Tatyna Shelestova
PECULIARITIES OF INFORMATIVE TRANSLATION FROM ENGLISH INTO
RUSSIAN
Annotation: This article deals
with language peculiarities of technical translation which allows readers to
interpret and translate a text in a deeper and successful way. The article
reveals a great importance of knowledge of such peculiarities for an adequate
understanding of an informative text.
Introduction
Scientific and technical texts are of great importance
as to their content and form. Over four million articles are published annually
besides a great amount of books on the problems of science and technology.
Nowadays technical translation is an issue of the day
as the translators who work in foreign companies have to face certain
difficulties while translating. The quality and result are determined by the
peculiarities of the source text. Therefore, the interaction of text and
translation is one of the issues for the theory of translation.
Translation of scientific and technical text is a
multidimensional and multifaceted process determined by the System and norm of
the two languages involved. It is not only dependant on the two cultures and
the communicative situations, but also directly dependant on the referential
situation and the functional parameters, of the source / target text. The
process of translation is not only a speech act, but also an act of
cross-cultural communication and this fact is borne out by the
interdisciplinary status of translation studies and its close link with
contrastive and text-linguistics; socio and psycholinguistics and semiotics.
Results
The 21st century witnessed the emergence of scientific
and technical translation as an independent field of study on the international
level. The Intercultural and Intercontinental communications made it mandatory
for human beings to understand scientific, technical and environmental issues
in the world, and to leave their cocoons behind. It only served to underscore
the significance that translation studies was to hold in the times to come. There
is hardly a Translator or an Interpreter today who has not to deal with
translation of scientific and technical materials. Translation of technical
text puts a premium on the translator's knowledge of the subject-matter of
Source Text. He must take great pains to get familiar with the system of terms
in the appropriate field and make good use of technical dictionaries and other
books of reference. When new words come into being to denote news object or
phenomena, they naturally cannot have regular equivalents in another language.
Such equivalents may only gradually evolve as the result of extensive contacts
between the two nations.
Therefore the translator coming across a new coinage
has to interpret its meaning and to choose the appropriate way of rendering it
in his translation. It has been observed that many phenomenon, words and
terminologies of the English language have no regular equivalents, and a number
of techniques has been suggested for transformation of such units of
translation in Russian. New words are coined in the language to give names to
new objects, or phenomena which become known to the people. Thus, research has
been conducted in the background of the ever changing in scientific and
technological scenario. The fast-track changes and rapid breakthrough in almost
all fields in science and technology has made it mandatory for technical and
scientific texts to translate into languages, other than the one in which the
study or work has been conducted. Selecting this area to work in, the researcher
has tried to focus on the problems encountered during the translation of
technical and scientific texts from English into Russian. The researcher is
seemed mindful of the magnitude of the task, and has therefore delimited the
study to focusing on the lexico-semantic peculiarities of translation of
scientific and technical text from English
into Russian. Russian and English are difficult languages to
learn/teach, yet the geographical proximity has made it important for learners
and teachers to recognize and identify the issues involved in translating the
text. The major problems, in rendering English scientific/technical texts into
Russian, lie in the domain of lexico-semantics.
Thus, the researcher has made a comparison of the two
languages. But in keeping with the nature of the study, has focused only on the
major differences – the foremost being the fact that English lexicon does not
suffer from a dearth of scientific and technical terminology. These and other
points have been discussed in detail in this study. The parameters of the
research demand a theoretical framework, and this has been discussed in the
article. The article comprises general scientific and technical lexicon;
word-building; structure and features of translation of terminological units
and ways of translating multi-component terms etc. This study discusses
translation studies, from a variety of perspectives and not merely the
pedagogical aspects. The nature of the research combined with the significance
of the language in the global scenario, makes this study the first of its kind,
and the researcher, without idle boasting, is hopeful that he has begun to set
a new trend. Hopefully, this study would be utilized to its utmost and in the
spirit in which it has been conducted.
The issue of technical translation has been regarded
by a great number of scientists such as T.A. Kazakhova, V.A. Sudohovtcev, A.L.
Pumpyanskiy, S.V. Tyulenev, V.A.
Komissarov, I.S. Alexeeva and others.
The aim of the article is to define language
peculiarities of informative texts and to consider the translation of
scientific and technical terminology. Methodological
basis of the research is comparative analysis, methods of observation,
description.
Specialized texts are characterized by their
information value (content-richness), consistency (strict succession, clear
connection between the main idea and details), accuracy and objectivity,
clearness and clarity. In the field of vocabulary it implies the usage of
terminology and specialized vocabulary.
The term is thought to be an emotionally-neutral word
(word-combination) conveying a name of a concrete notion that refers to this or
that field of science and technology [2]. In specialized literature terms
possess the main semantic meaning.
A term is characterized by
availability of definition, precision of semantics, independence, stylistic
neutrality (absence of expression), brevity, lightness of functioning in various
word-forms and capacity of combining with language
Besides terms in
informative texts there are generally scientific words and words in general
usage. This vocabulary is characterized by the fact that it does not have the
property to denote notions and objects of a certain scientific and technical
field. Generally scientific and technical vocabulary consists of words,
word-combinations, separate formations, special patterns and clichés
used for expressing links and relations between terminated notions and objects,
also for expressing quality, quantity and other estimate characteristics while
differentiating and classifying generally scientific and technical notions. Generally scientific and technical words are used
in certain fields for describing various processes and phenomena: to call up
data from memory (вызывать данные из памяти), to retrieve data
(выбирать, отыскивать данные), current (выпрямлять ток), to be alive (находиться под напряжением), to draw current (потреблять ток), to deenergize
something (выключить напряжение), to step up voltage (повышать напряжение).
In technical texts there
are words (problem, information) which create a lexical range of terms: menu (возможность выбора, набор, перечень), onus (задача, долг), strength (достоинство, преимущество), to see (реагировать, фиксировать), to drive (привести к срабатыванию). The peculiarity of these words consists of
the difficulty determining their meanings in the original text, and matching of
translation equivalents in the target language. Some of these words are
stylistically colored ones: mushrooming (быстрое развитие, быстрое изменение), bugaboo (проблема, трудность), beauty (достоинство, преимущество), workhorse (основной, главный, ведущий), wisdom (целесообразность, основанность на точном расчете). Any stylistically colored
units of original text have to be transformed into neutral ones which convey
their information essence.
There is a great amount of
words and word-combinations so called false friends of translators (for
instance, contribution - технологический, data - данные, decade - десятичный, instance - экземпляр, simulation - моделирование). Transliteration method can distort the meaning of
translated text [3].
The important
feature of technical texts that is reflected in the selection and usage of
language means is to reach brevity and compactness of narration. Therefore,
there are so many elliptical constructions there. Misunderstanding of these
constructions leads to the mistakes in translation. For stylistic and technical
style the substitution of subordinate clause in postposition is peculiar (esp.
suffixes – able, -ive): the materials available excellent properties never
before attainable (материалы с доступными превосходными свойствами никогда прежде не достижимые); all factors
important in the evaluation of (все факторы важны в оценке); problems difficult with
ordinary equipment (проблемы с обычным оборудованием). The same aim can be attained using
infinitive forms in the function of attribute: the properties to be expected (свойства, которые ожидаются) [4].
Conclusion
All the mentioned lexical and grammatical peculiarities of technical
texts have a direct impact on communicative character of such materials which
has to be conveyed while translating. The determination of language specificity
of this or that speech type or a functional style is produced in the frame of
special theory of translation for defining the influence of this specificity on
the translation process, character and ways to reach equivalence while
translating materials of such a type. The degree of such influence depends not
only on lexical and grammatical peculiarities in the original text, but on
their interaction with analogical phenomena in the target language.
Literature:
1. Alexeeva I.S. Professionalniy trening perevodchika. Sankt Peterburg, 2005.
2. Sudohovtsev V.A. Nauchno-tehnicheskaya informatsiya i perevod. Moscow,
1989.
3. Borisova L.I. Lozhniye druzya perevodchika. Moscow, 2005.
4. Latyshev L.K. Kurs perevoda (ekvivalentnost perevoda i sposoby yee
dostizheniya). Moscow, 1981.