The peculiarities of technical translation in the sphere of trade

 

1. Transposition. There may appear a necessity to rearrange elements of different levels: words, phrases, clauses or even sentence. Transposition of words and phrases may be caused by various reasons: differences in the accepted word order in SL and TL, presence or absence of emphasis, differences in the means of communicative syntax.

Speaking of word order, it would be more accurate to say that to change word order really means to rearrange not so much words but part of the sentence when translating from English into Russian one has to change word-order because normally it is fixed in English while in Russian it is relatively free: Most   of the modern radio-transmitters can communicate both telegraph and telephone   signals.- Большинство   современных радиопередатчиков может работать как в телеграфном, так и в   телефонном режиме, which depends (in this particular case) on the rhythm of the whole utterance. But such freedom of choice is rather rare, since the word order of the Russian sentences is not as arbitrary as it seems to be. The position of a word in the sentence is often predetermined by its communicative function.

Transposition of clauses is also used to preserve the semantic and communicative balance of the whole sentences: We   know the primary coil in the ordinary transformer to have more turns than the secondary one. - Известно, что первичная обмотка обычного трансформатора имеет больше витков, чем вторичная.

Transposition of sentences does not become necessary very often. However, it helps sometimes to render the meaning which is expressed by the Past Perfect from in the English text, so as to indicate the succession of action or events: This   question was discussed at the conference - Этот   вопрос был обсужден на конференции. (Этот   вопрос обсуждался на конференции. Этот   вопрос обсуждали на конференции.Конференция  обсудила этот вопрос)

 

2. Replacement. Replacements are also made at different levels.

To conform to the demands of the grammatical system of TL it may become necessary to change the grammatical form of a word: “fifteen thousand dollars” – “пятнадцать тысяч долларов” (“thousand” – singular, “тысяча” - plural), etc.

They often have to replace one part of speech by another.

The zinc in the dry cell accumulates a great many excess electrons which will move to the carbon electrode.-  Цинк   в сухом элементе аккумулирует большое число избыточных электронов, которые   движутся к угольному электроду.

Occasionally some other replacements may become necessary.

However, it must be remember that the choice of parts of speech influences the general stylistic coloring of the text, cf. “бросить взгляд” аnd “взглянуть”, “хранить молчание” and “молчать”, etc. Russian abstract nouns are usually more appropriate in newspapers and official texts, short-form adjectives and passive participle are somewhat bookish and should be avoided if possible when rendering colloquial speech, which means that part of speech replacements may be caused sometimes by purely stylistic considerations.

Replacement of parts of sentence. The most of frequent among such of replacements is that of substituting an object for the subject and vice versa. It is very helpful in translating English passive constructions. Statistics shows that in English they use passive constructions much more often that in Russian. Moreover, in English these constructions in themselves are not marked stylistically while in Russian they are mainly bookish and official. The essence of this replacement is in making the subject of the English sentence the object of the Russian version: This transformation is regularly used when the subject of the English sentence is expressed by a noun denoting some message: “the text (the telegram, the letter, etc.), “в тексте (в телеграмме, в письме и т.д.) говорят (сказано)”. Occasionally this transformation is applied to other nouns in the function of the subject.

One of the most important syntactic peculiarities of the English language is the existence of the secondary predication created by various participial and infinitive constructions. These constructions are included in the structure of the simple sentences in English while Russian simple sentences have only one predicative center. This may lead to the necessity of the substituting Russian composite sentence for simple sentence of the original text.

A long and syntactically complicated sentence containing secondary predication may be translated by several simple sentences: “A few months ago I was nominated for the Governor of the great State of New-York, to run against Mr.Stewart L.Woodford and Mr.John T.Hoffman on an independent ticket” – “Несколько месяцев назад моя кандидатура была выдвинута на пост губернатора великого штата Нью-Йорк, мне предстояло выступить против мистера Стюарта Л.Вудфорда и мистера Джона Т.Хоффмана.”

A different type of syntactic bond may be used in translation instead of that used in original text; i.e. subordination may be replaced by coordination and vice versa. Generally speaking, subordination is more frequently used in English than in Russian, since subordinating words in English are rather vague semantically while in Russian they state rather definitely the character of semantic connection between the clauses.

Syndetic connection used in English sentence is not always appropriate in Russian, so it would often create a wrong stylistic effect if preserved in translation. That is why asyndetic connection of part of the sentence is rather regularly used in Russian instead of English polysyndeton.

So, the following types of replacement may be used in order to overcome difficulties created by differences in the grammatical system of SL and TL: A. Replacement of word-forms (замена форм слова). B. Replacement of part of speech (замены части речи). C. Replacement of part of sentence (замены членов предложения). D. Replacement of a simple sentence by composite one and vice versa (замена простого предложения сложным и наоборот). E. Replacement of the principal clause by a subordinate one and vice versa (замена главного предложения придаточным и наоборот). F. Replacement of subordination by coordination and vice versa (замена подчинения сочинением и наоборот). G. Replacement of syndetic connection by asyndetic and vise versa (замена союзной связи бессоюзной и наоборот). Within the fourth type (replacement of a simple sentence by a composite one and vise versa) they also single out two additional varieties: joining several sentence together (объединение) and dividing a long sentence into several shorter sentences (членение).

    

3. Addition. It is very difficult to say whether this transformation is lexical or grammatical: it is both. Its lexical aspects have already been discussed: it is necessary to make some explanation of transcribed words, describe those notions which have no name in TL, add the words which are implied but not expressed in the structure of attributive phrases, etc. However, in all these cases the structure of the sentence is involved, that is why the transformation is considered to be grammatical. Sometimes there appear grammatical reasons for adding new words: it happens when some meaning is expressed grammatically in the original text while there is no way of expressing it grammatically in TL.

The IMF mission is to arrive in Almaty on November 17.The stuff will focus of the general macroeconomic indicates. (International Monetary Fund – Международный Валютный Фонд)

     17 ноября в Алматы должна прибыть миссия МВФ. Сотрудники фонда сосредоточат внимание на общих макроэкономических показателях.

«You   might ask why engineers have generally chosen to supply us with a.c. rather   than d.c. for our household needs». - «Можно   спросить, почему для домашних надобностей обычно используется переменный, а   не постоянный ток».

 In this way the translated version restores as it were the complete structure of the original sentence some elements of which might be only implied and not expressed materially. When using the transformation of addition one should be very careful to add only that which should really be added. It requires good knowledge of deep structure and surface structure grammars of both SL and TL and ability to analyze semantic and pragmatic aspects of text.

 

4. Ommision. This transformation is seldom structurally obligatory; it is usually caused by stylistic consideration and deals with redundancy traditionally normative in SL and not accepted in TL. A typical example of such redundancy is the use of synonymic pairs in English: “…their only stay and support…” – both the words mean "поддержка”, “опора”. There is no need to translate them both, one is quite enough: “их единственна поддержка” or, according to the demands of the context, “единственное, что спасло их от голодa”.

Sometimes it is recommended to omit semantically empty “tags” of declarative and interrogative sentence: The first thing I did was to give her a call. – Первое, что я сделал, позвонил ей.  

They sometimes recommend omitting logical redundancies and repetitions to achieve what is called “compression of the text”. However, it must be remembered that logical redundancy of speech and various repetitions are used by writers to characterize the personage`s individual manner of speaking, his way of thinking, etc. In such cases omissions are not allowed.

These are the main types of grammatical transformations. It should be born in mind, however, that is practice it is hardly possible to find these elementary transformations in their “pure form”: in most cases it is necessary to combine them

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II.4. Linguistic peculiarities of technical texts.

 

Within the fields of research and teaching the concept "technical text" covers texts which exist within a technical knowledge area and which as a result make use of the technical terminology belonging to that area. Furthermore, technical texts are considered as being informative, impersonal, objective and with a relatively standardized syntax, e.g. with many pre- and post-modifications, nominalisations and passive constructions. So, in crude terms technical texts are -as mentioned - considered a rather stereotyped and homogeneous group. In 1994 Baakes wrote:

"Scientists and engineers are trained to be objective and to accept as facts only impersonal, objective statements about things which can be seen by any observers who choose to look. This objective attitude is naturally reflected in the way they express themselves...”

A natural consequence of the conventional view on technical texts - in a translational perspective - must be that if you master the conventions of technical language, i.e. technical style, the greatest problem to the translator must be of a terminological kind. What I realised during my work as a translator in a technical company was that the expression "technical texts" in business life and among professional translators covers texts within a technical knowledge area (just as was the case within research and teaching), BUT that the expression - in practice - is in no way limited to informative, impersonal and objective text types with a fixed syntax and style. On the contrary it covers a very wide range of text types. In my work I have used the skopos theory (Vermeer 1989) to show that it is the skopos - i.e. purpose/function - which ought to decide which translation strategy is to be used and not an illusion of equivalence between the source and the target text. In the same way you could say that it is the function of the source text which determines the contents and style of a text and not the fact that a text contains technical terminology and certain syntactic characteristics. In translation-oriented text classifications technical texts are traditionally classified as informative texts - and frequently as the extreme opposite to literary language and poetry - which is probably one of the reasons for the very stereotyped view on technical texts. Fortunately, today many researchers are moving away from that view and are becoming more conscious of the fact that most texts – whether they are technical or not - are multifunctional:

"The traditional view of objective, a thetorical scientific discourse...has come increasingly into question..."

Some might claim that the texts are only classified according to their dominant function, but you could then ask the question whether such a classification is possible at all - for how do you assess which function is the most important in a text - is it necessarily the function which takes up most space? Buhler and Jakobson's well-known language functions are extremely useful concepts for the description of functions present in a text, but as the basis of a translation-relevant classification they are of no value and even misleading.We have worked with the following overall hypothesis "Though the informative function is evidently important in technical texts it is not the only relevant one. The majority of technical texts are more expressive than assumed up to now and are multifunctional to an extent which should be taken into account by the translator." Before we proceed we would like to explain what is meant by the concept "expressivity".

Expressivity Defined and Explained

Non-informative purposes can of course be explicitly expressed in a text, but due to the tradition of objectivity there is a tendency to express non-informative purposes in technical texts in a more subtle or implicit way - which does not exactly make it easier for the translator to discover the underlying messages of a text. Stylistic features which express something non-informative we call expressive features. Inspired by Gliser and to a certain extent Nord we have divided the expressive features into syntactic expressivity and lexical expressivity. Syntactic expressivity structures and emphasizes part of the text. A text can thus be organized in a way which supports the non-informative purposes of the text. Examples of syntactic expressivity can be: parallelisms, rhetorical questions, antithesis or inverted word order.

Lexical expressivity occurs when the attitudes and expressive messages of the writer are expressed at the level of lexis. E.g. by means of metaphors, puns, alliteration, hedging or by the use of lexemes with many connotations and a large number of other lexical means. By means of a mini-corpus consisting of 6 different technical texts in Danish (from the same company) we have tried to show that the technical writer - like any other writer - makes use of syntactic as well as lexical expressive linguistic means. It goes without saying that in most technical texts these features are a bit more subtle than e.g. within literature and poetry, but of course this does not mean that they do not exist. You might even say that a pun or a creative metaphor has a stronger effect in a text type where they are not so frequent. Each expressive feature often seems rather unimportant seen in isolation, but it is important to understand that it is the sum and interplay of the expressive elements in a text which point at the expressive messages.

When working as a staff translator it gradually dawned upon me that we was often left with impressions of a text which did not stem from the purely informative level of the text. We quite often got the impression that a writer was expressing this or that attitude in a very subtle way. I.e. in addition to the obvious subjects and purposes, the texts were filled with "hidden agendas" (not to be understood in any negative sense). Presumably most professional translators would recognize the intuitions just described as it is well known that there is more to a text than meets the eye. However, this is traditionally the way we describe phenomena we do not know enough about and when taking a closer look at the texts we was dealing with we discovered that my intuitions probably originated (at least partly) from a number of lexemes pointing in the same direction, though frequently with only part of their meaning. As we were later to become aware, the phenomenon just described is that of isotopy.

II.5. «False friends» of translator.

 

“False friends” – words or expressions that appear the same in two languages, but have different meanings in each. French and English form a happy hunting-ground. As language evolves, meanings change, and words from the past become false friends although in the same language.

In France, the word “demander” means only to ask or request. Woe betides the translator who renders it into English as “demand” – which is far more peremptory, and in some contexts can sound rude. This error is rumoured to have provoked a diplomatic incident. Another, which I witnessed myself, was made by the official interpreter whom the late President Georges Pompidou brought with him to London when Britain was seeking to join the European Community, as it was then called. The President had said – on television – that he well understood the emotional bonds between Britain and the Commonwealth. His interpreter translated “liens sentimentaux” as “sentimental links”. He should perhaps have said “links of sentiment”: but his actual words implied that those links were mawkish, false, or a blend of both.

These are plain instances of how “false friends” can affect diplomatic relations. But there are many that merely confuse ordinary people. “Actuel” means “present-day”, not “actual”; “une bribe” is a fragment (of music or talk), not a bribe; “un courtier” is not a courtier, but a broker; “descente de lit” (“bedside mat”) was misread, by a translator of Jean Cocteau, as “getting out of bed”. The alphabet could continue indefinitely.

Translation remains the problem, especially when the words in each language appear the same. And “false friends” are not the only culprits. Less usual suspects also carry burdens from the past. These are words and expressions that are directly translatable, and sometimes virtually identical.

For example, the words:

1. Actual -- means "фактический", not "актуальный".   

 It is interesting to illustrate, at this point, how Flory's original equation can lead to serious discrepancies if applied without due regard to the actual concentration of materials. На этой стадии интересно проиллюстрировать, как первоначальное уравнение Флори может привести к серьезным отклонениям, если его применять без учета фактической концентрации реагентов.

2. Original -- means "первоначальный", not "оригинальный".

The relationship is responsible for the original shifting of this band. Это взаимоотношение обусловливает первоначальный сдвиг этой полосы.

3. Progressive -- means "постепенный", not "прогрессивный".

A progressive increase in volume was noticed at all extensions. При всех растяжениях было замечено постепенное возрастание объема.

4. Actually -- "фактически", not "актуально".

This compound actually proved to be an isomer. Фактически это соединение оказалось изомером.

5. Originally -- "первоначально", not "оригинально"-It is the method originally developed by Hahn and his co-workers. Это метод, первоначально разработанный Ханом и сотрудниками.

6. Progressively -- "постепенно", "все более", not "прогрессивно".

The stability of an ion of the present type decreases as the number of aromatic rings decreases, so that benzhydrol and benzyl alcohol appear to behave as progressively weaker bases. Устойчивость иона данного типа уменьшается по мере того, как уменьшается число ароматических колец, так что, повидимому, бензгидрол и бензиловый спирт ведут себя как все более и более слабые основания.

7. Specific -- means "удельный", not "специфический".

If one knows the value for the specific rotation of optically pure phenylmethylacetic acid, it then becomes possible to set minimum values for the rotations of the optically pure aphenylethylphenols. Если известно значение удельного вращения оптически чистой фенилметилуксусной кислоты, то возможно установить минимальные величины вращения оптически чистых афенилэтилфенолов.  

8. Technique -- "метод", "методика", "процесс", not "техника"   

9. Procedure -- "методика", "метод", not"процедура" (см. ї 60).  

10. Figure -- "рисунок", "цифра", "число", not "фигура".  

11. Object--"цель", "предмет", not "объект".  

12. Subject-- "вопрос", "предмет", not "субъект".  

13. Extra -- "добавочный", "дополнительный", "лишний", not "высшего качества"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II.6. Lexicology and grammar of technical literature.

 

Any translator comes across various problems within translating any text documents; many lexical problems can be seen during his course of work. To check out these lexical problems we should first of all know what does lexicology means:     The term «lexicology» is of Greek origin / from «lexis» - «word» and «logos» - «science». Lexicology is the part of linguistics which deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups.