Научная статья на тему 'PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATING ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS'

PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATING ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
Language / national culture / phraseological units / comprehension / cultural identity / native-speaking people / modern English / research. / язык / национальная культура / фразеологизмы / понимание / культурная идентичность / носители языка / современный английский язык / исследование.

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Salimova, Nozima

Language, being one of the main features of a nation, expresses the culture of the people who speak it, i.e. national culture. A big role in its comprehension is given to phraseological units. They, as collapsed texts, represent an important component of the "language". Phraseological units not only express, but also form the cultural identity of the native-speaking people. The study of phraseological units helps in many ways to understand the culture and way of life of peoples, to master a foreign language. The world of phraseology of modern English is great and diverse, and every aspect of his research certainly deserves due attention.

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ПРОБЛЕМЫ ПЕРЕВОДА АНГЛИЙСКИХ ФРАЗЕОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ ЕДИНИЦ

Язык, являясь одним из основных признаков нации, выражает культуру народа, говорящего на нем, т.е. национальную культуру. Большая роль в его осмыслении отводится фразеологизмам. Они, как свернутые тексты, представляют собой важную составляющую «языка». Фразеологизмы не только выражают, но и формируют культурную идентичность носителей языка. Изучение фразеологизмов во многом помогает понять культуру и быт народов, овладеть иностранным языком. Мир фразеологии современного английского языка велик и разнообразен, и каждый аспект его исследований, безусловно, заслуживает должного внимания.

Текст научной работы на тему «PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATING ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS»

Oriental Renaissance: Innovative, educational, natural and social sciences Scientific Journal Impact Factor Advanced Sciences Index Factor

VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 6 ISSN 2181-1784 SJIF 2022: 5.947 ASI Factor = 1.7

PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATING ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS

Salimova Nozima,

UzSWLU, The senior teacher of the department of English teaching methodology,

nozima1273@gmail.com

Language, being one of the main features of a nation, expresses the culture of the people who speak it, i.e. national culture. A big role in its comprehension is given to phraseological units. They, as collapsed texts, represent an important component of the "language". Phraseological units not only express, but also form the cultural identity of the native-speaking people. The study of phraseological units helps in many ways to understand the culture and way of life of peoples, to master a foreign language. The world of phraseology of modern English is great and diverse, and every aspect of his research certainly deserves due attention.

Keywords: Language, national culture, phraseological units, comprehension, cultural identity, native-speaking people, modern English, research.

Язык, являясь одним из основных признаков нации, выражает культуру народа, говорящего на нем, т.е. национальную культуру. Большая роль в его осмыслении отводится фразеологизмам. Они, как свернутые тексты, представляют собой важную составляющую «языка». Фразеологизмы не только выражают, но и формируют культурную идентичность носителей языка. Изучение фразеологизмов во многом помогает понять культуру и быт народов, овладеть иностранным языком. Мир фразеологии современного английского языка велик и разнообразен, и каждый аспект его исследований, безусловно, заслуживает должного внимания.

Ключевые слова: язык, национальная культура, фразеологизмы, понимание, культурная идентичность, носители языка, современный английский язык, исследование.

INTRODUCTION

Phraseological units are quite often used in colloquial speech, and knowledge of their meaning and the ability to use them correctly is practically necessary. Knowledge of phraseology makes it extremely easy to read both journalistic and fiction literature. Reasonable use of phraseological units makes speech more

ABSTRACT

АННОТАЦИЯ

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expressive. In addition, the analysis of English Phraseological units makes it possible to trace the history of the country, get acquainted with its customs and traditions.

A comprehensive study of the word as the main unit of the language system is an important task of modern linguistics. Phraseological units play an important role in solving this problem, which continues to be one of the most relevant areas of modern linguistics.

The English language has a thousand-year history. During this time, a large number of expressions have accumulated in it, which people found successful, accurate and beautiful. This is how a special layer of language emerged -phraseology, a set of stable expressions that have an independent meaning. There should be a story behind every word, therefore, every the phrase must have its origin.

According to N.F. Alefirenko, the process of forming phraseological units in any language is long and unique. In an ordinary sentence, a word disappears or changes over time. This leads, on the one hand, to some change in the meaning of the whole combination, and on the other hand, this word enriches (in semantic terms) this expression creates a figurative expression - phraseology, in which there is a hint of a lot of situations. (N.F. Alefirenko, 2000)

Studying the origin of English phraseological units, you can learn a lot of interesting things from the field of linguistics, history, religion, country studies of English-speaking countries. The impetus for the creation of a particular phraseology was some specific ideas that arouse, evoke the activity of the imagination. Some of them were introduced in the language is written by writers, others find their origin in the Bible, others came from other languages such as French and Latin, for example.

Phraseology is a relatively young field of linguistics, which only relatively recently became established as a separate one linguistic discipline. Phraseology is distributed in all language areas. The literature of phraseology presents it as a subfield lexicology dealing with the study of phrases.

In linguistics, phraseology according to V.V. Vinogradov, is the study of a set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs and other types of lexical units (often called phrasemes), in which the constituent parts of an expression take on a more definite meaning and depend on the combination of all the words standing in a unit (V.V. Vinogradov, 1977).

Phraseology has been retained in the language for centuries, representing the culture of the native people. According to V. N. Telia, "the phraseological composition of a language is a mirror in which a linguistic and cultural community identifies its national identity" (V.N Telia, 1996).

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METHODS USED

According to V.I. Dal, translating phraseological units from one language to another presents significant difficulties. When translating, it is important not only to convey the meaning of phraseology, but also to display its imagery, stylistic function, and context features. Many English stable combinations are characterized by ambiguity and stylistic diversity, which complicates their translation into other languages. (V.I. Dal, 1997)

One of the frequent mistakes of the translator is the inability to notice phraseological units and their literal translation. Thus, a phraseological unit is often taken as a free combination of words. This leads to gross mistakes and distortion of the meaning of the statement: 'After the resounding success she decided to hang up her ax" - instead: - After a resounding success, she decided to retire.

The next difficulty is the difficulty of perceiving a phraseological unit. The translator should select the translation option depending on the context. This is a problem, since the expression can be used with a touch of irony, sarcasm, resentment, bitterness or irritation. The translator should also take into account that most of the English phraseological units have multiple meanings. For example, the expression "to take the floor" in the political sphere means "to speak" and colloquially "to go dancing". Depending on the situation, "you can never tell" can be translated as "how much know" and "what the hell is not joking."

Often phraseological units have false counterparts, i.e. phraseological units that coincide with them in form, but completely diverge in content. For example, "wind in the head" - empty imagination, arrogance; "run smb. to earth" - to find, get out of the ground (and not "drive, bury someone in the ground"); "stew in one's own juice" - to suffer because of your own stupidity, to sort out the mess that you brewed yourself (and not "stew in your own juice"). The English expression "to be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth" is close in meaning to the Russian phraseology "to be born in a shirt (shirt)", i.e. to be lucky. Often these expressions are given as correspondences. But the English version cannot be used in the same situations as Uzbek, because it means "to come from a rich family."

Often phraseology remains the property of only one language. The exceptions are the so-called phraseological tracing paper. Everyone knows the phraseology "when cancer is on grief will whistle." In different languages, you can find the corresponding equivalents of this phraseology:

when pigs fly - literally: when pigs fly - English;

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quand les poules auront des dents - literally: when chickens will have

teeth - French;

cuando las ranas crien pelos - literally: when frogs have fur - Spanish; wenn die Hunde mit dem Schwanz bellen - literally: when dogs bark

their tails - German.

According to A.D. Shveytser, cultural knowledge and differences represent one of the main tasks of translation for scientists. For a long time, translation was only related to language. However, translation consists in replacing text material in one language with equivalent text material in another language. The equivalence problem becomes a central topic for theorists. Translation, as a general term, refers to the transfer of thoughts and ideas from one language (source) to another (target), whether written or spoken languages. (A.D. Shveytser, 1973)

There are thousands of culturally limited terms and phraseological units deeply rooted in culture that a translator must deal with. In 1982, A.L. Yakobson gave some examples of cultural fields, such as temporary work, positions and professions, food, drinks, certain aspects of public life, etc. (A.L. Yakobson, 1982) In O.S. Akhmanova talks about measurements, coins, institutions, clothes, etc. (O.S. Akhmanova, 1996) All these topics distinguish one society from another and complicate the translation of phraseological units. That is why there are many opinions for the possibility or impossibility of their translation. Demands from both sides have always existed. The myth of the Tower of Babel has been interpreted as the beginning of a translation or as a warning that the translation is doomed to failure. Each language has its own way of systematizing reality, therefore, creates the impossibility of translation. The main arguments against the possibility of translation are linguistic.

For example, we can analyze how the color scheme is expressed in different languages. Most phraseological units use only five to seven different terms for colors. But in Hebrew there is no specific term for blue, whereas red, white and black are separated. Instead, there is only one term for yellow and green. The Rhodesian language has only four colors.

Another argument in favor of the impossibility of translation is the lack of symmetry between languages. For example, the Eskimo language has 30 words for snow, Argentina has 200 names for horse skin, and Arabic uses many synonyms to refer to camel.

Scholars such as R. Jacobson, B. Croce supported the impossibility of translation due to the existence of poetry full of connotations and stylistic techniques that cannot be translated (R. Jacobson, 1982).

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Any observation that concerns the translation of cultural elements should take into account that translation has always offered many opportunities to address various cultural issues about the fields of cultural production, the processes of cultural transmission, discussions of differences, but also questions about untranslatability, incompatibility. In other words, translate means the perception of our own culture communicated to the cultures of other countries. According to structuralists, the use of language as a means of communication between people emphasizes its social function; each culture has its own language. As a result, V.G. Gak reports that each community speaks about its thoughts and ideas, referring to their own way of perceiving the universe, their intellectual knowledge and experience. In other words, culture is an implicit belonging of a community. He also notes that phraseological units cannot be completely synonymous. So, the word "prowess" and the word "courage" cannot be considered synonymous, because "prowess" is not just courage, but unrestrained and dashing courage, due to the breadth of the space and including a component of self-admiration. As for phraseological units, the English unit to buy a pig in a poke contains a cultural connotation for historical reasons. In times of In the Middle Ages, piglets for sale, for convenience, were kept in bags. (V.G. Gak, 1988)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

M. Baker states that "the first difficulty a translator faces is the ability to recognize that he or she is dealing with an idiomatic expression." She believes that some idiomatic expressions are recognized more easily than others, mentioning two situations: 1) when phraseological units "violate the conditions of truth", and 2) when idioms include expressions that seem grammatically "incorrectly formed". And finally, he concludes that "the more difficult an expression is to understand and the less sense it makes, the more likely it is, that the translator recognizes it as a phraseological unit." Then M. Baker classifies two difficult-to-recognize cases in which the phraseological units could be misinterpreted (M. Baker, 1993):

1) some idioms are misleading;

2) the source language of a phraseological unit may have a very similar duplicate in the language into which it is being translated.

It may turn out to be identical at first glance, but have completely or partially different meanings. The difficulties mentioned in the last part were simply related to problems in the process of interpreting idioms and fixed expressions, and not the process of translating them.

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In fact, for any translator, the process of translating a phraseological unit is more complicated than the process of interpreting it. In addition, since the meaning of phraseological units cannot be derived from the individual words of which it consists, therefore, for the same reason, we cannot recreate the same meaning simply by replacing the literal element of the source language with an element of the translating language. There are some major issues, the most important of which are related to the discussion "Equivalences".

It seems that there are some sociolinguistic factors. For example, the phraseological units may have some culturally specific or culturally directed factors. The difficulty is the result of the problem of finding the appropriate equivalents of the target language for terms that convey culturally sensitive concepts in the original language as a result of the fact that both languages have different subsystems of meaning and culture.

A.V. Kunin's distinction between "translation" and "reproduction", as well as S. Catford's distinction between "literal" and "free" translation, does not take into account the representation that considers translation as a semiotic transformation. In its definition of translation equivalence he distinguishes four types (A.V. Kunin, 1984):

1) Linguistic equivalence, where there is uniformity on the linguistic level of the texts of the source language and the text of the target language, then there is a word-to-word translation.

2) Paradigmatic equivalence, where there is an equivalence of "elements of the paradigmatic expressive axis", that is, elements of grammar.

3) Stylistic (translational) equivalence - "functional equivalence of elements and in the original aspiration and in an effort to translate an expressive identity with an invariant of identical meaning."

4) Textual (syntagmatic) equivalence, where there is an equivalence of structuring a syntagmatic text, that is, an equivalence of form.

Let's consider the problems of translating English phraseological units in more detail.

recognize in the text phraseological units, as opposed to free language units. The inability to notice phraseological units and their literal translation is one of the frequent mistakes of the translator. Thus, a phraseological unit is often taken as a free combination of words. This leads to gross mistakes and distortion of the meaning of the statement: - "After the resounding success she decided to hang up her ax" -

The first and most important condition in any case is to be able to

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instead: - After the deafening after success, she decided to retire. Therefore, as soon as an expression that logically contradicts the context appears in the text, it should be considered as a possible phraseology.

❖ The second important condition in the process of recognizing phraseological units is the ability to analyze their speech functions. For example, the conflict between figurative literal meanings is often used by the author of the text to play off any figurative, aesthetic, emotional, evaluative and other associations or to create a humorous effect. In addition, phraseological units are quite firmly anchored to certain socio-cultural layers of society and serve as a sign of the indirect presence of one or another layer in the text.

❖ Further, phraseological units have a certain stylistic coloring: it can there may be elements of high, neutral or low style, professional or other jargon. For example, the appearance of a phraseological unit like "middle to half' in text indicates a relatively low social status of a character associated with it, most often with a dialectal provincial tinge.

❖ The translator may also face the problem of national and cultural differences between similar phraseological units in two different languages. Coinciding in meaning, phraseological units may have different stylistic coloring. In some cases, the use of phraseology in the source text is based on the use of the possibilities of national and cultural color, for example, to build an artistic image, and then even the presence of a dictionary match does not help the translator in solving the problem. For example, the expression when queen Ann was alive, which can be phraseological "in immemorial times" and retain its direct meaning "at the court of Queen Anne". This phraseology cannot be translated by some Russian phraseology without losing the national and cultural flavor (for example, under Tsar Peas, since it is not associated with the signs of that time in the original text: ladies, intrigues, balls). Perhaps the most appropriate solution would be either to choose a royal name more famous for the Russian reader (at the court of King Arthur), or in favor of temporary remoteness (as in the Middle Ages).

❖ Problems may arise even when translating international phraseological units that have the same source and approximately the same meaning in different languages, but received different functional characteristics. For example, in English the well-known saying Caesar's wife must be above suspicion corresponds to the Russian "Wife Caesar should be above suspicion", but unlike English, where this phraseology is easily split into components that can be used separately, implying the whole, these components are not so autonomous, so when translation the most

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correct way is to restore the whole: Madam, you are Caesar's wife. "Madame, Caesar's wife should be above suspicion.

❖ Another aspect of this problem is the similarity of phraseological units having different, even opposite meanings. The translator is often let down by such an external similarity, so you need to be attentive to the details of phraseological expression, since the correspondences can be very far apart in form. For example, there are two proverbs in English that are quite similar in form: every tree is known by its (his) fruit and as the tree, so the fruit, the values of which are quite far apart from each other and therefore when translating, they get completely different forms (and, accordingly, associations): "a tree is recognized by its fruits" (a person is recognized by his deeds, an association with the Bible) and "an apple does not fall far from the apple tree" (bad is inherited, associations with folk wisdom, common sense).

❖ The system of phraseological units also includes various kinds of historical phrases that have become winged expressions, but are differently significant for the source and translating cultures. Some of them acquire great versatility and are relatively easy to recreate in translation, becoming, in turn, a fact of the translating culture. However there are also expressions that have several phraseological correspondences, depending on the context. So, the famous phrase of Oliver Cromwell (according to legend) "Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry!" can be translated in two ways into language: "Rely on God and keep the powder dry!" or "Hope in God, but do not flatter yourself," which more conveys the colloquial character of the original unit.

❖ One of the most difficult types of phraseological units to translate is phraseological units based on modern realities. Some of them quickly become well-known and become widespread, penetrating into international dictionaries of modern culture; thus phraseological units are relatively easy to recognize in context and are translated, as a rule, by means of calculus.

CONCLUSION

Phraseology emerged relatively recently as an independent linguistic discipline. The subject and tasks, scope and methods of studying phraseology have not yet been clearly defined, and therefore have not received full coverage. The linguists did not work out there is no consensus on what phraseology is, therefore, there is no unity of views on the composition of these units in the language. Some researchers include stable combinations in phraseology, others only certain groups. So, some linguists do not include proverbs, sayings and winged words in the category of phraseological units, considering that they differ in their semantics and syntactic structure from

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phraseological units. There are two trends in the study of culture. On the one hand, scientists are trying to figure out what exactly is being studied and how it is being studied when a specific approach is applied; and what may be a suitable field of study for the general science of culture. This means that culture is not an object of research that needs scientific analysis. J. Condon focuses on the relationship between culture and translation, since culture is largely based on translation activities, since it is only through the addition of new texts, culture can improve. (J. Condon, 1997)

Analyzing the interaction between culture and language, as well as between culture and translation, it should be noted that culture and translation are among the most defining and influential variables in human communication. There are many comments regarding the relationship between language and culture. Although most of them point to the necessity of these concepts, some hypotheses insist on their uselessness.

REFERENCES:

1. Alefirenko N.F., Semenenko N.N. Phraseology and paremiology. - Moscow: Flint: Nauka, 2009. - 344 p.

2. Ashukin N.S. Winged words: literary quotations; figurative expressions / N.S. Ashukin, M.G. Ashukina. - M.: Khud. Lit., 1987. - 503 p.

3. Baker, M. In other words: A coursebook on translation [Text] / M. Baker. -London and New York: Routledge, 1993. - pp. 68-71.

4. Bally, Sh. General linguistics and questions of the French language [Text] / Sh. Bally. - Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2001. - 416 p.

5. Condon, J. An introduction to intercultural communication [Text] / J. Condon. -Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1997. - 306 p.

6. Dal V.I. Proverbs, sayings, jokes of the Russian people: Collection: In 2 vols. - St. Petersburg, 1997. - 684 p.

7. Gak, V. G. Phraseology, imagery and culture [Text] / V. G. Gak // Soviet lexicography. Collection of articles. - Moscow: Higher School, 1988. - pp. 159-169.

8. Kunin, A.V. English-Russian phraseological dictionary 1984. - 944 p.

9. Kunin, A.V. Course of phraseology of modern English [Text] / A.V. Kunin. - M.: Phoenix, 1996. - 384 p.

10. Telia, V. N. Russian phraseology. Semantic, pragmatic and linguoculturological aspects [Text] / V. N. Telia - M.: School "Languages of Russian culture", 1996. -288 p.

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