IIIкурсVI семестр

Заняття № 1. Contextual meaning of the definite and indefinite articles.

We all know that the article (definite and indefinite) is a functional word that serves to identify or determine the noun (to study – the study), the superlative degree of its quality (the highest building; the most beautiful girl…) or the order of the nouns in a word-group (the first visitor; he was the last to speak…) in a row of similar nouns. In some prepositional phrases articles may change their lexical-grammatical nature and become a particle (the more – the better – чим більше, тим краще); acquire some grammatical, functional and lexical meaning (the Browns, the Petrenkos…); may be lexicalized (the Carpathians, the Cordeliers…), at the baker’s; at the florist’s…

1. there are some occasions the definite/indefinite article may acquire some lexical meaning in certain contexts and thus serve as a peculiar means of “expressive connotation” (те, що мається на увазі; додаткове значення):

He lived more poorly than an artisan.

Жив він бідніше за будь-якого ремісника.

I was terrified and couldn’t say a word.

Я був наляканий і не міг сказати жодного слова.

2. the article can/may be an adjunctive/identifying adjective or a modal particle:

She had acquired a reputation for neatness and accuracy.

Вона здобула за ретельно виконану роботу (охайність та точність) солідну репутацію.

She would have called him a fish. (L.Carroll)

Вона назвала б його просто “карасем”. (простенькою людиною)

3. the article can/may have a distinctly nominal (іменний) or rather nominalizing meaning:

He took the bottle up and having surveyed and smelt it said…: “The?”

Він узяв пляшку, підняв, оглянув її, понюхав та сказав…: “І що?/Це вона і є?”

Analyzing the example given above we can say that without broader context it would certainly be impossible to guess what the definite nominalizing article stands for in the extract.

In order to faithfully convey each kind of the aforementioned meaningful articles, the future translator will be advised first of all to subject the whole passage, which is to be translated, to a thorough content analysis in order to select possible lexical substitutes for the articles in the target language (TL).

The choice of the contextually equivalent substitutes depends much on the translator who, when selecting a fitting lexical equivalent for the article, has to take some factors into consideration. Besides, the translator has to keep it in mind that some contextual meanings of the definite article may seem similar to those of the indefinite article and the reverse. The translator should be no less attentive to the style of his TL passage which in its turn will help him achieve a faithful translation of the sentences or the passage as a whole, where both the defining and nominalizing lexically charged articles are used.

When conveying the lexical meanings of the definite and indefinite articles to Ukrainian, attention should be paid to their functional meanings in the sentence/word-combinations. In Ukrainian they are expressed through pronouns, adjectives, participles, adverbs or cardinal/ordinal numerals. The meaning of the numeral one, on the other hand, is always expressed only through the indefinite article:

They lived in New York and shared a studio.

Вони жили в Нью-Йорку та орендували (поділяли між собою) одну студію (однокімнатну квартиру).

Another way of rendering the nominalized articles is through the parts of speech having the functions of attributes to the noun:

To his horror he realized that a good player of the town soccers had left the team.

На свій жах він збагнув, що якийсь з хороших гравців полишив команду.

The articles used emphatically, on the other hand, have usually particles for their contextual equivalents in Ukrainian:

Everything I could do was to content myself with a few mugs of beer.

Все, що я міг зробити – це випити лише кілька кухлів пива.