17. The problem of conveying intralinguistic meaning

Words influence each other and presuppose choice of their neighboring dependants. They cannot combine if they belong to different styles (*светлоокая девка, a boozy-woozy lady). Words do not combine if they do not match speech norms, i.e. their word combinability is beyond the norm. Thus, in Russian we say молодой картофель but we cannot say in English *young potatoes, as the word potatoes requires the adjective new (new potatoes). Words in their primary meaning cannot be combined together if their near context is not taken into consideration. The Russians say “Не пейте сырой воды”, which cannot be rendered by the phrase “Don’t drink *raw water.” because English-speaking people use in this case quite a different word combination: “unboiled water”. So in translation we have to substitute one word for another that naturally fits the context.

Intralinguistic meaning – the relation between the linguistic signs of one and the same language.

Aspects of intralinguistic meaning:

- Sound similarity: alliteration, assonance (for ex: in “The Raven” by Poe);

- Morphemic similarity ("Do you know anything about books?" "Yes, sir, I'm a good bookkeeper." - Вы что-нибудь смыслите в книгах? - Да, сэр, я умею вести конторские книги)

- Intralinguistic meaning is also revealed in puns, or plays upon words, which make most puzzling tasks for a translator. In this case a translator cannot use translation equivalents but has to compensate a word by another one that can be also played upon. For example, to translate a children’s riddle into English: Why is a book like a king? – Because it has many pages. (where the word page is associated with two homonymous meanings: 1) страница, 2) паж), a translator compensated the homonymous page by the Russian homonym глава (1.head, 2.chapter): Что общего между книгой и драконом? – У обоих несколько глав).

18. Grammatical aspect of translation

Equivalence is achieved by different transformations: grammatical, lexical, stylistic. The causes generating grammatical transformations are not always purely grammatical but may be lexical as well, though grammatical causes naturally prevail due to differences in the SL and TL grammatical structures.

Divergences in the structures of the two languages are so considerable that in the process of translation various grammatical and lexical transformations indispensable to achieve equivalence. These transformations may be classed into four types: 1. transpositions; 2. replacements; 3. additions; 4. omissions.

Transposition- is a change in the order of the target sentence syntactic elements (Subject, Predicate, Object, etc.) as compared with that of the source sentence dictated either by peculiarities of the target language syntax or by the communication intent. (e.g. The flight will be boarding at Gate 17 in about fifteen minutes. Приблизительно через 15 минут на этот рейс будет посадка у выхода номер 17)

Replacement - is any change in the target text at the morphological, lexical and syntactic levels of the language when the elements of the certain source paradigms are replaced by different elements of target paradigms. (e.g. He used to come to Italy each spring. Обычно он приезжал в Италию каждую весну.)

Addition - is a device intended for the compensation of structural elements implicitly present in the source text or paradigm forms missing in the target language. (e.g. The policeman waved me on. Полицейский помахал мне рукой, показывая, что я могу проезжать).

Omission - is reduction of the elements of the source text considered redundant from the viewpoint of the target language structural patterns and stylistics. (e.g. Summer rains in Florida may be violent, while they last. Летом во Флориде бывают сильные дожди). We also omit words that are not necessary for understanding or expressing a certain coloring.One of the cases or superfluity is the use in English of twin-pair synonyms mostly typical of judicial documents. (E.g. regular and normal session – обычная сессия)

This classification, however, should be applied with reservation. In most cases they are combined with one another, moreover, grammatical and lexical elements in a sentence are so closely interwoven that one change involves another.