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ПЕРЕВОД И ПЕРЕВОДОВЕДЕНИЕ • TRANSLATION STUDIES
УДК 81'243:81' 25:81'33:81'811.111-26
С. С. Ильина
Подготовка к саммиту Азиатско-Тихоокеанского экономического сотрудничества: перевод дорожных знаков
Проводимый во Владивостоке со 2 по 9 сентября 2012 года саммит АТЭС изменил многое в жизни города. В рамках подготовки к этому событию во Владивостоке построены два вантовых моста - на остров Русский и через бухту Золотой Рог; проложена высокоскоростная федеральная магистраль М-60, соединяющая Владивосток с г. Хабаровском, на острове Русский за три года построен и введен в эксплуатацию кампус Дальневосточного федерального университета. Все новые объекты получили свое толкование на английском языке. Буквально за несколько дней именования всех основных зданий, улиц, проспектов, населенных пунктов и т. д. были переведены / транслитерированы на английский язык и перенесены на дорожные знаки. Согласно мнению большинства лингвистов, а также иностранцев, столкнувшихся с попытками понять суть появившихся дорожных знаков, в ходе перевода топонимов с русского языка на английский были допущены ряд ошибок, вводящих иностранных гостей города в тупик. В статье приводится анализ перевода дорожных знаков г. Владивостока и федеральной трассы М-60, на основе которых предпринимается попытка понять природу допущенных ошибок и делается предположение о факте существования русского варианта английского языка.
Ключевые слова: ГОСТ, перевод топонимов, русский вариант английского языка, саммит АТЭС, транслитерация
Svetlana S. Il'ina
Vladivostok APEC Road Signs: Drawbacks in Translation or Russian English?
The latest, 24 the APEC summit took place on the 2d-9th of September, 2012 in Vladivostok, the capital of the Russian Far East. Vladivostok had undergone great changes to get ready for the APEC summit on Russkiy Island. Among these innovations are: construction of the bridge to the Russkiy Island, construction of the Far Eastern Federal University on Russkiy Island; construction of the bridge across the Golden Horn Bay, construction of the rail road «Vladivostok -Airport - Ussuriysk», modernization of Vladivostok Airport, construction of 3-star class hotels. All these innovations are accompanied with their translations into English: streets, avenues, monuments, bus stops, stores, main buildings, major companies, and organizations were to be given their English equivalents in the shortest period of time, just several days before APEC participants' arrival. This article is the first attempt to analyze this overnight phenomenon. Most often and vividly observed by both the city dwellers and its guests are the local toponyms, and it's them that arose a lot of discussions and are considered either to be poorly translated or a perfect example of the Russian English.
Keywords: APEC 2012, GOST - National Standard of Russian Federation, road / traffic signs, Russian English, toponym translation, transliteration
Historical and political comments
APEC, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, is s forum for 21 Pacific Rim member economies that seeks to promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific region. It was established in 1989 in response to the growing interdependence of Asia-Pacific economies and the advent of regional trade blocks in other parts of the world; to fears that highly industrialized Japan (a region, and to establish new markets for member of 8) would come to dominate economic activity in the Asia-Pacific agricultural products and raw material beyond Europe...[http: // en. m. wikipedia. Retrieved on Jan. 11, 2014]
Geographical comments
The latest, 24 the APEC summit took place on the 2d-9th of September, 2012 in Vladivostok, the capital of the Russian Far East. Vladivostok had undergone great changes to get ready for the APEC summit on Russkiy Island. Among these innovations are: construction of the bridge to the Russkiy Island, construction of the Far Eastern Federal University on Russkiy Island; construction of the bridge across the Golden Horn Bay, construction of the rail road «Vladivostok - Airport - Ussuriysk», modernization of Vladivostok Airport, construction of 3-star class hotels. All these innovations are accompanied with their translations into English: streets, avenues, monuments, bus stops, stores, main buildings, major companies, and organizations were to be given their English equivalents in the shortest period of time, just several days before APEC participants' arrival. This article is the first attempt to analyze this overnight phenomenon. Most often and vividly observed by both the city dwellers and its guests are the local toponyms, and it's them that arose a lot of discussions and are considered either to be poorly translated or a perfect example of the Russian English.
Linguistic comments
Toponyms are normally transcribed or transliterated: Oxford - Оксфорд, Находка -Nakhodka. Now the tendency towards transcription prevails over the tendency towards transliteration - some decades ago one should render Stratford-on-Avon as Стратфорд-на-Авоне, now it is Стратфорд-он-Эйвон. Likewise: Комсомольск-на-Амуре should be rendered Komsomolsk-na-Amure rather than Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur.
Care should be taken to revert to non-naturalized place-names: Beijing is not *Бейц-зин in Russian, but Пекин, Leghorn is Ливорно, and Munich is known to Russians as Мюнхен. In rendering, a translator should check all terms in the most recent atlas. Bilingual general and specialized dictionaries may be consulted. A term found must be carefully checked in monolingual dictionaries.
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Transparent local geographical names can be translated by calques: Rocky Mountains - Скалистые горы, Saint Helena Island - остров Святой Елены, залив Золотой Рог - Golden Horn Bay.
Half-calques can be used to translate toponyms with classifiers, such as river, lake, bridge: Waterloo Bridge - мост Ватерлоо, Salt Lake City - город Солт-Лэйк-Сити.
If a toponym is a little-known proper name, it is normally transferred (transcribed) with the addition of some generic information (Dalnegorsk, a small mining town in Primorski Region). Names of states are usually clarified: Seattle, Washington - (город) Сиэтл, штат Вашингтон.
Some toponyms are substituted in translation: Strait of Dover - Па-де-Кале, the English Channel - Ла-Манш. However, it is important to avoid wrong associations in substitution. For example, Приморский край is sometimes translated as Maritime Territory, which sometimes confuses English-speaking receptors mistake it for the Canadian Maritime Province [2, 123-124].
The trip by the federal highway M-60 «Ussuri» Khabarovsk-Vladivostok from the international airport Knevichi greeting international guests to Russkiy Island which hosted APEC 2012 Summit is full of road signs.
АЭРОПОРТ. НАХОДКА AIRPORT T ЫДКНОГЖ Д ТЕРМИНАЛ “A"I NAKH0DKA
АРТЕМ
ARTEM
АЭРОПОРТ A'RPORT
ТЕРМИНАЛ “В'
As one can guess, there are some problems with multiple signs transliterating for example toponym АРТЕМ as ARTYEM / ARTEM, many of them being either only in Russian or combining transliteration with half-calques (LAZURNAYA BAY, RUSSKIY isl.) Besides that, isl. (used with RUSSKIY isl.) is short for an isle, which is a tiny island, but RUSSKIY is a rather big island with some settlements, institutions, big medical center, and FEFU campus.
Upon reaching the city of Vladivostok, its international guests observe the road signs directing them to the city's main streets, such as SVETLANSKAYA Str., SEMYENOVS-KAYA Str., SUKHANOVA Str., POGRANICHNAYA Str., POLOGAYA Str., NEKRASOVSKAYA Str., NABEREZHNAYA Str., FONTANNAYA Str., UBOREVICHA Str., GOGOLYA Str., FADEYEVA Str.,
BORISENKO Str., OSTRYAKOVA Str., IL'ICHEVA Str., RUSSKAYA Str., VOYENNOYE SHOSSE, Str., ADM. YUMASHEVA Str., STRELOCHNAYA Str., ZHIGURA Str., POSTYSHEVA, Str., FIR-SOVA Str., KOSMONAVTOV Str., DOBROVOLSKOGO Str., MONTAGNAYA, Str., NIKOFOROVA Str., VS. SIBIRTSEVA Str., SOROK LET VLKSM Str., ул. ПРАПОРЩИКА КОМАРОВА (never transliterated in English). (Here and further in the article toponyms in the bold style are the ones that need special attention).
The city's avenues got the following English «appearance»: KRASNOGO ZNAMENI AVE. / пр-т КРАСНОГО ЗНАМЕНИ, NARODNYI / NARODNY AVE., OKEANSKIY AVE.,
OSTRYAKOVA AVE., PARTIZANSKIY AVE., STOLETIYA VLADIVOSTOKA AVE. / 100-YEAR
ANNIVERSARY OF VLADIVOSTOK CITY AVE. ., lacking unity in transliteration or translation in the examples in bold type.
The city's squares and districts are marked as LUGOVAYA sq., SEMYENOVSKAYA sq.; PERVOMAYSKIY D., SNEGOVAYA PAD' D.
Among the local place-names are ВГМУ (no English transliteration or translation for this institution - Vladivostok National Medical University), ВГУЭС / VLADIVOSTOK STATE UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND SERVICE (translated only once and transliterated only on one of the road signs, its Russian abbreviation given on the rest of the city road signs), ДВФУ (never translated on the road signs in the city center - its first transliteration is given on Russkiy island only), РЕСТОРАН KOREA HOUSE, AMURSKIY ZALIV (the road sign for the health resort), CITY ADMINISTRATION, CITY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL № 1 (ДЕТСКАЯ ГБ № 1), CITY PARK, CITY TRAFFIC POLICE (ОГИБДД по г. Владивостоку), MILITARY HEALTH «OKEANSKY» (for ВОЕННЫЙ САНАТОРИЙ / health spa «ОКЕАНСКИЙ»), POKROVSKIY PARK, POST OFFICE, RAILWAY STATION, REGIONAL CLINICAL HOSPITAL № 1 (ПРИМОРСКАЯ ККБ № 1), SEAPORT, SPECIAL CITY CIVIL REGISTRY OFFICE (СПЕЦИАЛИЗИРОВАННЫЙ ОТДЕЛ ЗАГС ПО Г. ВЛАДИВОСТОКУ), stadium «AVAN-GARD», stadium «DINAMO», TIKHAYA BAY, st. SADOROD, st. SPUTNIK, «V-LASER» (the city
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supermarket «В-ЛАЗЕР»)and, of course, the most confusing road sign in the city is the one that marks its center.
The road signs marking the way from the city to Russkiy Island start with the ZO-LOTOY ROG BRIDGE (МОСТ ЧЕРЕЗ б. ЗОЛОТОЙ РОГ) which is also puzzling since the name of the bridge is Golden (ZOLOTOY) Bridge, and the name of the Bay which it is built over is Golden Horn Bay (ZOLOTOY ROG BAY), so the right English name for the bridge would be either Golden Bridge / ZOLOTOY Bridge or the Golden Horn Bay Bridge / ZOLOTOY ROG BAY BRIDGE...Other places on Russkiy Island are NAZIMOVA (which is actually a cape and if not marked as a cape, for foreigners it is just a name of a settlement), CANAL (which is actually a ship canal, and without this part of the word combination, CANAL for a foreigner also stands for a settlement), FEFU, PODNOGYE, and RUSSKIY isl.
Introduction of all these road signs in the city and on the main highway has become a great concern of everyone who more or less speaks English because such «phenomena» as CENTR (URBAN), different transliteration of the same name, no transliteration where it's actually supposed to be, incorrect translation / transliteration can't fail to be paid attention to.
Interviews with international guests of the city (10 respondents were interviewed, 6 of them are US citizens, 1 respondent from UK, and 1 from Australia) showed the following reaction to the road signs analyzed (the total number of the road signs equals 147). First of all, signs to the airport demonstrate a «cultural difference» in pictograms. In American English the airplane is pointed in the direction to drive and there's no arrow. In Vladivostok road signs there is an arrow for the proper road direction and the airplane always points to the left at the word «airport» which is a lot confusing. Short forms for such words as street (marked Str.), district (marked D.) station (marked st.), square (marked sq.) would be absolutely recognizable for international guests, were they marked St., Dist., Sta., Sq. accordingly. Some respondents suggested that the abbreviation Bldg. be added to the CITY ADMINISTRATION sign. It would also be easier for the strangers in the city to read the road signs if there were no advertizing on them. They all agree that advertizing must be on separate signs which should be any other color but black and white. Everybody was baffled by the signs with partial translation or transliteration, such as with ПРАПОРЩИК meaning some place to turn right, and КОМАРОВА - another place and to turn left. Of course, MILITARY HEALTH OKEANSKY gave absolutely no idea of the sign meaning, and the apostrophe after the word PAD' had no sense for the foreigners at all.
Most of the English speaking part of Vladivostok city came to the idea of a machine translation. After some investigation on the name of the translator we eventually found out that the traffic signs have been translated or transliterated according to the National Standard of Russian Federation (ГОСТ Р 52290-2004) monitoring the Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Meteorology. Tables Г4 and Г5 of the official paper by this
