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УДК 398.21(=161.1):811.111'25
E. V. Naumova
ON RUSSIAN-ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF AMBIGUIOUS LEXICAL UNITS (RUSSIAN FAIRY TALE "MOROZKO" AS A CASE-STUDY)
The proposed topic serves as a follow-up discussion to the problem of semantic and structural ambiguity in different genres (previous studies focused on social and political text headlines). The problems of lexical, semantic and structural ambiguity is critical with regard to the translation techniques and tools the translator uses to decode the information from source language (SL) to target language (TL). When dealing with Russian-English translation, the most frequent problems that may occur are on the lexical and grammatical level, which further affect the semantic value of the TL text. These translation difficulties apply to almost all genres. In this article, we will look at some of the difficulties in translating lexical units in Russian fairy tale texts. This study will also give a theoretic overview of the fundamental theories of equivalence suggested by distinguished scholars; it also presents a brief classification of ambiguity and its types and possible causes for occurrence in the field under the main focus for discussion. A comparative analysis of the fairy tale under study and its two variants of translation will reveal the main cases and problems of ambiguity in literary text translation. The present study will also illustrate and justify the fact that lexical ambiguity does not function independently: it is closely intervened with other types of ambiguity, such as syntactic and scopal ambiguity, and other types. The data analysis clearly shows that there are cases of adequate and equivalent translation variants in both translations. Both, the Russian and the English translators used the corresponding translation techniques and strategies to retain the cultural value of the text.
Keywords: lexical ambiguity, realia, written translation, semantics, translation methods, culture, Russian folklore, equivalence, cultural worldview, comparative stylistics.
Е. В. Наумова
Способы передачи лексически многозначных единиц в русско-английском переводе (на материале русской народной сказки «Морозко»)
Тема данного исследования является продолжением исследования вопросов многозначности/ двусмысленности семантических единиц в разных жанрах и особенностей перевода таких единиц. Ранее исследовались особенности перевода многозначных единиц в общественно-политических текстах. Проблема семантической, лексической и структурной многозначности является существенной в вопросах перевода, так как переводчик должен выбирать те или иные подходящие для каждого конкретного случая приемы и способы перевода или, иначе говоря, декодирования информации с исходного языка ИЯ на язык перевода ПЯ. Применительно к русско-английскому переводу наибольшую трудность представляет перевод единиц на лексическом и грамматическом уровнях, которые и придают основную смысловую нагрузку тексту ПЯ. В данном исследовании рассматриваются некоторые проблемы перевода лексических единиц в жанре русских народных сказок. Также в статье приводится краткий обзор основных теорий эквивалентности, предложенных отечественными и зарубежными исследователями, дается краткая классификация
НАУМОВА Елена Васильевна - ст. преподаватель каф. перевода ИЗФиР СВФУ им. М.К. Аммосова. E-mail: [email protected]
NAUMOVA Elena Vasilievna - Senior Lecturer, Department of Translation, Institute of Modern Languages and Regional Studies, M.K. Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University.
видов многозначности, а также основные причины ее возникновения в контексте затрагиваемой проблемы. Сравнительный анализ двух вариантов перевода рассматриваемой сказки позволит выявить основные причины и проблемы возникновения случаев многозначности в литературном тексте. Данное исследование также иллюстрирует и доказывает тот факт, что лексическая многозначность функционирует не как отдельное явление, а в сочетании с другими видами многозначности, такими как синтаксическая, скопическая и некоторые другие виды многозначности. Анализ данных выявил случаи адекватных и вполне равнозначных вариантов перевода и в том, и в другом текстах перевода. Переводчики (русскоязычный и англоязычный), выполнившие рассматриваемые переводы, применили соответствующие приемы и стратегии перевода с целью сохранения и передачи культурных реалий, содержащихся в тексте.
Ключевые слова: лексическая многозначность, реалии, письменный перевод, семантика, методы перевода, культура, русский народный фольклор, эквивалентность, культурная картина мира, сравнительная стилистика.
Introduction
Over the past years, some research on the topic of ambiguity has been done by scholars, however there are no studies referring to the process of ambiguity from the point of view of English-Russian/Russian-English translation. Furthermore, there have not been any studies on the causes and ways of solving cases of ambiguity in the process of Russian-English translation in folklore texts.
Considering all that has been stated above, the present study shall give a brief classification of the types of ambiguity and a systematic overview of lexical ambiguity instances in Russian-English fairy tale texts translation and find some suggestive ways of detecting and solving the problems of translating semantically ambiguous lexical structures. The problem of ambiguity causes many difficulties in the attempt to reach a maximum level of equivalence between the SL (source language) and TL (target language). These translation challenges will be discussed further in the article.
This part of the article presents a general overview of the main theories of equivalence in translation studies presented by distinguished scholars, as well as some extra-linguistic aspects of translating the texts serving as the main research focus in general and the main problems in translating the ambiguously presented lexical components.
Ambiguity and its types
This section of the article shall present an outline of the main types of ambiguity and different theories as to what is implied by this term.
It has been mentioned earlier that over the last decade there have been many studies on the problem of ambiguity and its causes in various languages. First, a few words should be said about the term itself and how it is represented by different scholars. Ambiguity is a term generally used by the English-speaking scholars, whereas some Russian scholars (add names) use the terms corresponding to the Russian equivalent for ambiguity and the notion of homonymy (and its subdivided types) to represent the case under the main study.
In her fundamental research on the stylistic devices in Russian, M.A. Yuzhannikova [1] uses the notion of dvusmyslennost', which in Russian literally stands for ambiguity. The scholar defines it as "the ability of a full utterance or its components to bear several meanings (occurring simultaneously or consecutively); this is by the linguistic collocation mechanisms existing in a particular ambiguity-friendly environment". M.A. Yuzhannikova [1] also signifies the fact that "ambiguity is the most adequate concept among those denoting laws of logical meaning equivalence and, thus it should be regarded as a separate notion opposed to such closely related terms as vagueness, homonymy, polysemy, and syncretism. Interestingly, what foreign scholars regard as types of ambiguity (to be overviewed below), is seen by this scholar as "mechanisms of ambiguity emergence", namely: lexical, grammatical and contextual polysemy, lexical and
syntactical homonymy, antonymy, contextual antonymy and synonymy, syncretism, semantic vagueness, linguistic anaphora, deixis, pragmatic disagreement, and alternative sentence subdivision into phonological segments.
Another scholar, A. I. Olkhovskaya [2] uses the notions of ambiguity, homonymy and semantic derivation as interchangeable synonyms. Furthermore, she singles out the following subtypes of ambiguity: a) trivial, normal and complex metonyms "shifts"; b) "technical ambiguity" (lit.);
c) non-verbal metonymy of the verbs and non-adjective metonymy of the adjectives;
d) anthropomorphic animal descriptions/characteristics; d) temporal representations of spatial values; and e) direct address.
It is worth noting here, that the academics mentioned above regarded the problem of ambiguity strictly from the cultural, psychological and linguistic proper point of view. Further theoretical overview of research studies on ambiguity will include scholars, who had a slightly different approach to the problem, i.e., they analyzed the notion of ambiguity from the point of view of translation.
E. S. Sherstnyova [3] completed an in-depth study of ambiguity or as she called it "multi-translatability" through translation analysis of a literary work. No classification of ambiguity and its types is presented in this scholar's work, however, very significant aspects are singled out in the course of discussion as far as theory and practice of translation is concerned. Mainly, the author notes that "the occurrence of multi-translatability is connected with both - the multi-layer nature of the source text and with the translator's concepts; it is also largely connected with the out-of-date and out-of-style nature on the part of some of the existing translations; another factor is strictly an extra-linguistic one, when the publishers set their own requirements for the publication of a certain text translation". The scholar also stresses the fact that "multi-translatability is a temporal category since the translations are typically introduced in a culturally and historically contrastive time period".
N. K. Garbovsky [4; p.324], an expert on the theory and practice of translation mentions what is called interlingual asymetry, which he explains as a phenomenon where words that are spelled similarly or the same in several language have completely different semantic value. This causes confusion and misinterpretation. Such words are known as the les faux amis du traducteur (a term introduced by Maxime Kressler and Jules De Rocquigny) or the translator's/interpreter's false friends. Another scholar, V. V. Akulenko, reffers to this phenomenon using the terms dialexemes.
V. V. Alimov [5; p.40] uses the Russian term mnogoznachnost', which is a direct terminological correspondence to ambiguity. Ambiguity is defined as "the ability of one and the same word to attain different semantic values in a sentence and to retain these semantic values outside of a given context". Clearly, he draws a line of similarity between ambiguity and polysemy.
Other scholars define ambiguity as "the possibility to interpret one phrase in several ways".
Using a computational analysis approach B. Gleich et al. [6] singled out the following types of ambiguity:
(1) Lexical ambiguity, which manifests itself in cases of polysemantic words;
(2) Syntactic ambiguity or structural ambiguity is represented by a word chain having several possible sequences patterns and, thus, several grammatical structure variants;
(3) Semantic ambiguity, when one sentence can be understood/interpreted in several different ways while being syntactically and lexically monosemantic;
(4) Pragmatic ambiguity, which manifests itself as a context-dependent semantic ambiguity;
(5) Vagueness, a linguistic phenomenon in which a lexical unit being monosemantic on the grammatical level may have some additional meanings that can be deduced within the given context.
Thomas Wasow et al. [7] regard ambiguity as "a semantic property" that "has two or more distinct denotations".
The following types of ambiguity are distinguished by these scholars:
(1) Morphological ambiguity, where the graphical and phonological non-equivalence of the morphological components can lead to ambiguous interpretations.
(2) Lexical ambiguity, where the lexical units have several denotations.
(3) Syntactic ambiguity, when the syntactic elements are placed in such a way that allows them to be interpreted in several ways with respect to their semantic and grammatical roles.
(4) Scopal ambiguity, when a certain quantifier adds dual meanings to the expression.
The authors of this classification bring the following example of scopal ambiguity in a sentence: Every man loves a woman (any woman or a particular woman?)
The scholars also note the fact that ambiguity and vagueness are not equivalent notions, because vague expressions do not have specific semantic boundaries since they are predominantly used in natural speech. Ambiguous expressions, on the other hand, have a specific range of meanings that make them dual or multiple in meaning. There may also be instances when several types of ambiguities are present in a given expression.
Anjali M. K. et al. [8] distinguish much more diverse and specific ranges of ambiguities in the natural language, mainly:
(1) Lexical ambiguity, or "ambiguity of a single word", when a certain word may be used in different syntactic roles due to its ability to undergo the process of lexical conversion.
(2) Lexical semantic ambiguity, or "ambiguity of a single word", when a certain word may be used in different contexts due to its homonymous nature.
(3) Syntactic ambiguity, or structural ambiguity which according to the scholars should be subdivided into scope ambiguity and attachment ambiguity. Anjali M. K. et al. [8] share the opinion of Thomas Wasow et al. [7] as to the definition and significance of this type of ambiguity in comparison with the other representations of ambiguity. Attachment ambiguity occurs when the phrase/clause structure is violated in such a way that a sentence acquires an unclear, dual meaning. One classic example brought by a number of grammar and semantics experts is: The man saw the boy with the telescope (was the man holding a telescope or did the boy see the man through the telescope?). This remains uncertain, thus making this sentence ambiguous.
(5) Semantic ambiguity, a type of ambiguity in which the mono-semantic meaning of the words and their fixed syntactic position do not prevent it from being understood from several different linguistic perspectives.
This is another classic example of such phenomenon: The car hit the pole while it was moving (What was moving - the car or the pole, or both?)
(6) Anaphoric ambiguity, a type of ambiguity that occurs on the discourse level. It is caused by one part of speech referring to two notions that were mentioned in the discourse at the same time. One example that the scholar brings is: The horse ran up the hill. It was very steep. It soon got tired. (It - the horse or the hill?)
(7) Pragmatic ambiguity, a type of ambiguity where the word or phrase acquires a dual meaning due to specific context in which it occurs. A basic example of this would be: Can you pass me the salt? (What is implied by the modal verb "can" - physical ability or an informal request?)
This was a short outline of the main types of ambiguity recognized by scholars. It can clearly be seen that lexical ambiguity is an integral part in all of the classifications mentioned above. Also, it must be taken into account that ambiguity is a complex phenomenon by its nature and representation. Often several types of ambiguity merge together to create the poly-semantic and, thus, a misleading effect. Therefore, there may be instances where lexical ambiguity will not function by itself only, but may be triggered by other forms of ambiguity.
Text equivalence and translation
Being an important and, in most cases, a key goal in translation, there has been a number of theories regarding the notion of equivalence suggested by E. Nida [9], J. C. Catford [10], M. Halliday [16], P. Newmark [11], V. Komissarov [12], L. Barkhudarov [2008] and others.
Equivalence in translation is understood as a semantic closeness of the original text in relation to the translated text. The term by itself is very broad and obscure and does not cover all the problematic cases that the translators encounter in their professional career. This gave rise to theories suggested by different scholars, where some of them look at the notion of equivalence in its pure form, others attempted to distinguish levels of equivalence within the general notion. Namely, Komissarov [12] suggests that there are five main types (or levels) of equivalence. These five levels of equivalence coincide with the levels of the original text and the text translation.
Specifically, the first level is regarded as the 'goal of communication level', where the translator decodes the main or the general idea of the text without paying special attention to the lexical and grammatical features. The second level is the 'level of description'. The third level is concerned with 'the level of the utterance'. At this level of equivalence, the language units in the SL do not coincide with that of the TL, both - on the lexical and syntactic level. There is no direct syntactic correlation of the language units in SL and TL. The fourth level known as the 'message level' of equivalence represents an almost complete syntactic structure equivalence as well as a nearly full semantic correlation of the lexical units in the SL and TL. The fifth level of equivalence is the 'level of language units', in which a complete equivalence is reached between the SL and TL. Syntactical and lexical structures coincide completely at this level of equivalence.
M. Halliday [16] notes that equivalence between the SL and the TL cannot be absolutely complete because the lexical and syntactical components of the SL cannot always function in the same way or do not always have a complete correspondence in the TL. Furthermore, in his theory of equivalence, he draws a specific distinction between the notions 'the same role' and 'the same function'.
In his book on The Theory of Translation, N.K. Garbovsky [4, p.264] notes that the notion of equivalence is somewhat obscure, at least, in the Russian language. He further justifies his point of view by stating that the contradictory nature of the term suggests the ability of a word, phrase or utterance to be replaced by a corresponding element under the comparison and further translation. However, this mutual interchangeability cannot be absolute, but only partial. The scholar also mentions that nowadays the notion of equivalence is often used along with the notion of adequacy in translation. They are used as full synonyms, despite the fact that they were many disputes about these terms being completely inter-replaceable.
Equivalence is regarded as a contextual category, which is not connected with the use any lexical or grammatical notions. Given that our research focuses on the problem of lexical ambiguity, some theories regarding lexical equivalence shall be regarded below.
Interestingly, unlike the previously mentioned scholars, V.V. Alimov [5; p.35] stresses the fact that equivalence is not something that simply occurs in a certain context, on the contrary, it is not a context-dependent phenomenon, i.e., in order for language units to be considered equivalent, they need to retain this ability, regardless whether there are used in a certain linguistic context or not.
In her book In Other Words, Mona Baker [14] discusses the notion of equivalence at word level. She notes that there are hardly any cases of complete correspondence between words in the SL and TL since a notion represented in one language as one lexical unit can be represented as two or more lexical units in another language (e.g. Eng. Tennis player; Rus. tennisist). In respect to this, Baker follows a model suggested by Cruse [15] and distinguishes four main types of lexical meaning, mainly: propositional meaning, expressive meaning, presupposed meaning, and evoked meaning. Baker sees the propositional meaning and expressive meaning as opposites in the sense that the propositional meaning can be interpreted as true or false, whereas words conveying the expressive meaning cannot be judged as true or false. We can clearly state that the word shirt is used to denote 'a piece of clothes worn on the upper part of the body'. Words containing expressive meaning cannot be regarded as true or false because, in such cases, they
reflect the subjective, personal feeling of the speaker. It follows that lexical units may have one propositional meaning but several expressive meanings within one language. The same can be said about the lexical units of two different languages.
According to Baker [14] the notion of presupposed meaning is closely connected to the notion of restrictions, mainly - selective and collocational restrictions. Selective restrictions have to be strictly followed and they are those collocations that we would normally expect in combinations of words. For instance, such a collocation as triangular shape is possible, while a collocation triangular person is not, because we cannot used the word 'triangular' with animate objects. Connotation restrictions, on the other hand, do not follow any logical rule of combining word together because they do not occur directly from the propositional meaning of the word.
Lexical equivalence and register
Register is another feature that affects the lexical meaning of the word. The differences and peculiarities in register are governed by the field, tenor and mode of discourse. Field in this case stands for 'what is happening in the particular situation' and tenor is understood as 'the relationship between the participants of the communication process'. Mode is regarded as a term for 'the role of the language in a specific situation' [14].
Baker associates the problem of lexical non-equivalence with the notion of semantic fields. Semantic fields are formed by groups of words within one semantic category. Knowing these semantic categories and building the semantic chains of words within them would help the translator see how many correspondences the each lexical unit has in another language. In some cases, there may be few lexical correspondences in the TL, likewise, the SL may have few correspondences to the words in the TL and this can be clearly observed in the process of back-translation. Baker notes, however, that there are words which cannot be easily grouped under a specific semantic field due to their use in a certain context or due to the fact that the notion exists in one the SL but does not exist or fully correspond to the notion represented in the TL.
Types of realia and translation strategies
Translators use different strategies to overcome the translation "obstacles" manifested by instances of non-equivalence.
With respect to this, Baker [14] suggests using the following strategies in cases of lexical non-equivalence:
Translation by a more general word (superordinate)
Translation by a more neutral/less expressive word
Translation by cultural substitution
Translation using a loanword or a combination of a loanword and an explanation to it
Translation by paraphrase using a related word
Translation by paraphrase using unrelated words
Translation by omission
Translation by illustration
Folklore texts reflect the cultural traditions of the people that the text was created by. Kabakchi [17] mentions the close connection of lexical units to the culture that they represent. In this regard, the lexical items used to translate the lexical unit from SL to TL would need to undergo not just simply a lexical adaptation, but also a cultural one. The choice of the lexical variant adopted in the TL should coincide with the special features of the multilingual world or with the cultural features of a particular TL.
The difficulty in translating lexical units, therefore, lies in the problems of adapting one cultural item to another. The translator faces two choices - (a) to lose the cultural trace of the SL and make the lexical unit understandable for the TL recipient or (b) to retain the cultural trace of the SL and make the lexical unit hardly or less, if not completely non-understandable for the TL recipient.
Kabakchi [17] also subdivides the cultural lexical items into idiocultural items which are represented by xenonyms. Some examples of Russian xenonyms in English include: tsar, Cossack. Generally, Russian xenonyms in English are subdivided into thematic groups, for instance: Geography: oblast', the Urals History: Stalingrad, the Battle of the Ice Politics: Bolshevik, Duma, perestroika Science and education: Candidate of Science Religion: Old Believer Art and Literature: Bolshoi Theatre Traditions and household: samovar, izba
Such lexical units as listed in (g) are well-represented in Russian folklore texts (e.g. Baba-Yaga ('evil witch'), skatert' samobranka ('a magic tablecloth'), fire-bird ('phoenix') etc.). Kabakchi [17] classifies xenonyms into the following lexical groups: Borrowings: Rus. ^ Eng. balalaika, borshch, etc. Calques: Rus. ^ Eng. Decembrist, Old Believer, etc. Lexical hybrids: Bolshoi Theatre, etc.
The peculiarities listed above shall be observed and analyzed in the Russian fairy tale "Morozko" as a case-study. Methods
A comprehensive linguistic insight into the problem under the main discussion cannot be achieved without the use of a range of scientific methods. In the course of data research, the continuous sampling and the contrastive lexical analysis methods were used as the fundamental methods of finding different variants of translation in TL to the corresponding units in SL. The method of theoretical analysis and synthesis was used as a subsidiary method of investigating the current state of the problem and the previous findings on the research topic presented. Discussion
The information presented in this section below provides a concise analysis of the ambiguous lexical units, mainly, stating the reasons why they are ambiguous in the TL and which variant of translation would be most suitable in specifically illustrated case of translation.
The comparative linguistic analysis of the lexical units included the study of two English translations of the SL text. The first English translation (T1) was done by a Russian translator, Irina Zheleznova [18] in 1966; the second translation was completed by R. Nisbet Bain (T2) in 1915.
The common key features of T1 and T2 texts manifest themselves in the attempt to find and implement what Mona Baker [14] referred to as cultural substitution. This can already be observed in the translation of the title of the fairy tale represented by the main characters proper name.
SL T1 T2
'Morozko' Father Frost Morozko
Zheleznova [18] replaced the Russian lexical unit with the closest cultural equivalent in the English language, which is based on the analogy with the English Jack Frost. Whereas, Bain [19] retains this lexical units, representing a xenonym according to Kabakchi [17] by transliterating the proper name and giving a translator's comment where the author of the translation draws the analogy with Jack Frost. Other examples of such translation include:
SL T1 T2
'(a) 'Krasnaya' Pretty one Beauty
(b) 'Batyushka' Good Father (Frost) Father Morozko, little father
(c) 'Golubchik' Sweet one Darling little pigeon mine
(d) 'Stariy khrych' Old croaker Husband, old man
(e) 'Lapushka' Sweet one Sweet clover
(f) 'Pirog' Pie Cake
(Example 2a shows and example of what Mona Baker [14] called a translation by an unrelated word. The lexical unit 'krasnaya' literally means 'red'. The red color in Russian culture represents the concept of 'beauty, being beautiful' [20]. If it is translated using a direct equivalent 'red', this will create a completely different connotation in English, since the red color in the English culture is associated with notions that have nothing in common with beauty, i.e., stop signal color (red light), anger (to see red), a warm welcome of an honorable guest (red carpet). Hence, in order to avoid lexical ambiguity of this lexical unit both translators found a semantic equivalent. The lexical units in 2b seem to be ambiguous at first since in the English language cultural tradition the word 'father' is mostly used to refer to the member of the family. However, this lexical unit has other connotations, i,e, "any lineal male ancestor; the Supreme Being", "one who exercises parental care over another" [21] . Furthermore, in the folklore context, it may have a transferred meaning given that in both, English and Russian cultures, there is a notion of Father Christmas (English) and Father Frost (Russian). Examples 2c-e show a typical for the Russian language culture use of diminutives. The main translation challenge here is to find the semantic correspondences that due to the differences in the languages' structures require a more significant approach. The example from T2 illustrates that Bain not only found an equivalent for the Russian diminutive but also reflected the Russian semantic component 'golub' (lit.: pigeon), which sounds absolutely adequate in English. The T1 example sounds somewhat ambiguous in the sense that it may not always be used to address a child. It is more commonly used to address a loved one. However, it still reflects the emotive meaning of this lexical unit. The example in 2c shows a neutralization in the lexical emotive meaning. The translation variant in T1 is closer to the SL lexical unit, however, it sounds too vulgar for a children's story and it reflects the voice qualities of an old person, whereas here it more important to reflect that it is an old person. The word 'croaker' apart from 'an old person' in English also has a meaning of 'an annoying bird', which would sound quite ambiguous here had it not been for the macro-context. Example 2f reflects to different translation of a very general notion in the Russian language. 'Pirog' make contain sweet and non-sweet stuffing. Whereas the English notion 'cake' reflects a type of pastry, which is mainly sweet. In the fairy tale, a piece of 'pirog' was given to a dog, from which we can conclude that it was likely to be a non-sweet product, however, we do not know this from the context. Therefore, T1 variant of translation seems to be a better and less ambiguous one, since the notion 'pie' in English may denote both - sweet and non-sweet products.
Other examples from the text include cases of cultural substitution:
SL T1 T2
(a) 'Ochutilsya' In a twinkling And look
(b) 'Ruki vroz " Hands dropped Threw up her arms
(c) 'Sgin " A plague on you Be off with you!
(d) 'Propadi' I hope the earth swallows you
These cultural substitutions are chosen for the sake of keeping this fairy tale a story for children. They are also connected with the cultural representation of a specific phenomenon in the mind o the recipient of the text. The example in 3a shows that both translations reflect the proper lexical value of the initial variant in the SL. Furthermore, the T2 variant retains the verbal paradigm of the initial lexical unit. Retaining the action helps to engage the reader in the plot of the tale and not just reflect the semantic value of the text. However, if it had not been for the macro-context, it would be difficult to understand what the attention is being drawn to, which makes this unit context-dependent and as a result somewhat ambiguous. The T1 variant, on the other hand, also shows the instance of the action, but unlike the T2 variant it also gives a special characteristic to the spirit of winter - Morozko. This character controls the winter conditions and therefore as it moves it 'twinkles' in the form of snow particles in the air. This is a more specific, and thus, less ambiguous representation of the initial lexical unit.
The examples in 3b-e show a quantitative non-equivalence of the SL and the TL units. They
are semantic equivalents which give a specific emotive meaning to the SL unit. The ambiguous lexical unit in the source language is compensated differently in the two variants of translation. The T1 variant does not reflect the real meaning implied by the original source. In English, the expression ''to drop one's hands" means to be in despair. However, in the fairy tale, the old woman was not in despair but in dismay, which is clearly reflected in the T2 variant.
The examples in 3c-d illustrate that the Russian verbs representing curses were translated directly retaining all the minimal semantic components in T1 and generalized by one rather neutral phrase in T2. Since this is a fairy tale most commonly written for children, the T1 variant would sound too dramatic and too straightforward, whereas the T2 variant reflects the semantic meaning that is implied: the old woman's daughter simply wanted Morozko to go away. Both T1 and T2 variants reflect the menacing tone of the girl revealing her features of a negative character. These are the key characteristic features of translation and lexical ambiguity in the given fairy tale.
Conclusion
To sum up all that has been stated above, the problem of lexical ambiguity should be strictly regarded from the linguistic point of view; it should also be regarded from the point of view of culture as these two aspects are closely related and inter-dependent, thus, they cannot and should not be regarded separately. The theoretical outline shows that terminology used and the concepts represented in the theory of translation, lexicology and inter-linguistic culture is all interconnected in the process of translation, i.e., when translating, we deal not only with linguistic material, but also with a product of national culture. If the message conveyed in the SL is misinterpreted in the TL, it will create a false cultural image in the mind of the recipient, therefore, leading to a false worldview of other cultures. Translators should take this into regard and try to avoid cases of false interpretation of the cultural units presented in international folklore literature.
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9. E. Nida (1964) Principles of Correspondence from The Translation Studies Reader edited by Lawrence Venuti. Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2004.
10. J. C. Catford (1965) Translation Shifts from The Translation Studies Reader edited by Lawrence Venuti. Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2004.
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