand kind of interpreting.
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The written translating from an orally presented matter is, as L.S.Barkhudarov points out1, a rare occurrence. This is because a natural speech flow is too fast for putting it down in the target language (except for a shorthand presentation, which would be then a regular translation, i.e. interpretation from a written matter). Translating from an oral speech/recording is now and then resorted to for training practices. When the matter to be rendered is produced at a slower speed than the written translation, this matter/speech can naturally be performed (and put down) in the target language.
DECRIPTIVE AND ANTONYMIC TRANSLATING
Descriptive translating. One must bear in mind that it is the notional meaning of the source language unit and not always its morphological nature or structural form that is to be rendered in the target language. As a result, the target language unit, which equiva-lently/faithfully conveys the denotative/connotative meaning of the corresponding source language unit may not necessarily belong to the same language stratification level. Depending on the notion expressed by the source language word/lexeme, it may be conveyed in the target language sometimes through a word-combination or even
1 See: Бархударов Л.С. Язьік и перевод. - М.: Междунар. отношения, 1975, р. 46-48.
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through a sentence, i.e., descriptively: indulge робити собі приємність у чомусь, віддаватися втіхам; infamous той (та, те), що має ганебну славу; inessentials предмети не першої необхідності, предмети розкошів; вщерть up to the brim, full to the brim; в'язи the nape of one's head, the back of the head; окраєць crust of a loaf, hunk of a bread; окривіти (осліпнути) to become lame (grow blind). Therefore, the descriptive way of conveying the sense of language units implies their structural transformation which is necessary to explicate their meaning with the help of hierarchically different target language units.
Descriptive translating/interpreting is very often employed to render the sense/meaning of idioms/phraseologisms, which have no equivalents in the target language. Cf. in English: (as) mad as a hatter цілком/геть божевільний; all my eye and Betty Martin! нісенітниці! (дурниці!); like one (twelve) o'clock миттю, вмить, прожогом. In Ukrainian: зуб на зуб не попадати to feel very cold (to feel freezing); навчить біда коржі з маком їсти hard times make one inventive; наговорити сім кіп/мішків гречаної вовни to say much nonsense.
No less often is descriptive translation employed when dealing with the notions of specific national lexicon: haggis геґгїс (зварений у жирі овечий кендюх, начинений вівсяними крупами і спеціями впереміш із січеним овечим потрухом); porridge порідж (густа вівсяна каша зварена на воді чи молоці); Senate сенат (рада університету в Англії, складається переважно з професорів); sweet-meatсолодка страва, приготовлена на цукрі чи медові.
Alongside the literal translating some explications of the meaning of specific national notions becomes sometimes necessary: вареники varenyky, middle-sized dumplings filled with curd, cherries, etc.; дума duma, Ukrainian historic epic song; кобзар kobzar, a performer of dumas to the accompaniment of the kobza (a mandolinelike four string musical instrument), the bandore (a fiat multistringed Ukrainian musical instrument).
Descriptive translation is also employed in foot-notes to explain obscure places in narration. Cf. midland мідленд, діалект центральної Англії, a spiritual релігійна пісня америк. негрів.
Antonymic translation is employed for the sake of achieving faithfulness in conveying content or the necessary expressiveness of sense units. It represents a way of rendering when an affirmative in structure language unit (word, word-combination or sentence) is con-
veyed via a negative in sense or structure but identical in content language unit, or vice versa: a negative in sense or structure sense unit is translated via an affirmative sense unit. Cf.: to have quite a few friends мати багато (немало) друзів; mind your own business не втручайся не в свої справи; take it easy не хвилюйся, не переживай; not infrequently часто; no time like the present лови момент (використовуй нагоду); я не нездужаю, нівроку (Т.Ш.) І feel/am perfectly well; не спитавши броду, не лізь у воду look before you leap; немає лиха без добра, every dark cloud has a silver lining, etc.
The antonymic device is empolyed in the following cases:
1) when in the target language there is no direct equivalent for
the sense unit of the source language. For example, the noun «inferi
ority» and the adjective «inferior» (like the verb phrase «to be inferior»)
have no single-word equivalents in Ukrainian. So their lexical meaning
can be conveyed either in a descriptive way or with the help of their
antonyms «superiority», «superior»: Тле defeat of the Notts in last
season's cup semi-finals was certainly the result of their physical and
tactical inferiority... (The Kyiv Post) Поразка клубу «Ноттінґем
Форест» у торішньому півфінальному матчі на кубок країни була
наслідком переваги їхніх супротивників у фізичній і тактичній
підготовці (...була наслідком того, що гравці поступалися
супротивникові у фізичній і тактичній підготовці).1
The meaning of some English word-groups can also be conveyed in Ukrainian antonymically only: Baines was reading a newspaper in his shirt-sleeves. (Gr. Greene) Бейнз сидів без піджака і читав газету. Do you mind this? (M.Wilson) Ви не заперечуєте?
2) When the sense unit of the source language has two
negations of its own which create an affirmation: In those clothes she
was by no means non-elegant (S.Maugham) У цьому вбранні вона
була досить елеґантна.
3. In order to achieve the necessary expressiveness in narration: I don't think it will hurt you, baby. (E.Hemingway) Думаю, вам воно не зашкодить, люба. A shell fell close. (Ibid.) Неподалік вибухнув снаряд. Не lurched away like a frightened horse barely missing the piano stool. (J.London) Він сахнувся вбік, мов сполоханий кінь, мало не перекинувши стільця коло піаніно (ледь обминаючи стільця біля піаніно).
1 See more about transformations of the kind in part IV of this work.
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