III .Translation problems on lexicological level in machine-building texts Lecture 7. Translation of terms

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1. The definition of the word “term”.

2. Essential characteristics of the terms.

3. The structure of the terms.

4. Translation problems.

The language of much scientific writing is unintelligible to in non--specialist translators uninitiated in the principles of the yen science. Lexical problems in technical translation are usually caused by terminology, although terms make up only about 5-10 per cent of a sci-tech text.

A term is a word or a word-group which is specifically employed by a particular branch of science, technology, trade or the arts to convey a notion peculiar to this particular activity; any word or word-group used to name ■і notion characteristic of some special field of knowledge, industry or culture.

Terms are words of a specialized scientific and technical language which are created, borrowed or adopted to exactly express the definite concepts specific for that science and mime its special objects.

Terms have the following essential characteristics:

1. A term is a definition(al) word, i.e. it is directly connected with a scientific definition and displays a relationship of one-to one correspondence to it, having a precise meaning. The content of the notion that a term serves to express is specified by definitions in literature on the subject.

2. One of the essential characteristics of a term is its highly conventional character. A term is generally very easily coined and accepted.

3. Terms are characterized by a tendency to be monosemantic and therefore easily call forth the required concept.

An ideal term should be monosemantic (i.e. it should have only one meaning) and when used within its own sphere, does not depend upon the micro-context. Polysemantic terms may lead to misunderstanding, and that is a serious shortcoming in professional communication. Polysemy may be tolerated in one form only, namely if the same term has various meanings in different fields of science. The terms alphabet and word, for example, have in mathematics a meaning very different from those accepted in linguistics. Although terms ordinarily tend to be monosemantic, there are, in actual fact, numerous polysemantic terms. The linguistic term semantics may denote both the meaning of a word and the branch of Lexicology studying meanings. In the terminology of painting, the word colour may denote hue and, at the same time, stuff used for colouring.

4. Terms as a rule do not have synonyms because scientists and other specialists would name the same objects and phenomena in their field by different terms and would not be able to come to any agreement. But, in fact, some terms do possess synonyms. In painting, the same term colour has several synonyms in both its meanings: hue, shade, tint, tinge in the first meaning and paint, tint, dye in the second.

5. Being mostly independent of the context a term can have no contextual meaning whatever. The only meaning possible is a denotational (primary logical) meaning. No emotional colouring or evaluation are possible when the term is used within its proper sphere.

A term can obtain a figurative or emotionally coloured meaning only when taken out of its sphere and used in literary or colloquial speech. But in that case it ceases to be a term and turns into an ordinary word. The adjective atomic used to describe the atomic structure of matter was until 1945 as emotionally neutral as words like quantum or parallelogram. I But since that time it has assumed a new implication, so that the common phrase, this atomic age, is now used to denote an age of great scientific progress, but also holds connotations of menace and monstrous destruction.

6. Terms are generally associated with a definite branch of science and therefore with a series of other terms belonging to that particular branch. Taken all together, clusters of terms form the nomenclature or system of names, for the objects of study of any particular branch of science.

Terms are coined so as to be self-explanatory to the greatest possible degree. The origin of terms shows four main channels, two of which are specific for terminology. These specific ways are:

1. The use of combining forms from Latin and Greek like aerodrome, aerodynamics, biography, biology, cyclotron, microfilm, telegenic, telegraph, thermonuclear, telemechanics, supersonic. The process is common to terminology in many I languages.

2. Borrowing from another terminological system within the same language whenever there is any similarity between the respective fields. Sea terminology, for instance, lent many words to aviation vocabulary which in its turn made the starting point for the terminology adopted in the conquest of space. If we turn to linguistics we shall come across many terms borrowed from rhetoric: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and others.

The remaining two methods are common with other layers ' of the vocabulary. These are word-formation in which derivation and composition take the leading part, and borrowing from other languages. Since the process of borrowing is very marked in every field, all terminology has a tendency to become international.

We must also pay attention to the fact that it is often possible lo trace a term to its author. It is, for instance, known that new terms anode and cathode were coined by M. Faraday, the term vitamin by Dr. Funk in 1912, the term bionics was born at a symposium in Ohio (USA) in September of 1960.

Those who coin a new term are always careful to provide it with a definition and give some reasons for their choice by explaining its motivation.

From the point of view of their structure all terms fall into the following six groups:

1) simple (root) terms: frame, gate, nut;

2) derived words formed with the help of suffixes an prefixes: -er, -or, -ist, -ant, -ing -ment, -tion, -ance, -ence ship, -hood, -ure, -ness: estimator, excavator, chemis consultant, luring, replacement, abrasion, maintenance resilience, relationship, likelihood, perviousness, flexibility electricity, excavation; поп-, re-, en-, over-, under-, inter sub-, post-: non-conductor, reconstruct, enlarge, overload, overproduction, underground, interaction, submarine, subway, post-operative.

3) compound words consisting of at least two stems electromotive, heart-beat, speedometer, to trickle-irrigate;

4) terms formed by conversion (the process of coining a new word in a different part of speech without adding any derivative element so that the basic form of the original and derived words is the same): air-taxi (noun) -» to air-taxi (verb), bridge (n) -> to bridge (v), carbon-copy (n) -> to carbon-copy (v), doctor (n) -> to doctor, H-bomb (n) -> to H-bomb (v);

5) shortened words: A-sub, H-bomber, bit, radar, transceiver, TV;

6) terminological combinations of words: calling number] indication service, electronically controlled filter, inference power, density, international multiple destination sound-programme circuit section.

With the development and growth of civilization many terms become well known to everybody and are often used in everyday conversation. Many words that were once terms have gradually' lost their qualities as terms and have passed into common usage. Such words as radio, television, and the like have long been in common use and their terminological character is no longer evident. Some of these are of comparatively recent origin. Here are a few of them, with the year of their first appearance given in brackets: stratosphere (1908), gene (1909), quantum (1910), vitamin (1912), isotope (1913), behaviourism (1914) penicillin (1929), cyclotron (1932), ionosphere (1932), radar (1942), transistor (1952), bionics (1960).

Terminology of a language consists of many systems of terms. It is the sum total of terms for a specific branch of science, technology, or industry forming a special layer in the word stock of a language.

Terminology forms the greatest part of every language vocabulary. Hundreds of thousands of words belong to specialized scientific, professional or trade terminological systems and are not used or even understood by people outside the particular speciality.

There are terms for all the different specialities, e.g.: amplitude (physics), antibiotic (medicine), arabesque (ballet), feedback (cybernetics), fission (chemistry), frame (cinema).

Every branch and every school of science develop a special terminology adapted to their nature and methods. Its development represents an essential part of research work and is of paramount importance, because it can either help or hinder progress. All scientists are linguists to some extent. They are responsible for devising a consistent terminology, a skeleton language, to talk about their subject matter. The development of terminology is the most complete reflection of the history of science, culture and industry.

The intense development of science made it imperative to systematize, standardize and check the definitions of scientific terms now in current use. Work on terminology standardization has been going on in almost all branches of science and engineering since the beginning of the 20th century. Terminological systems are purposefully controlled. Almost every system of terminology is nowadays fixed and analysed in glossaries approved by authorities, special commissions and eminent scholars.

There are three sorts of translation problems arising from the specialized use of technical terms. First, there is the obvious problem of terms not used in everyday, ordinary language, and which are, therefore, totally unfamiliar to the lay translator.

A term is instantly recognizable as belonging only to specialized scientific contexts. Without specialist knowledge, therefore, translators can neither guess the exact meaning of the term nor make an informed guess at its correct target language rendering.

The second problem is that of terms whose ordinary, everyday uses are familiar to the translator, but which are used in some other, technically specialized, way in the source text. That is, the familiar meanings of the terms do not help the translator to understand their technical meanings. The noun horse is an example. This word has a familiar everyday use, normally rendered as "кінь". However, when horse is encountered in a specialized technical context, its familiar everyday use is clearly inappropriate. Knowing the ordinary commonsense meaning of the term is no help at all in guessing what the technical meaning might be. (It is in fact "рама".)

Ordinary Everyday English Words and Their Technical Meanings

Everyday Word	Technical Meaning
horse	рама
pig	болванка
frog	хрестовина
fly	маховик
goose	праска
monkey	баба (для забивання паль) ■ забивання паль) ;
bug	скоба
collar	підшипник
jacket	стінка циліндра
skirt	порожнистий циліндр
boot	сошник
hat	кровля
tree	вал
leaf	прицільна рамка
nut	гайка
bush	втулка
grass	стрічка шумів
plum	заповнювач бетону
forehead	забій
brow	містки
nose	головка домкрата
Lip	носик ковша
beard	Зазублина
ear	затискач
arm	спиця
breast	Амбразура
leg	катет
chair	рельсова подушка
bench	верстак
blanket	зона відтворення

Third, a term may have an ordinary, everyday meaning that is not obviously wrong in the context. This is the most dangerous sort of case, because the translator can easily fail to recognize the term as a technical term, and mistakenly render it in its ordinary sense. Swimming-pool is apparently a perfectly ordinary collocation of everyday words. The non-specialist might well translate this expression simply as "плавальний басейн", without recognizing it as a technical term "гомогенний реактор". Volume control may be rendered by a non-specialist translator as "перевірка об'єму "instead of" регулятор гучності".

As these examples show, access to technical dictionaries and up-to-date databanks is indispensable for translators of technical texts.

General dictionaries for the most part include terminological meanings in the semantic structure of the head-word. The fact that one of the meanings is terminological is signalled by showing In brackets the field where it can be used, e.g. astron. (astronomy), chem. (chemistry), geom. (geometry), maths (mathematics), med. (medicine).

Specialized dictionaries, unlike general dictionaries, make a careful selection of terms.

However, not even these source materials can be guaranteed lo keep the translator out of difficulties. For one thing, technical texts are liable to be innovative — why publish them unless they make some new contribution? This means that dictionaries and databanks must always lag slightly behind the most up-to-date use of technical terms.

Second, even the best source materials do not necessarily (jive a single, unambiguous synonym for a particular technical term, so that the translator may still have to make an informed choice between alternatives, e.g.: gate 1) ворота, затвор, засувка, дверцята люка, шлюзні ворота, шлагбаум; 2) літник; 3) штрек, відкаточний штрек, прохід, фільмовий канал; 4) селектор; 5) ключ; 6) шибер; 7) куліса; 8) вентиль; 9) сторбімпульс; 10) решітка корообдирального барабану; 11) ножівковий верстат.

Finally, even established technical terms are sometimes used loosely or informally in technical texts, in which case it may be misleading to render them by their technical target language synonyms.

All of this suggests that the normal limitations on the use dictionaries apply also to technical translation, but in particularly acute form. That is, translators can only select the appropriate target language terminology from a range alternatives offered by the dictionary if they have a firm grasp both of the textual context and of the wider technical context.