Aitmukhanbetova A.S.
Master of Humanitarian Science
Senior teacher
of al-Farabi Kazakh National University
Bekturova E.K.
Senior teacher
of al-Farabi
Kazakh National University
The
translation of the national coloring words
In every language, there are words that, without in any way
distinguishing themselves in the original from the verbal co-text, however they
are not easily transmissible into another language through the usual means and
demand from the translator a peculiar attitude: some of these pass to the text
of the translation in unaltered form (they are transcribed), others may only
partially preserve in translation their morphological or phonetic structure,
still others must sometimes be substituted for lexical units of a completely
different value or even "composed". Among these words, we meet
denominations of element of everyday life, of history, of culture etc. of a
given people, country, place that do not exist in other peoples, countries and
places. Exactly these words have received in translation studies the name of
"realia".
Vlahov and Florin's research is precious, we will return to it many
times again. For the time being, what we wish to stress is the definition the
two Bulgarian scholars give to "realia" within the framework of
interest of this paper: words (and composed expressions) of the popular
language representing denominations of objects, concepts, typical phenomena of
a given geographic place, of material life or of social-historical
peculiarities of some people, nation, country, tribe, that for this reason
carry a national, local or historical color; these words do not have exact
matches in other languages.
As to realia translation, there are many possibilities, many ways of
incorporating. The first actualization consists in the neologism, often
amounting to a calque. By "calque" we usually mean the
"translation calque": with material of the receiving language a
simple or composed word is formed by literally translating the elements of the
expression in the source culture. One classic example is the English
skyscraper, that has many calques in different languages: the Russian
neboskreb, the Italian grattacielo, the French gratte-ciel, the German
Wolkenkratzer, for example.
There are instances of appropriation, i.e. of adaptation of foreign
realia: a word in the receiving language is created that, however,
fundamentally is worn over the frame - even from a phonemic point of view - of
the original word.
A couple of examples from Vlahov and Florin's list of "political
and social" realia can clarify the kind of translation problems we are
talking about: think of how you would "translate" into your own
language county, canton, princedom, bidonville, arrondissement, suk, promenade,
corso, prospekt, agora, storting, kneset, duma, czar, doge, vizier, alcalde,
ayatollah, satrap, Bürgermeister, Union Jack, fleur de lis, and so on.
Set
against this definition of realia, both our examples appear to designate
objects or concepts typical of a given culture: traditional British
culture—British cuisine?—in the case of the pudding, American sci-fi in the
case of the quantum leap. Neither of them has "exact matches"
(whatever this means) in our target languages. Both phrases carry some
"local colour," as is witnessed by the fact that other speakers felt
compelled to take them up again and develop on them, perhaps in order to enrich
their own speech with some humour. That's why I argue that phrases like these
can be considered as a specific type of realia.
The difficulties while translating are connected most
of all with conveyance of national character
of one or another work: the brighter it reflects national life the more
illuminate characteristic situations the more difficult for the translator to
find adequate functional figurative means.
It will be enough to recollect the difficulties that the translator faced
with translating wonderful works of outstanding American writer John Steinbeck.
Steinbeck is not only a deeply national, original writer but also a modern
writer. His creative work could appear only in our days. Many translators mark
out Originality and specific character do not show that the work cannot be
translated but they show the creative character of the translation process.
World literature knows many examples when translators managed to convey all the
originality of works and these translations became masterpieces as their
originals. Originality, national coloring of the work is not lost in the
succeed translations and that is one of the main principals of creative
translation activity. National coloring like everything in the world is in the
constant movement. Here the translation ‘s role is enriched with one positive
moment. His task is to carry this constantly changing stability to readers of
other nations. It is interesting that for some works this process lasts more
than ten years till the form is adopted and reconstructed.
List
of literature
1.
Andress A. “The distance of time and translation.” 1965.
2.
Aristov N.B. “The basis of translation.” 1959
3.
Aznaurova E.S., Abdurahmonova D.I. “Translation theory and practice.”
1982.
4.
Barkhudarov L. S. “Language and translation.” 1975