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54D.D. Davletova, R.R. Iskandarova
THE ROLE OF EQUIVALENCE IN THE TRANSLATION OF COLLOCATIONS
This article discusses the definition of equivalence in translation and addresses the importance of colloquial expressions in improving the quality of translation in English, achieving true equivalence, as well as their features related to translation. The article also analyzes the most common English collocations and their Uzbek equivalents.
Key words: equivalence, collocations, analysis, translations, meaning.
Equivalence is an expression from a language which has the same meaning as, or can be used in a similar context to, one from another language, and can therefore be used to translate it: for example, English I don't understand, French Je ne comprehends pas, Italian Non capisco, Modern Greek Dhen katalaveno, Japanese Wakari-masen
Collocations are the words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. "Why do builders not produce a building or authors not invent a novel, since they do invent stories and plots? No reason as far as dictionary definitions of words are concerned. We don't say it because we don't say it." (Bolinger and Sears, 1968: 55) True equivalents of collocations are paramount to make up correct sentences and to be understood by native speakers easily. For example, the English say 'get married to someone'. In Uzbek we use 'with' after 'marry' (which seems more logical for us). However, this isn't the normal way in English. So, firstly the equivalent of the whole phrase ('get married to someone'), must be learnt, then no one makes this mistake. Every language has thousands of collocations and it is almost impossible to learn all of them. In this article there are given the linguists' views on equivalents of collocations and some advice which can help language learners to become more aware of the collocational words. In addition, the most common collocations are given with translation examples in it.
Translation is a process which is complex and multifaceted. It is common to talk about "translating from one language to another", but in fact the process of translation is not only about replacing one language with another. Translating was seen as a decision-making process, where a translator often has different kinds of possibilities to choose in order to fulfil the function of the translation. If a particular language unit in one language carries the same intended meaning/message encoded in a particular language environment in another, then the two units are considered equivalent. The area of equivalents covers linguistic units such as morphemes, words, phrases, sentences, idioms and proverbs. So, the search for equivalents is the most problematic stage of translation. It should be noted, however, that this does not mean that the translator must always find one-to-one categorically or structurally equivalent units in two languages, that is, sometimes two different language units in different languages have the same function.
Most of the linguists have commented on the importance of collocations in language learning. Zahra Sadeghi states "Second language learners often rely on their native language in trying to communicate or translate. They assume that there always exists a one-to-one correspondence between L1 and L2 lexical items. This strategy may be of some help to the learner at the beginning levels of language learning, but it is also a major cause of errors because even equivalent lexical items do not always convey the same sense in two languages for various reasons, including cultural differences which are reflected in the vocabulary of every language. This false assumption causes the learners to make collocational errors." For instance, most learners use "hometask" instead of "homework" which does not have equivalent in English during the class or some say "do a list" which seems as a correct sentence in Uzbek like "Ro'yhat qilmoq" but here the verb "do" is being used incorrectly. It is because being unaware of the words which can co-occur with the verb "do" and "make". If the learners acquire the collocations very well, they may stop doing these kind of mistakes a lot.
In the process of translating collocations, it is crucial that translator can distinguish accepted equivalents from the other groups of words in the original language. In this case it is important to understand what an accepted collocation is. According to Newmark it is explained as following:" A collocation consists of two or three lexical (sometimes called full, descriptive, substantial) words, usually linked by grammatical (empty, functional, relational) words. (1978:115)
Some definitions of translation actually replace equivalence with identification and emphasize the need to fully preserve the content of the original in the translation. For example, when Fedorov uses the term "utility"
© D.D. Davletova, R.R. Iskandarova, 2022.
instead of "equivalence", this utility implies "a complete transfer of the semantic content of the original." However, this thesis has not found its confirmation in the observed evidence, and its supporters are forced to make many remarks that contradict the original definition. Thus, L.S. Barkhudarov's invariance "can be said only in a relative sense", "translation losses are inevitable; there is an incomplete transmission of the meanings expressed in the original text. but it remains unclear how this should be combined with the fact that "the immutability of the content plan" is expressed as a single determinant.
A set of English verbs that are extremely common, such as do, make, get, have, go, etc. often cause learners problems with collocation. Some learners often say get a baby/an accident/fun instead of have a baby/an accident/fun, and make some shopping/research/work, instead of do some shopping/research/work. While the native English speakers intuitively make the correct collocation, based on a life-time experience of hearing and reading the words in fixed combinations, the Uzbek learners of English try to translate the words. The problem for the Uzbek learners of English is that there are no collocation rules that can be learned. They have more limited experience and may frequently collocate words in a way that sounds odd to the native speaker. Uzbek students' collocation errors are mainly because of lack of knowledge about collocations. There is a table of most common English adjective noun collocations with Uzbek equivalents:
English adjective+noun Collocations Uzbek versions of the English adjective+noun collocations
Heavy bag, heavy box, Og'ir yukxalta, og'ir quti,
heavy rain, heavy snow kuchli yomg'ir, kuchli qor,
heavy traffic Katta tirbandlik
As it is clear from the table the word "heavy" has different equivalents if we translate it into Uzbek. In the initial combinations its equivalent can be translated as "og'ir" it is the most acceptable translation. However, when the word "heavy" comes together with the words "rain", "snow" we cannot translate it as we did in the first examples. It is not clear enough if we translate it as the following: "og'ir yomg'ir" or "og'ir qor" this does not make sense. Here the word "kuchli" can be more accepted equivalent. In the last example the given adjective can be translated as "katta" and it makes sense.
There is a table of most common English verb collocations with Uzbek equivalents:
English Collocations in the sentence Uzbek versions of the English collocations
I like listening to the radio, when I am doing the ironing Dazmol qilayotganimda radio eshitishni yoqtiraman
I'll make dinner if you do the dishes afterwards. Idishlarni keyin yuvsangiz, men kechki ovqat tayyorlayman.
I like to do homework. Men uy vazifasini bajarishni yaxshi ko'raman.
Did the flood do much damage? 4. To'fon katta zarar keltirdimi?
As it is clear according to the table one word "do" can be translated and used in different equivalents in Uzbek language "qilmoq", "yuvmoq", "bajarmoq", "zarar keltirmoq". As a result, such phrases are often made by Uzbek students of English, even by the intermediate learners, as * do a decision, *do a party and *do an experiment. The correct expressions should be make a decision, have a party and do an experiment. They make such mistakes because the English words make, have and do have the same equivalent "qilmoq" make a decision- qaror qilmoq, bazm qilmoq, tajriba o'tkazmoq in Uzbek. In the same way, the Influenced by the way Uzbek students use a general term to express many different meanings they transfer this habit into making wrong English collocations. From what has been mentioned above, it is clear that figuring out the equivalents of collocation is a big problem in learners'
In conclusion, achieving true equivalence in translation has many advantages as it is discussed above. When a word or phrase means exactly the same thing in both languages, we call that an equivalence, and it's understandably one of the first things professional translators look for. Comparative studies of languages show that the translations of the words may not always be suitable when it is done by a computer. In theoretical computer science and formal language theory, the equivalence problem is the question of determining, given two representations of formal languages, whether they denote the same formal language. It is also stated in the article that loss of meaning often happens because of being unaware of collocations and not achieving true equivalents in both source and target language. So the translators should consider the varieties of collocations and the relationships between words and this requires a deep understanding of the colloquial expressions of both first and second languages, not just the words.
ISSN 2223-4047
Вестник магистратуры. 2022. № 3-1 (126)
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DAVLETOVA DILDORA NADIR QIZI- postgraduate student, Urganch davlat universiteti o'qituvchisi.
ISKANDAROVA RISOLATRAVSHANBEKOVNA - postgraduate student, Uzbekistan State University of World Languages.
