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19Norwegian Journal of development of the International Science No 16/2018 57
EUROPEAN COMMUNICATION PRACTISES IN TERMS OF INTERROGATION IN MASS MEDIA AND ITS REFLECTION IN THE TRANSLATION INTO RUSSIAN
Stoikovich G.,
Candidate of Philology, Professor, Samara State Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities, Samara, Russia
Stoikovich L.,
Candidate of Philology, Associate professor Samara State University of Economics, Samara, Russia
Sapova O.
senior teacher, Samara State University of Economics, Samara, Russia
Abstract
The article considers the category of interrogation in English mass media texts and their translations into Russian. The authors describe the most frequent types of questions used in English mass media texts, different ways of their translation, reveal tendencies of transformations of questions between languages, try to reason them. The main attention is paid to the syntactic correlation of interrogation in English and in Russian, the correctness of the translation is also analyzed.
Keywords: interrogation, questions, translation, mass media language, syntactic translation transformations
One of the main categories of communicative interaction is the category of interrogation which components are interrogative sentences; the variety of interrogative questions is the same as other types of the sentences.
In the present article we will briefly describe features of interrogative category in English media and ways of its translation into Russian. As material for the comparative analysis of interrogative sentences were 57 information articles published in various English-language online editions, such as "The Guardian", "The Times", "BBC", "CNN", "The Washington Post", etc. also the translations of the articles on the information Internet portal "INOSMI" (http://inosmi.ru). There were 214 examples.
Such scientists as G.G. Pocheptsov, N.I. Zhinkin, I.P. Ivanova, L.S. Barkhudarov, Pospelova A.G. and many others considered the issues of interrogative sentences in different years [8; 5; 11; 3; 9]. By O.S. Akh-manova's definition the question is "the statement aiming to induce a listener to report something unknown to a speaker or is a statement demanding examination" [2. Page 65]. A question is a sentence which aims to receive language reaction of a listener. Most part of the questions (except rhetorical ones) assumes immediate reaction from the interlocutor and is focused on the moment of speech.
In the work "Question and interrogative sentence" N.I. Zhinkin considers ability of questions to perform various functions. The author showed that the speech act of a question is a kind of speech action, and the question is a "form to fix a thought" [5. C.29]. By means of an interrogative sentence the information request can be transferred and also speech actions, such as statement, assumption or request can be expressed. Thus, N.I. Zhinkin drew line between the speech act of a question and an interrogative sentence for the first time.
The considered material is a number of texts of journalese style. The main characteristic features of this style are tendencies to standardization and expressivity. They are caused by the main functions which are per-
formed by journalese style, namely information and denotative function and function of emotional impact on the reader. The syntax of journalese style differs in active use of emotional and expressive constructions, such as exclamatory sentences of various meaning, interrogative sentences, address sentences, rhetorical questions, repetitions, segmented constructions, etc. In the analyzed media texts interrogative sentences often perform the function of emotional impact on the reader, especially rhetorical and indirect questions. It is interesting that interrogation is often put already in a heading.
These factors, certainly, influence the translation of different types of questions and require studying and account in translation activity. It is generally agreed that translation is a difficult process causing contradictory opinions and interpretations. During the analysis of translation mechanism and processes which occur in person's consciousness while translating from one language on another, many scientists came to a conclusion that adequate translation is impossible. There are opposite opinions concerning the translation - from the recognition of absolute translatability of language philosophy Enlightenment of Descartes, Leibniz, to full untranslatability. In this regard the opinion of Z. Munen is interesting who in the course of the discussion calls translation "the shocking fact in modern linguistics" which consideration "was always sidelined or neglected". At the end of the article which is devoted to translation activity, Z. Munen comes to the following conclusion: "correctness [...] of the translations aren't challenged by social practice while in the theoretical aspect linguistics tends towards denying this correctness" [7. C. 36].
Really, Z. Munen states that in the theory the translation from one language into another one can't be considered completely correct and logical. However, as practice shows, there should be the achievement of the communicative goal while translating. At the same time we can note that the transfer of grammatical structure in target language isn't the objective of a translator, his main objective is to transfer the essence of the state-
ment (with the exception of those cases when translator's objective is to translate of stylist devices by means of a certain grammatical structure) [7] .
As L.S. Barkhudarov claims, the specifics of English grammar in comparison with Russian grammar have analytical character; as a result, it defines its many features. But in spite of the fact that the grammatical systems of languages can differ considerably from each other, they often have some similar lines [3]. In the analysis of media texts and interpretation of translation solutions we also proceeded from the theoretical provisions drafted by I.S. Alekseeva [1], E.V. Breus [4], V.N. Komissarov [6], Y. I. Retsker [10].
At the research stage of communicative and semantic features of interrogative sentences in media texts it was revealed that their main part is made by rhetorical questions (75%); direct questions make 9% of total amount of the questions, and indirect ones make 14%. At the same time each of three communicative types of questions has distinctive features.
During contrastive and translation analysis of interrogative sentences in the texts of media articles we managed to find out that to translate researched sentences various translation transformations are used. The great amount of material of the research resulted in various ways and methods of transferring of interrogative sentences from English into Russian and also reflection of interrogation category in target language. In the present article we will present the main conclusions to which we came in the course of contrastive-translation analysis of questions, and separate aspects of a research are shown.
According to the statistical analysis of the ratio of common use of translation transformations, additions (22%) and omissions (23%) prevail while translating interrogative sentences in publicistic texts from English into Russian. The frequency of using additions, in our opinion, is caused by divergences in grammatical structures of two languages, by the aspiration of translators to comply to Russian language standard at the same time to achieve bigger expressiveness, and the frequency of omissions is the aspiration to comply publicistic style in Russian to laconicism. We will give an example of addition:
So what did kill off the Neanderthals? (TG) - Tak chto zhe na samom dele ubilo neandertal'tsev?
Here we can see that the addition is used not only to comply the target text to Russian language standard when there is no grammatical amplifier in Russian, but also to achieve stylistic goals.
As for omissions, their incorrect using can result in semantic loss: Is the Islamic State Exterminating the Language of Jesus? (FP) - IazikIisusa?
In this case the most part of the sentence is omitted, at the same time the topic of article reveals, but not completely, there is a considerable semantic loss. We should note that the similar phenomena are typical for headings.
Besides, translation method of grammatical replacement is regularly used: syntactic replacement in the sentence structure (14%), replacement of sentence parts (15%) and positional mobility (16%), framing (12%). We will consider syntactic replacements which
are quite various while translating interrogative sentences. Replacements are caused mainly by the differences in syntactic systems of languages. Replacements of simple sentences by difficult ones are observed:
So could a conjunction of different ideas within language pedagogy be the secret to learning and teaching? (TG) - Tak, mozhet bit' secret izucheniya Iprepo-davaniya iazikov v tom, chtobi ob'edinit' razlichnie metodi iazikovoi pedagogiki?
complex into simple: But is there any proof that he was involved? (TG) - No est' li hot' kakie to doka-zatel'stvaprichastnosti soleimani?
compound into complex (Is there any way to learn a language in a week or two, and those ads on the internet promise? (io9) - Est' li sposob viuchit' iazik za nedeliu ili dve- kak obeshchaet reklama v internete?
and vice versa: What about another alternative, where women were simply different from men? (M) -A kak naschet eshche odnoi alternative: zhenshchini prosto otlichaiutsya ot muzhchin?
Besides, while translating questions in the form of complex sentences the type of a subordinate clause often changes, for example, subordinate attributive clauses are changed into subordinate object clauses:
And are there instances where women are faring better than their Arab counterparts elsewhere; and why is that? (NPR) - Pravda li, chto polozhenie zhenshchin v nekotorikh arabskikh stranakh luchshe chem. v drugikh, I esli da, to s chem eto svyazano?
subordinate attributive clauses into adverbial clauses of reason:
Will the company agree to end any exploration and development of unconventional reserves (for example, in the Arctic and much of the Canadian oil sands) that science has shown to be inconsistent with the 2° limit? (PS) - Soglasitsia li kompaniia zavershit' liubuiu razvedku I razrabotku netraditsionnikh mes-torozhdenii (naprimer v Arktike i na bol'shoi chaste Kanadskikh neftianikh peskov), potomu chto nauka pokazala, chto eto nesovmestimo s limitom v 2°? and also other transformations are possible. We should note that in most cases the interrogation remains both at semantic, and at syntactic level. At the same time, it was considered that rhetorical questions can be translated by affirmative exclamatory sentences, and direct questions - by affirmative sentences without any serious losses or distortions.
The statistical analysis shows that while translating from English into Russian in media texts complex interrogative sentences are transformed into simple ones more often than complex syntactic constructions which have tendency to simplification, at the same time Russian sentences are complicated by a participial or verbal adverb phrase.
Also during the research we managed to reveal the tendency to simplification of syntactic sentence structure while translating headings that is confirmed by the frequency of omissions, syntactic replacements and fragmentations:
Can you learn even complex languages quickly? (BBC) - Kak bistro viuchit' inostrannii iazik?
The new cold war: are we going back to the bad old days? (TG) - Na poroge novoi kholodnoi voini;
Is internet surveillance really 'Orwellian'? (D) -Slezhka v internete - vse kak v knige Oruella?
In general in comparison with English language simple syntactic constructions and also laconicism are characteristic features of Russian language;
The main thing, certainly, is that all replacements result in adequate transfer of question essence, its communicative goal. However, some inaccuracies or errors are noticed which sometimes lead to translation transformations. First of all we can name an omission which can result in semantic loss, grouping and replacement of a part of speech that can lead to loss of stylistic coloring, and illiterate position mobility results in distortion of sentence meaning.
Thus, the mistakes that we revealed during the translation of various articles show that even qualified translators aren't insured from mistakes, and confirm the relevance of this research. The received material and drawn conclusions are valuable to use on a practical training of practical translation, to improve of translation process as during the research we managed to reveal some tendencies while translating interrogative sentences in media articles. The opportunity for research is more detailed studying of the translation of different question types, its influence on general content of translated version of the article and also studying of semantic and stylistic compliances / discrepancies between interrogation of original and translated texts of media articles.
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ON STUDYING COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR IN LINGUISTICS
Umirzakova Z.
Assistant Professor, Department of Practical Language, Kazakh National Pedagogical University named after Abay
ОБ ИЗУЧЕНИИ КОММУНИКАТИВНОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯ В ЛИНГВИСТИКЕ
Умирзакова З.А.
Канд.филол.н., доц. кафедры практических языков, Казахский национальный педагогический университет им. Абая
Abstract
The article analyzes the work dedicated to conceptual research of Russian scientists. As the basic concept in the study the term "communicative behavior" is used. The author reveals parameters of the communicative behavior of the Kazakhs study against the background of Russian communicative behavior, examines methods and techniques used in the course of further research of the native Kazakh culture.
Аннотация
В статье анализируются работы, посвященные концептуальным исследованиям русских ученых. В качестве базового понятия в исследовании используется термин «коммуникативное поведение». Автором выявляются параметры исследования коммуникативного поведения казахов на фоне русского коммуникативного поведения, рассматриваются методы и приемы, используемые в ходе дальнейшего исследования носителей казахской лингвокультуры.
Keywords: communication, communicative behavior, communicative linguistics, communicative culture.
Ключевые слова: коммуникация, коммуникативное поведение, коммуникативная лингвистика, коммуникативная культура.
