Филологические науки/6. Актуальные проблемы перевода

Преподаватель английского языка Игнатенко С.С.

Университет МВД, Украина

Text translation problems and cross-cultural misunderstandings

During the translation process, the translators come across various situations that might be problematic. It should be mentioned that there is a difference between a translation difficulty, which relates to a difficulty encountered by an individual translator, due to a certain inability, and a translation problem, which is a universal problem. Translation theory mentions four types of translation problems: linguistic, cultural, pragmatic and text specific problems. This article deals with the intercultural problems in translating.

Cultural problems are mainly due to the contrast in expressing various ideas and approaching specific text genres. For instance, the English template for an instructions manual differs from the French one, or a culture may employ a specific typology for a species of animals whereas another may not. These implications for translation may take several forms ranging from lexical content and syntax to ideologies and ways of life in a given culture. The translator also has to decide on the importance given to certain cultural aspects and to what extent it is necessary or desirable to translate them into the certain language. The parallels in culture often provide a common understanding despite significant formal shifts in the translation. The cultural implications for translation are thus of significant importance as well as lexical concerns.

Furthermore, when the source and target languages belong to different cultural groups, the first problem faced by the prose-translator is finding terms in his or her native language that express the highest level of faithfulness possible to the meaning of certain words. For example, there are some words that are related to typical fabrics, cookery specialties, or jobs; they also represent specific culture and the translators should be very careful in translating such words. They also find it difficult to render ambiguous puns. Similarly, the titles of stories and novels provide many examples of such ambiguities, which are hard or even impossible to translate. A literary translator must also be skilled enough to translate feelings, cultural nuances, humor and other delicate elements of a piece of work. In fact, the translators do not translate meanings but the messages. That is why, the text must be considered in its totality.

Although if to consider how close any translation can come to the original text or statement Nida notes that “since no two languages are identical either in meanings given to corresponding symbols, or in ways in which such symbols are arranged in phrases and sentences, it stands the reason that there can be no absolute correspondence between languages… no fully exact translation…the impact may be reasonably close to the original but no identity in detail”(Nida 1964:126). Every text is unique and, at the same time, it is the translation of another text. No text is entirely original because language itself, in its essence, is already a translation: firstly, of the non-verbal world and secondly, since every sign and every phrase is the translation of another sign and another phrase. However, this argument can be turned around without losing any of its validity: all texts are original because every translation is distinctive. Every translation, up to a certain point, is an invention and as such it constitutes a unique text.

To begin with, the translator keeps both the Source Language (S.L) and Target Language (T.L) in mind and tries to translate carefully. But, it becomes very difficult for a translator to decode the whole textbook literally; therefore, he takes the help of his own view and endeavors to translate accordingly. It is broadly accepted that ‘the original text’, ‘the translated version’, ‘the language of the original’ and ‘the language of the translation’ are constantly transformed in space and time. Numerous publishers, reviewers and readers accept a translated text if it is fluently readable, if it reflects the foreign author’s individuality or purpose or the fundamental sense of the foreign book - that the translation is not a translation in reality, but the original. Translation is a challenging activity and there are few difficulties that emerge throughout the translation process since every language portrays the world in diverse way and has its own grammar structure, grammar rules and syntax variance. For example, Greek has separate words for ‘light blue’ and ‘dark blue’, while other languages, such as Welsh and Japanese, have words that can denote ‘blue’ or ‘green’, or something in between.

Examples of translation problems:

1.”Who is the President of the United States?”

2. How to translate”tongs” into Romanian?

3.”Starfish are not exactly fish”

1. The first example is a question in a questionnaire addressed to mental patients. Its aim is to test patients’ memory. Clearly, this question should be addressed to patients living in the United States. But what happens if the questionnaire needs to be translated in another language? By offering this equivocal answer, but it depends on the context. Normally, such a questionnaire should be adapted to the target audience (i.e. non-American mental patients), so the translated version of the question should replace the US with the appropriate country. But what happens if the question should be translated in the subtitles of an interview videotaped for training purposes? Is the aforementioned solution still valid? Should US be again replaced with the patient’s country of residence? No, in this case the question should be translated as it is. And this is due to the fact that the target audience and the purpose of the question are different, but also to the medium used. In this case, the target audience is no longer made up of patients, but of health professionals who need to be trained in view of using this assessment tool. If, however, instead of subtitling, the client would choose to dub the video, it would be possible to replace again US with the audience’s country of residence, but this would entail further changes and the translator should be instructed to do so by the client.

This is a typical example of a pragmatic problem. You can see that here the solution depends on the purpose, target audience and medium of the target text. The client should provide all the necessary information to the translator in order for him/her to know which solution to adopt.

2. The second example, tongs (kitchen tool), was contained in the same questionnaire. It was used in a section which tested the patient’s ability to recognize various objects. The problem that the Romanian translator has in this case is both cultural and pragmatic. It is cultural because the object is not at all common in Romanian culture (even healthy individuals would have a problem naming it). It is pragmatic because the translation task requires a solution suited for this particular context (in a different context, for instance in an instructions manual, the name of the object should be equated). It is suggested to replace this object with another one which has a similar degree of iconicity and usage in the target culture. This solution would entail not only a change operated in the text, but also the replacing of the actual object shown to the patient.

3. The third example in a text with facts about various species of animals. This sentence represents a problem for the Romanian translator because the Romanian equivalent for starfish does not contain the word fish, which means a Romanian native will know that the starfish is not exactly a species of fish and s/he doesn’t expect such a text to tell him/her that. Just like in the previous example, the problem cannot be placed into a single category. So here they are the linguistic problem (the incongruent equivalence) and a cultural problem (the inappropriate sentence in this context due to the Romanian equivalent). The solution, again, would require replacing this piece of information with another fact about starfish.

The difficulty in translation just lies in the fact that both the content and the style are already existent in the original and as a result, you will have to do your best to reproduce them as they are in quite a different language.

Литература:

1. Nida, E. A. (1964). Towards a Science of Translating. With Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

2. Nida, E. A., & Taber, C. R. (1982). The Theory and Practice of Translation. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

3. Головлева Е.И. Основы межкультурной коммуникации//Учебное пособие. Ростов н/Дону. Феникс, 2008 .с. 26

4. Тхорик В.И., Фанян Н.Ю. Лингвокультурология и межкультурная коммуникация//Учебное пособие. Второе издание – М: ГИС, 2006, с.162-165