Dauletbayeva Alima

Taraz University of Innovation and Humanities, Kazakhstan

 

PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATING PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS

 

Phraseological units, or idioms, as they are called by most western scholars, represent what can probably be described as the most picturesque, colourful and expressive part of the language's vocabulary. [1,225p.] Academician V.V.Vinagradov spoke of the semantic change in phraseological units as “a meaning resulting from a peculiar chemical combination of words”.  A.V.Koonin offered that a phraseological unit is a stable word –group characterized by a completely or partially transferred meaning  [1, 230-231p.].

           One of the main problems in the art of translation is phraseology. In this context, it is a disheartening fact that most of the language-pair-related phraseological dictionaries are unidirectional (source language to target language) and based on a selection of the target language's phraseological units. The problem with the unidirectional approach is the very important fact that phraseological units cannot simply be reversed. It is necessary to make a new selection among the idioms of the former target language in order to achieve a central, adequate corpus of lexical units.

            Some say, translation is art based on knowledge. Of course, an interpreter must have a good knowledge of the idioms of the two languages as well as take decisions to the best of his (her) knowledge and taste. Suppose one has to interpret the idiom "метать громы и молнии (в чей-л. адрес)" which is rather frequently used in the Russian press. The interpreter who wants to make his translation idiomatic has to look up a dictionary of Russian idioms to be sure of the idiom's meaning, and then to find in a dictionary of English idioms an adequate English idiom. This process seems to be ideal but our interpreter soon realizes that translation begins where dictionaries end.

The interpreter would realize that the idiom "метать громы и молнии" may mean three things in one: (1) быть в страшном гневе, (2) выкрикивать бранные слова и (3) что подобные действия — "гнев" и "крик"— дело напрасное или неразумное.

So, it seems impossible to find a single English equivalent for all contexts. At first glance, however, it appears quite possible to find several English idioms and translate the Russian idiomatically 'by parts', that is,

(1) "быть в страшном гневе" may be expressed by 'to be beside oneself with rage' or 'to go up into the air' (i.e. explode with rage) or 'to fly off the handle' (which may, sometimes, correspond to the Russian "он словно с цепи сорвался");

(2) "выкрикивать бранные слова" can be idiomatically expressed by 'to jump down smb.'s throat' (i.e. shout angry words at smb. though (3) it is needless and/or unwise to do) or by 'to go off the deep end' (i.e. speak with unduly anger). However, the resulting combination of an idiom of 'rage' and of that 'of needless shouting' appears to be too long in time to suit interpretation purposes, e.g., 'Beside herself with rage, she was jumping down his throat' or even 'She went up into the air and off the deep end about it'. The latter— we may note— sounds particularly funny due to the zeugma's effect. (Recall Ch. Dickens' zeugma: 'She fell into a chair and a fainting fit simultaneously'.)

On the other hand, the shortest way of translating the idiom "метать громы и молнии" may well be 'to hurl thunderbolts at smb', that is, by means of a metaphor devised by experienced translators. This metaphor does not exist in the English language but is well understood when the context helps. We realize, at the same time, that the latter part of our combined equivalents, that is, 'to jump down smb.'s throat' and 'to go off the deep end' seem to be satisfactory for the purpose because their usage cannot be imagined beyond the scope of anger.

As one can see now, interpreters are not able to deal, in their work, only with the idioms (e.g., "Привычкавторая натура") that may have, in English, their ready-made equivalents (e.g., 'Custom is second nature'). Interpreters have to be ready to create what we might call 'contextual equivalents' which do not exist in dictionaries.

And it is not at all enough to know the existing types of translation, that is, for example, to know that Russian idiomatic phrases can be translated by means of

(1) an English absolute monoequivalent ("складывать оружие" - 'to lay down one's arms'),     

(2) or by a relative equivalent ("встречать что-либо в штыки" - 'to meet smth. at dagger-point'),

(3) or by a selected synonym ("метать громы и молнии" might, depending on a context, be translated either as 'to jump down smb.'s throat' or 'to go off the deep end' or 'to go up into the air', etc., etc., etc.),

(4) or metaphorically ("метать громы и молнии"- ‘tо hurl thunder bolts at smb.'),

(5) or, the last and the least, by a description ("встречать что-либо в штыки"- ‘tо give smth. a hostile reception' or 'to meet smth. With resistance', or the like).

It is only natural that this very classification (as any other) can and does show the result of the translation, whereas the process of translation is really quite different.

The choice of a particular type of translation is secondary and subordinate to the requirements that our translation should be (a) adequate and (b) idiomatic. Besides, the choice also depends on (c) the circumstantial factors of the language.

NOTE: The use of a descriptive translation may be justified, for one, if a certain idiom is repeated twice in the same paragraph. To avoid tautо1оgу and present a better style of narration, it is acceptable to translate one of the phrases descriptively.

One must learn how to translate an idiom by an idiom (e.g., "встречать в штыки" by 'to meet at dagger-point') because descriptive translations (e.g., 'to meet with resistance') almost always happen to be not only emotively blank but also unable to serve as a basis for our application, in the process of translation, such important and necessary stylistic means as puns (e.g., "Она встретила предложение в штыки, но штыки ее оказались тупыми".) or anti-idiomatic additions (e.g., "Они встретили наше предложение буквально в штыки".) and many others to be thoroughly considered by us in this book later on.

The origin of idioms is closely connected with people's mentality .The present day English can't be considered full of value without idiomatic usage, as the use of idioms is the first sign of a certain language's developing. Idiomatic sentences enrich a language and the knowledge of idioms signal that the speaker knows the language on the level of a native speaker. And we concluded that even languages belonging to different families may have similar or hemi similar idioms and those which differ dramatically can be guessed within the context. So idioms are integral part of language which makes our speech more colourful and authentically native.

 Literature:

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6. PEER, W. Van (2000), “Hidden Meanings”, Contextualized Stylistics, Tony Bex, Michael Burke and Peter Stockwell (eds.), Amsterdam-Atlanta GA, Rodopi, pp. 39-47.

7. REBER, A. S. (1995), The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, London, Penguin Books [1985].

8. SHORT, M. (1995), “Understanding conversational undercurrents in ‘The Ebony Tower’ by John Fowles”, Twentieth-Century Fiction: From Text to Context, Peter Verdonk and Jean J. Weber (eds.), London and New York, Routledge, pp. 45-62.