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79проелемы современного осрпзоопнип
E.V. Ivanova, M.Yu. Evpak
PECULIARITIES OF TRANSLATION OF EDUCATION CULTURE-BOUND WORDS FROM ENGLISH INTO RUSSIAN
Keywords: Culture-bound words, realia, education, translation, transcription, transliteration, transplantation, lexical substitution, calques, explicatory translation.
Abstract: The present article deals with the problem of translation of education culture-bound words from English into Russian which is a part of a complicated and very important problem of rendering ethnic and historic peculiarities and uniqueness. Nowadays scholars suggest various ways of solving this problem: culture-bound words may be rendered in the borrowing language through transcription, transliteration, transplantation, calque translation, lexical substitution, hyponym translation, semantic neologisms formation, explicatory translation, etc. The major goal of the study is to analyse various strategies of translation of this or that education culture-bound, reveal advantages and disadvantages of each strategy and to choose, if it is possible, the most appropriate variant.
Ключевые слова: реалия, образование, перевод, транскрипция, транслитерация, трансплантация, лексические замены, калькирование, описательный перевод.
Аннотация: В настоящей статье рассматриваются особенности перевода реалий системы образования с английского языка на русский, что является частью большой и очень важной проблемы передачи национального и исторического своеобразия. На сегодняшний день учёные предлагают различные способы решения данной проблемы: реалии могут быть переданы на язык перевода при помощи межъязыковой транскрипции, транслитерации, трансплантации, калькирования, лексических замен, гипонимического перевода, образования семантических неологизмов, описательного перевода и т.д. Основная цель данного исследования - проанализировать различные способы перевода тех или иных реалий системы образования, выявить преимущества и недостатки каждого из способов и выбрать в каждом отдельном случае, если это возможно, наиболее подходящий вариант перевода.
Nowadays education is a major focus of interest for many foreign and Russian Mass Media sources which means that while working on texts and articles devoted to this topic a translator quite often has to deal with education culture-bound words (realia) and to choose the most appropriate way of their translation, which is not an easy task.
A culture-bound word names an object peculiar to this or that ethnic culture [6]. Scholars use different terms to denote this notion. Some of them equate culture-specific items to "untranslatable" or "unfindable" words, others, such as A.A. Reformatsky, label them "barbarisms" [8], I.I. Revzin and V. Yu. Rozentsveig use the notion "lacune" [7], I.S. Alekseeva uses the term "exo t-icism" [1], P. Newmark refers to them as cultural words [5]. Most of Russian scholars (V.S. Vinogradov, G.D. Tomakhyn) and some foreign linguists (D. Robinson, S. Vlakhov, S. Florin) prefer using the term "realia" (derived from Latin realis, pl. realia). S. Vlakhov and S. Florin have given the following definition to this notion: realia are words and word combinations denoting objects and concepts characteristic of the way of life, the culture, the social and historical development of one nation and alien to another. Since they express local and/or historical colour they have no exact equivalents in other languages [13]. G. D. Tomakhyn refers to realia as not only those words which are completely alien to another nation but also those words which have similar meanings but are not obvious one-to-one equivalents and have differing sense components in their structure. Hence, he points out the following types of culture-bound words: (1) unique culture-bound words (e.g. rag (Br.) - a program of stunts, parades, and other entertainments organised by students to raise money for charity); (2) analogues (e.g. drug-store - аптека); (3) language lacunae of similar notions (e.g. clover-leaf - автодорожная развязка в виде клеверного листа) and (4) similar words with different functions (e.g. "cuckoo's call" asked for by an American girl to find out how soon she will get married and «кукование кукушки» counted by a Russian to find out how long he/she will live) [10].
According to the semantic fields Tomakhyn classifies culture-bound words into five main groups which are: (1) ethnographic culture-bound words (e.g. Irish stew, bread-and-butter letter, hot-dogging; jack-o'-lantern); (2) geographical culture-bound words (e.g. Tidelands, the Blizzard State, brash lot, bald eagle, land hog); (3) social and political culture-bound words (e.g. Stars and Stripes, pocket veto, alphabet soup, kingmaker); (4) culture-bound words connected with education, religion and culture (e.g. campus, eleven-plus, day care, tabernacle, dime novel, happening);
(5) onomastic culture-bound words (e.g. Plymouth Rock, Martin Luther King, F.D.R. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt). The scope of our research interests includes strategies of translating education culture-bound words from English into Russian [10].
The translation of culture-bound words is a part of a complicated and very important problem of rendering ethnic and historic peculiarities and uniqueness. Today scholars and linguists suggest various ways of solving this problem. Such scholars as A. Chesterman, L. Venuti and F. Schleiermacher suggest two main strategies of translating realia which are foreignisation and domestication. According to A. Chesterman foreignising strategy of translation includes the realia in the target text without adapting them but borrowing or transferring them directly. In domesticating translation "culture-specific items are translated as target language cultural or functional equivalents, so that they conform to target language norms" [3]. M. Baker gives more detailed classification of strategies for realia translation: (1) translation by a more general word (superordinate), (2) translation by more neutral/less expressive word, (3) translation by cultural substitution, (4) translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation, (5) translation by paraphrase using a related word, (6) translation by paraphrase using unrelated words, (7) translation by omission, (8) translation by illustration [2].
Most of Russian scholars (V.S. Vinogradov, V.V. Kabakchy, G.D. Tomakhyn) give similar classification using other terms such as (1) transcription (the process of copying the sound form of the source language word by means of the target language letters), (2) transliteration (the process of copying the letters of the source language by the target language letters of another system, the conversion of different alphabets), (3) transplantation (the process of transferring a source language word to a translation language text as it is, without any changes), (4) using calques (the process of translation by parts, morpheme-by-morpheme when either a culture-bound word or phrase is borrowed from another language by literal translation (loan calque) or when its additional meaning is transferred to the word with the same primary meaning in the target language (semantic calque), (5) semi-calques formation (the process of creation a new word or word combination in the target language one part of which consists of a morpheme or a word of the target language and another part consists of a loan morpheme or word), (6) lexical/analogue substitution (the process of translation when a source language cultural word is translated by a target language cultural word or by a target language cultural-free word with almost the same meaning), (7) hyponymic translation/ generalization (the process of substituting words of a narrower meaning with those of a wider meaning), (8) semantic neologisms formation (the method of translating cultural words by creating a new word, when a translator uses a nonce word of his own), (9) explicatory translation (the process of revealing a culture-bound word meaning in full). In order to avoid possible misunderstanding while using such methods of translation as transcription, transliteration, transplantation, calques and semi-calques, many scholars recommend employing two or more translation strategies at the same time (e.g. combination of transcription or transliteration with explanation which can be given in commentaries (both in-text and after-text), in footnotes; combination of transplantation and hyponimic translation, etc.) Each strategy mentioned above has its advantages and disadvantages. It is quite difficult to say to which way of rendering education culture-bound words while translating texts from English into Russian a translator should give preference. For each particular case it is necessary to determine which roles have culture-bound words in a translated text, to understand if they render a particular message and are of special importance in a text, if it is necessary to render national colouring in a given context, if the author of the source text aims at marking culture-bound words as culturally-loaded peculiar elements of foreign culture or he doesn't mean to lay stress on them.
While conducting our research we analysed the ways of rendering of culture-bound words connected with the British and American systems of education in the process of translating texts from English into Russian. We have analysed 53 newspaper articles and their translation from the Internet-sources such as BBC news, the Times, the New York Times, etc., 1 novel -
проелемы современного осрпзоопнип
"Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses" by David Lodge and its translation performed by O. Makarova, examples from English-Russian electronic dictionaries and articles from English-Russian encyclopedic dictionaries. As the result we have revealed 406 cultural words connected with the British and American system of education. Then we analysed the methods of their translation into Russian.
Despite the fact that translators are more inclined to render culture-bound words through transcription and transliteration, our study of the ways of translating education culture-bound words from English into Russian has shown that dealing with them, translators more often use such means of translation as lexical substitution (34 %) and calque translation (26 %). The preferable use of lexical substitution can be explained by the fact that it is possible to find equivalents with quite a close meaning in the target language for some of these words and that in most texts under study education culture-bound words were not specified by the authors as specific elements of foreign culture. E.g.: (1) For the first four weeks, the economists simply kept track of the number of parents who came late; there were, on average, eight late pickups per week per day-care center. - Первые четыре недели экономисты просто отслеживали количество опаздывающих родителей. (В среднем их оказалось по восемь человек в неделю на каждый детский сад); (2) Give him accelerated promotion to Associate Professor. - Срочно переведи его в старшие преподаватели.
However, in some cases, use of such method of translation may lead to cross-language interference and elicit misleading associations caused by the target language speakers' idea and understanding of the elements of their native culture. Let us consider some examples. Such English words as scholarship, fellowship, studentship, exhibition and bursary are usually translated into the Russian language as «стипендия». But, in our opinion, the choice of such equivalent is not a good one as most people in Russia usually associate the word «стипендия» with "a small sum of money paid as allowance or as expenses to students of colleges and universities" (such students usually don't pay for their education; tuition fee is paid by the government but the Ru s-sian word «стипендия» itself doesn't imply payment for education and is used to denote only a sum of extra-money paid to students). Such words as scholarship, fellowship, studentship, exhibition and bursary are used to denote "various kinds of payment made to support a student's education, awarded on the basis of academic or other achievement" or "an amount of money that a student is given to work on a research project at a university". In this case students don't get any allowance or extra-money, they only get some financial support to cover their tuition fees and research expenses. To our way of thinking, more suitable analogues to these words in Russian are «грант» (a sum of money paid as a charity financial aid to support people conducting some research or authors of art works, etc.), «субсидия» (financial aid or support paid by the government, local authorities or special funds to private individuals or legal entities) or «дотация» (an allowance paid by the government to enterprises, organizations and private individuals for a specific purpose; this amount of money is not asked to pay back). Use of these equivalents will help to convey the meaning of these words more precisely. It also should be mentioned that every type of financial support mentioned above (scholarship, fellowship, studentship, exhibition, bursary) has its own peculiarities and sometimes, while translating texts connected with the topic "Education" it is quite important to reveal the differences between these words and to show explicitly what word was mentioned in the source text. Then, as it seems to us, it would be better to use such method of translation as transcription or transliteration in combination with hyponymic translation and explanation. E.g.: fellowship - субсидия феллоушип (выделяется аспирантам или научным работникам на проведение научного исследования). Such way of translating of this culture-bound word will let us both preserve national colouring of the given word and to give the reader a better idea of tits meaning.
If it is difficult or impossible to find quite a close equivalent for a culture-bound word and if national colouring of a translated culture-bound word should be rendered, translators often
use calques: E.g.: (1) We have no Eton to create the self-consciousness of a governing class; we have, instead, clean, flaccid and innocuous preparatory schools. - У нас нет Итона, где формируется психология правящего класса, вместо этого у нас имеются чистенькие, пресные и безобидные подготовительные школы. (2) Two-year colleges may be public, private or proprietary. - Двухгодичные колледжи могут быть государственными, частными или частновладельческими. Sometimes calque translation is used in combination with explicatory which helps to make the meaning of the calques clearer. E.g.: Such diploma mills are frequently named to sound confusingly similar to those of prestigious, accredited academic institutions. -Нередко названия подобных «мельниц дипломов» (учебных заведений, не прошедших аккредитации и выдающих (часто за плату) дипломы сомнительной ценности; по своему звучанию напоминают наименования престижных, аккредитованных учебных заведений).
Calques are formed on the basis of language material of the target language and are frequently motivated. That is why, despite the fact that they are elements of foreign culture, readers of translation can easily perceive and remember them. Besides, they are highly convertible. However, here we should remember that sometimes using calques may lead to confusion and misunderstanding. Thus, translating education culture-bound words connected with universities and colleges names we may face such names as 'King's College', 'Queen's College', 'Royal College'. All these educational institutions are situated in Great Britain and may be translated into Russian as «Королевский колледж». But such a translation doesn't give us an idea of which one of these colleges was mentioned in the text. That is why in this case it would be better to use such method of translation as transcription or transliteration: King's College - Кингз-Колледж; Queen's College
- Куинз-Колледж.
Such a way of translation as explicatory translation was used in 20% of all the cases under analysis. E.g.: (1) Robert's taking the eleven-plus next year, and it won't be long before Amanda's in the thick of O-Levels. - В следующем году у Роберта выпускные экзамены для одинна-дцатилеток, а у Аманды на носу экзамены за пятый класс); (2) endowed school - школа, существующая на благотворительные средства (поступающие от пожертвований, завещаний и так далее); (3) underclassman - студент младших курсов; (4) valedictorian - выпускник школы или колледжа, который произносит прощальную речь на выпускной церемонии. Explicatory translation excludes misunderstanding or lack of understanding which may arise when culture-bound words are translated by means of transcription, transliteration or calques formation but, on the other hand, it makes the target text quite verbose and not very convenient for reading and that is why it is used not very often.
Such methods of translation as transcription and transliteration were used quite rarely (only in 8 % of cases). E.g.: (1) By our third year in secondary school, streaming had been abolished.
- К третьему году нашего обучения в средней школе стриминг был отменён. (2) On Saturday and during school days, these girls will attend a skillcenter. - По субботам и в учебные дни эти девочки будут посещать скиллсентр. The rare use of such ways of translation as transcription and transliteration for rendering of educational culture-bound words in articles and literary texts is explained by the fact that they cause the occurrence of unusual puzzling words in the target text. It is quite difficult for a non-expert to perceive, understand and remember such new words as they are usually non-motivated. The use of such ways of translation is suitable, for instance, while translating specific cross-cultural texts, when it is important to lay stress on elements of foreign culture and render the form of the original word. But even in translation of such texts it is better to use transcription and transliteration in combination with some explanation when a culture-bound word is mentioned in the text for the first time. E.g.: streaming may be rendered as стриминг (распределение школьников по потокам или классам на основании их способностей).
Transplantation (the term was suggested by V. V. Kabakchy) was used mostly to render culture-bound abbreviations such as names of exams: (SAT, ACT, MCAT); names of organisations (NASUWT) and, as well, to render grades (A, B, C, etc.) Transplantation is also used mainly in combination
провлсмы современного осппзоппнип
with other methods of translation (explicatory translation, lexical substitution and hyponymic translation): (1) This year more than 94 % of students have passed their A-Level exams successfully. -В нынешнем году количество успешно сдавших экзамены A-Level превысило 94 %. (2) 22.4% of entries received an A-grade - 22,4 % абитуриентов получили оценку «А», то есть высший балл. (3) NASUWT members are demanding that schools in England should only employ fully-qualified teachers. - Профсоюз учителей Британии NASUWT потребовал, чтобы школы Англии нанимали на работу только высококвалифицированных преподавателей.
Hyponymic translation was used only in 3 % of all cases: As time passed, she began to talk bit by bit about her junior high school. - Понемногу она начала рассказывать о школе; semi-calques were used in 2% of all the cases: sandwich course - курсы «сандвич»; semantic neologisms occurred only in 1% of cases: The first open-air schools in England were opened in London in 1908. - Первые «школы воздуха и света» в Англии появились в Лондоне в 1908 году.
Now we shall view different ways of translating of such a culture-bound word combination as "grammar school" which, as it seems to us, represents one of the most interesting examples from the point of view of translation analysis. In two sources of the material under study such real-ia as "grammar school" was translated using the method of lexical substitution: (1) You are so tall and the strongest at the grammar school! - Ты такой высокий; ты был сильнее всех в гимназии. (2) He has mentioned two types of free schools: comprehensive schools and grammar schools. - Он рассказал о двух категориях бесплатных школ - об общеобразовательных школах и лицеях. Here we should mention that to render this culture-bound word combination translators used different equivalents from the Russian language: «гимназия» and «лицей» (both words are used to denote some type of an advanced level school). In another source a translator used the hyponymic translation: This had lasted from her later years in grammar school up to her second year in college. - Этот период продолжался довольно долго: начиная с последних лет учебы в школе вплоть до второго года обучения в колледже. English-Russian dictionaries suggest such variants of translation as «грамматическая школа» (loan calque) and «классическая школа» (semantic calque).
Here we shall consider advantages and disadvantages of different methods of rendering the word combination "grammar school" while translating texts from English into Russian. Before translating this word combination a translator should understand what system of education is described in the text. If an author describes the British system of education then "grammar school" means "a school for children between the ages of Ц and 18 who have passed a special examination to be allowed to go there". If he/she means the American system of education then "grammar school" is used to denote a primary school for children between the ages of four or five and ele ven. The translation of the second variant (when the author describes the American system of education) doesn't cause any difficulties. Here a translator may easily use a Russian language equivalent «начальная школа» adding, if it is necessary, some comments giving the age of children attending this type of school. But difficulties arise when a translator is to deal with the "grammar school" related to the British system of education.
From our point of view, when we deal with the British system of education, the most appropriate method of translation of this culture-bound word combination is the calque translation as it allows to render national colouring of the realia and to point out this notion as a foreign culture element. Moreover, the calque «грамматическая школа» can be easily perceived and remembered by the readers of translation as it is based on words existing in the target language. It worth mentioning that if we find such a cultural word combination in an article devoted to the British system of education or in some novel or story describing this system it will be quite useful to give a short explanation to this notion either in brackets or in footnotes so that a reader could get the idea of this kind of school and could understand the difference between this type of school and other types of schools in Britain and also those types of school which exist in Russia. E.g.: gram-
mar school - грамматическая школа (школа для детей от 11 до 16 или 18 лет; государственная; имеет академическую направленность; программа предусматривает изучение классических языков).
The translation of this language unit by means of lexical substitution and using equivalents has some advantages as well as serious disadvantages. The advantage of this method is that an equivalent from the Russian language is well known by a Russian reader and while reading the target text a recipient of this text won't face any difficulties in its understanding. However, we should note that this understanding won't be absolutely correct and this is one of the main disa d-vantages of this translation strategy. That means that while reading the target text the reader won't regard this language unit as a foreign culture-bound word since it is not marked in the text of translation and the reader probably will think that the "grammar school" mentioned by the author of the original text is an absolute equivalent of such a notion as «лицей» or «гимназия». Besides, he/she will get a misleading understanding of this notion. But if we use the method of componen-tial analysis (which was described by P. Newmark and some other scholars) while translating this culture-bound word-combination it will be quite obvious that such realia as "grammar school" and «лицей», for instance, have some components of their meanings that coincide as well as some national and cultural components of meanings that can be found only in one of this notions. Thus, we can see that "grammar school" is a school for children between 11 and 16 (18) years old while «лицей» is an advanced school for children between the ages of 6 (7) and 17 (18); people can study here from the first up to the eleventh form; grammar school is a state-maintained secondary school while «лицей» may be both a state-maintained and a private fee-paying school; the curriculum of a "grammar school" usually includes learning of classic (Greek and Latin) languages while in «лицей» children are not supposed to learn them. In Russia «лицей» is a professionally-oriented school offering advanced studies in particular subjects. Sometimes this word is also used to denote an institution of secondary vocational education. Taking into consideration all these factors we can see that the lexical substitution is not always the best way of solving such kind of a translation task. It may lead to misunderstanding and misinterpreting of the original text and may be used only if it is not necessary to acquaint the reader with the British system of education and it is enough just to show that the "grammar school" is an advanced, prestigious type of school.
The use of hyponymic translation is also not a good way of rendering this notion into the Russian language. If a translator uses this strategy the culture-bound word loses its national colouring and its specific sense components. As a result the reader doesn't get the idea of any particular type of school which may cause interlingual interference, as well as in the case of the use of the lexical substitution. Such a method of translation may be used only in those cases when it is not necessary to render the national specific character of a word or in the translation of texts which are not connected with education and in which a specific meaning of this word combination doesn't play an important role for the correct understanding of the text.
One more way of rendering this culture-bound word combination, which is mainly found in the Internet sources translations, is transplantation or the process of transferring a source language word to a translation language text as it is, without any changes. This method of translation is usually combined with the explanation of this notion or with the lexical substitution given in brackets: grammar school (школа для детей от 11 до 16 или 18 лет; государственная; имеет академическую направленность; программа предусматривает изучение классических языков) or grammar school (лицей). On the one hand, such way of translation helps to preserve the original form of the cultural word combination and to render its national colouring but, on the other hand, it causes the occurrence in the target text of words and word combinations which are difficult to understand, to read and to perceive. For those people who do not speak English it is almost impossible to read this word combination correctly. That is why when a translator is to choose between such methods of translation as transcription (transliteration) and transplantation in this case it is more reasonable to use transcription or transliteration of the notion which is new for a
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Russian reader as it not only allows the translator to render a national colouring of the culture-bound word combination but it also can be read by those readers who do not know the English language.
Thus, we may conclude that trying to find the most appropriate way of translating a foreign culture-bound word a translator usually must choose between accuracy, comprehensibility, and simplicity of the target text. In each particular case a translator should pay attention to the context. The choice of the final variant is always up to a translator.
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