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СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ НАПРАВЛЕНИЯ ЛИНГВИСТИКИ
УДК 378.016:811.111. DOI 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-01-10. ББК Ш143.21-9. ГРНТИ 16.31.51.
Код ВАК 13.00.02
TRANSLATING COMMUNICATIVE INTENTION AND MEANING FROM ENGLISH INTO RUSSIAN
Elena N. Makarova
Ural State University of Economics (Ekaterinburg, Russia) ORCID ID: https://0rcid.0rg/0000-0002-4439-5521
Ab stract. This paper deals with the study of communicative structure used in English and Russian utterances. The study is aimed at analyzing Russian EFL learners' ability to convey communicative meaning of English utterances using a variety of Li (Russian) lexical and syntactic means when translating experimental materials from L2 (English) to their native tongue. The application of theoretical and empirical methods allowed registering and classifying translation variants and identifying problems caused by inability of the Russian subjects to understand the communicative meaning of the source sentences with a different location of the communicative center. The results prove that conveying the emotional coloring of a sentence is a challenging task for the Russian EFL learners. Comparative analysis of the data with the results from previous studies helps reveal the connection between the ability of the Russian speakers to identify the location of the communicative center and their ability to choose a correct translation strategy. The paper also addresses the issue of determining nucleus position; its role in conveying the communicative structure in written speech is crucial. A potential area for application of the results of the study concerns the EFL teaching methods, as they contribute to the development of foreign language communicative competence of non-linguistic students as well as their translation competence. Outlined are the perspectives for further research aimed at deeper understanding of the mechanisms determining nucleus position in non-native written speech and significance of prosodic means for conveying communicative meanings in the process of written and oral translation.
Keywords: English language; methods of teaching English; methods of teaching English at university level; Russian language; Russian students; translation strategies; translation studies; translation; activity as translator; English utterances; linguistic means.
КОММУНИКАТИВНАЯ УСТАНОВКА ГОВОРЯЩЕГО И СПОСОБЫ ЕЕ ПЕРЕДАЧИ С АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА НА РУССКИЙ
Макарова Е. Н.
Уральский государственный экономический университет (Екатеринбург, Россия) ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4439-5521
Аннотация. Статья посвящена проблеме коммуникативной организации высказывания в русском и английском языках. Цель исследования - анализ языковых средств, используемых русскими студентами
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© Е. Макарова, 2021
неязыковых специальностей для передачи коммуникативного значения английских высказываний при письменном переводе на родной язык. Для достижения поставленной цели были применены теоретические и прикладные методы, позволившие выявить, описать и классифицировать варианты перевода экспериментальных фраз с английского на русский язык. Анализ полученного в ходе проведения эксперимента материала позволил определить трудности, возникшие у русских студентов в процессе передачи коммуникативных значений английских вариантов с разной позицией коммуникативного центра. Полученные результаты свидетельствуют, что передача экспрессивной окраски английских фраз представляет трудную задачу для русских студентов неязыковых специальностей, изучающих английский язык в качестве иностранного. Сравнительный анализ полученных данных с результатами исследований, проведенных автором ранее, подтверждает, что умение русских учащихся решать коммуникативные задачи, в частности, определять верную позицию коммуникативного центра в английской фразе, является значимым для выбора верного варианта перевода. В рамках проведенного исследования также рассмотрен вопрос о важности определения позиции главного фразового ударения в письменной речи. Полученные результаты имеют широкую сферу применения и могут быть использованы для совершенствования методики преподавания английского языка в русской аудитории, в том числе для развития у студентов неязыковых специальностей, изучающих английский язык как иностранный, иноязычной коммуникативной компетенции, а также переводческой компетенции. Дальнейшая разработка исследуемой проблемы может быть направлена на изучение механизмов, влияющих на определение потенциальной позиции фразового ударения в письменной неродной речи, а также анализ роли просодических средств в процессе передачи коммуникативных значений в письменном и устном переводе как с русского на английский, так и с английского на русский язык.
Ключевые слова : английский язык; методика преподавания английского языка; методика английского языка в вузе; русский язык; русские студенты; переводческие стратегии; переводоведение; перевод; переводческая деятельность; английские высказывания; языковые средства.
Для цитирования: Макарова, Е. Н. Коммуникативная установка говорящего и способы ее передачи с английского языка на русский / Е. Н. Макарова. - Текст : непосредственный // Филологический класс. - 2021. - Т. 26, № 1. - С. 132-143. - DOI: 10.517б2/1И<-2021-2б-01-Ю.
For citation: Makarova, E. N. (2021). Translating Communicative Intention and Meaning from English into Russian. In Philological Class. Vol. 26. No. 1, pp. 132-143. DOI: 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-01-10.
Introduction. During the last decade the world has become more interconnected with the advancement of technology and the ease of international movement. This changing environment brings with it numerous practical linguistic problems, many of which can be solved through the development of teaching and learning methods. To succeed in everchanging global society, university graduates must possess communicative competences which will enable them to carry out effective professional and cross-cultural communication in a foreign language, mostly English. It should be noted that successful interaction with representatives of different countries and cultures requires not only fluency in EFL but quite often adequate translation skills.
Since the communicative function of a language is the most important one, analysis of language units and categories responsible for information structure and communicative meaning of an oral or a written utterance remains relevant. Contrastive analysis aimed at
examining the choice of language means used for expression of similar content are considered most interesting [Gak 1989]. Without detailed analysis of the main communicative categories and linguistic means of their representation in L2 utterance, it is impossible to understand the literal meaning of a statement in L2 and its actual meaning in a certain communicative situation. The results of previous studies prove that transmission and perception of communicative meanings in L2 in both oral and written speech are challenging tasks for an L2 language learner [Gudmestad and Edmonds 2018; Abdul Ridha 2014; Le and Wijitsopon 2015; Park and Nam 2015; Egorova 2017]. The significance of studies on conveying communicative structure in L2 has been empirically confirmed: 'ESL students often produce similar texts, which appear disconnected and disjointed because there is no clear information structure. Moreover, an incomplete understanding of the meanings of both theme and focus of new information often leads to un-
intended emphases which makes it difficult for the reader / teacher to understand the points being made' [Francis 1989: 220]. That is why modern researchers focus on searching for effective ways of providing innovative techniques for teaching correct representation of communicative structure in L2 [Pérez de Cabrera 2012].
The English language is considered the lingua franca of the world. Other languages have also proved their significance in providing cross-linguistic communication; the Russian language successfully performed the function of a lingua franca in the Soviet Union in the 20th century [Pavlenko 2006]. Today Russian remains the language of communication for individuals of different nationalities within Russia and the former Soviet countries. Modern research proves that interest in learning Russian has been growing in recent years [Rovinskaya 2013].
The analysis of linguistic means, involved in representation of communicative structure components in Russian and English is of interest as these languages differ in word order and sentence structure. Brief characteristics of their word order and prosodic features help better understand and predict potential difficulties in the process of conveying meaning of utterances by an L2 (Russian) EFL learner and translator. In spite of the fact that both languages belong to the group of languages with the basic SVO word order, the word order in English is fixed while the word order in Russian is relatively free. Also, if the English word order is more actively engaged in the manifestation of grammatical function due to the necessity of preserving syntactic relationships between words, in Russian the communicative and stylistic word order functions are more significant.
As for prosodic means, English and Russian share the usage of sentence stress (the nucleus) for communicative center marking. Anyway, there is a difference in this area as well. In the English language, nucleus can be used to highlight the element of 'new'at the beginning or in the middle of a phrase without accompanying change in the word order. As for the Russian language, the communicative center is often marked by both the location and the phonetic means. Consequently, if in English, the main means of expressing the communicative center is the nucleus, in Russian, nucleus and word order both
act as the main means of utterance's communicative organization.
Earlier findings demonstrate that EFL Russian learners face problems in distinguishing differences between variants of one sentence with different position of communicative center [Makarova 2018]. The relevance of ability of manifesting L2 communicative structure to the development of translation competence of L2 learners has also been proved [Makarova 2019].
The aim of the present study is to consider, analyze, and describe linguistic means used by the Russian EFL learners in the process of translation from L2 (English) into Li (Russian). This will allow for the identification of the translation strategies that the Russian EFL learners choose as well as the evaluation of their effectiveness.
Literature review. The issue of the actual division of the sentence raised in the works of V. Mathesius and the other members of the Prague Linguistic Circle has been developed in linguistics since the middle of the twentieth century. Although it has attracted interest of many scholars, it continues to remain in the top list of disputable topics. This is confirmed by linguistic discussions, the subject of which is the role of various linguistic means in the process of conveying communicative meanings in different languages [Face and D'Imperio 2005; Klassen, Wagner, Tremblay and Goad 2016; Vander Klok, Goad and Wagner 2018].
Marking of components of communicative structure involves prosodic, grammatical, syntactic and lexical means. The literature review proves that in the majority of languages the mobility of nucleus is widely used for signaling of communicative structure components [Fansel-ow 2016]. Word order, alongside with the nucleus, is recognized as the main way of highlighting the communicative center in many of the world's known languages. However, the results of numerous contrastive studies show that the intensity of these two means used in communicative structure signaling varies.
Some authors suggest that English with its nucleus shifts is a language with 'plastic'prosody unlike languages with free word order which are called 'non-plastic' [Dubeda and Mady 2010]. The majority of contrastive studies of information structure comparing English to other language
systems are carried out from a syntactic perspective [Breul and Gobbel 2010]. Few authors focus on the interaction of word order and prosody [Calhoun, La Cruz and Olssen 2018].
In the last decade, there has been increased interest in the contrastive analysis of the informational and communicative structure of utterances in Slavic languages and the English language. The research on the phonetic prominence of non-final lexical elements in Czech, Hungarian and English was conducted by T. Dubeda and K. Mady [2010]. A. Szwedek [2011] analyzed the role of articles, sentence stress, word order and some syntactic means in indicating 'new' information in Polish and English sentences. The author concludes that in the Polish language word order change is the most common solution for fulfilling this task, whereas English primarily uses changes in location of the nucleus: its shifts are less common in Polish than in English. The research carried out by Ye. Savchenko [2016], presents the analysis of prosodic means in English and Ukrainian speech in the aspect of correlation between semantic and communicative structures.
L. V. Shcherba, whose ideas serve as a foundation for the present research, was one of the first to present the results of his contrastive study of the means involved in conveying communicative meanings in Russian and other languages on the example of one sentence [Viller 1960]. In spite of extensive contrastive research on the English-Russian language pair, the foundation for which was laid in the works by A. Smirnits-kiy [2007], V. Plotkin [2007] and other linguists, there remain few attempts to comprehensively analyze various linguistic means in the expression of communicative categories in English and Russian. Moreover, their interaction in the Russian language itself belong to the controversial linguistic topics: 'The connections of intonation with semantics and syntax have been clearly insufficiently studied in modern Russian linguistics, and these connections are in the focus of attention of researchers' [Pavlova and Svetoza-rova 2017, cited by Skorikova 2020: 122]. As these mechanisms are not sufficiently studied, the use of contrastive analysis makes it possible to gain their better understanding and identify difficulties in the choice of linguistic means responsible for conveying the communicative meaning in L2.
The last decade is also characterized by the growing number of studies dealing with the application of Theme / Rheme theory to the process of translation. Using the material of various languages, modern authors consider ways of implementing the elements of communicative structure for preserving the equivalence of translation in the process of representing the writer's intention [Wang 2014]. When searching for solutions for translation problems, modern linguists analyze mostly written translations, paying special attention to the distribution of information presented in the form of Theme-Rheme relation [Karini 20x9]. Analysis of information structure-based strategies used in translating is presented in the study of Á. L. Jiménez-Fernández [2020]. The author analyzes syntactic means of establishing the theme / topic, comparing the source and target texts and paying special attention to such information structure phenomena as negative preposing, topic fronting and passive voice. It's important to mention the growing number of studies done on the material of the Chinese language. For example, X. Du [20x9] compares the actual division of the Chinese and English sentences in a legal text. M. Reda [20x9] assumes, that when evaluating the quality of translation, the distribution of communicative dynamism in the original should be given more consideration than its linear arrangement. The research carried out by L. Dusková [20x8] is based on excerpts from passages of digital running text of three English novels and their Czech translations drawn from the InterCorp. The author focuses on the problems arising from the different hierarchy of the respective word order principles with the primary ones being grammatical function in English and information structure/functional sentence perspective (FSP) in Czech. The results show that most problems arise in the case of different linear ordering as it may indicate either an identical or a different FSP structure.
In spite of numerous studies on characteristic features of the process of Russian-English and English-Russian translation, most of the authors focus on the analysis of one aspect of translation: grammatical, lexical, or stylistic. M. Safina and I. A. Avkhadieva [20x8] deal with the actual division of the sentence when translating literary works by V. V. Nabokov from English into Russian. The authors conclude that 'the existing
inconsistencies in the structure of sentences in the English and Russian languages consist in the different structure of theme-rhematic relations within a sentence and can cause difficulties in translation' [Safina and Avkhadieva 2018: 125]. E. Petrova [2016] considers various lexical and syntactic markers (particles and adverbs) which act as intensifiers in both Russian and English and concludes that the adequacy of translation often depends on the location of logical stress. On the grounds of observation, the author proves that literal translation can be caused by the inability of inexperienced translators to apply the theory of actual division of the sentence and identify the communicative center of the utterance.
The literature review proves that contrasts in linguistic means of signaling communicative structure in utterances can be of primary significance in the process of solving the challenging tasks of translators on achieving the translation equivalence. Yet, there is a lack of studies analyzing the complex means, namely word order and the nucleus, and their interaction in the implementation of communicative structure for utterances in the process of translating from L2 (English) into L1 (Russian). Since phonetic prominence is one of the main means for marking the semantic weight of lexical elements, most studies have been carried out on the material of oral speech [Luchkina and Cole 2016]. Few linguists raise the issue about the role of sentence stress in understanding the meaning of written speech and its translation into a foreign language. This area remains poorly studied, no matter that 'decision-making mechanisms about the location of the nucleus and the communicative focus (rhema) in written utterances are one of the most interesting topics' [Pavlova 2009: 72]. By giving examples of wrong and ambiguous translations caused by ignoring rules of the word order in the target language, A. Pavlova comes to the conclusion that written text cannot be understood without its mental intoning and accenting, even though less prominently in comparison to oral speech [Pavlova 2010]. Significance of the issue of effect of prosodic means in written texts comprehension accounts for the choice of written utterances as the material for the present research. In addition to word order, potential position of a nucleus serves for indicating the 'importance' of lexical elements and helps transfer the informa-
tion and communicative structure of written utterances.
Materials and methods. The materials for the experiment included 90 English sentences, 45 of which contained intensifiers (really, never and others). Each sentence was presented to the Russian subjects in 2 or 3 variants. Different position of the communicative center in each variant could be associated with the possibility of either logical or emphatic stress realization. The communicative center in each variant was underlined (for example: What did Carl do here? What did Carl do here? What did Carl do here?).
Theoretical and empirical methods were utilized while implementing this research study. Those methods include a literature review, linguistic analysis of the English and Russian experimental material, comparative qualitative analysis, elementary quantitative analysis, empirical research methods (experiment, interview, observation).
Subjects. The subjects participating in the study are university students aged 20 (10 subjects) and 21 (5 subjects), who are majoring in economics and management and are completing a two-year course for an additional qualification of Translator in the Field of Professional Communication. All the subjects are native Russian speakers who are proficient at English level B2 (according to CEFR) as determined by a placement test administered before their participation in the study.
Procedure. At the first stage of the experiment, the Russian subjects were asked to orally comment on the differences between two or three communicative variants of one sentence with a different position of the underlined communicative center. In pre-task interviews, all the subjects confirmed their understanding of what a communicative center was. Some of their responses included: 'the most important word in a sentence, 'determining its meaning', 'the word which helps understand what they want to say', and 'the word which must be highlighted in order to be understood by your partner'.
At the second stage of the experimental research, the same subjects were asked to translate the experimental sentences from L2 (English) into
Li (Russian). They were given the task to find and reproduce the closest Russian equivalent of the English sentences (variants with the same grammatical and lexical structure which differ in the potential location of the nucleus (this word was underlined). The number of Russian equivalents was not limited. It took the participants from 65 to 80 minutes to complete the task. Then an analysis was conducted of those sentences translated from English into Russian.
Findings and discussion. The results from the interviews of the subjects show that 95% understood the difference in the meaning of the communicative variants which differ in potential location of logical stress. As for the variants containing intensifiers, which help express different degrees of emphasis, comprehension proved to be more difficult. In most cases, Li Russian speakers either perceived the variants with different degrees of emphasis as completely equivalent (50% of the experiment participants) or presented incorrect interpretation of the differences between them (30%). Only 20% of the subjects mentioned that the variants with the highlighted intensifiers were characterized by higher degrees of emotionality and expressiveness, sounded more persuasive or helped express a stronger degree of doubt. The findings obtained at this stage are similar to the results of the preliminary experiment which was conducted with Li Russian speakers who lack translation training or a linguistic background [Makarova 2018].
The translations obtained at the second stage of the experiment reveal the typical translation variants and allow for their classification. The results also show the linguistic means used by the Russian Li subjects in the process of translation from L2 (English).
The first group is formed by the examples with logical stress possibilities. Their communicative center is in italics:
- I met Carl last Thursday. Did you see him?
- What did Carl do here?
1) - What did Carl do here?
2) - What did Carl do here?
3) - What did Carl do here?
The identical English word order in these three questions does not prevent a speaker from conveying his different communicative intentions. Although the reader sees only the vocab-
ulary and the word order, 'he decides on the location of the most prominent stress and on the communicative focus (rhema) of a sentence' [Pavlova 2009: 72]. At the first stage of the experiment, most of the subjects confirmed their understanding of the difference in the meaning of the three variants. Word order changes turned out to be the most common way of demonstrating this difference in translation: all L1 Russian subjects put the Russian equivalent of the English word to the strong final position:
1) - What did Carl do here?
Chto zdes'delal Karl?
2) What did Carl do here?
Chto Karl delal zdes'?
3) - What did Carl do here?
Chto Karl zdes'delal?
About 30 percent of the subjects presented several translations of each English sentence; thus, it demonstrated the possibility of word order variation in the Russian equivalents. For example:
- What did Carl do here?
1) Chto zdes'delal Karl?
2) Chto Karl delal zdes'?
3) Chto delal Karl zdes'?
4) Chto zdes'Karl delal?
Word order changes in these cases do not affect the communicative meaning of the sentence. The position of the proper name 'Karl' in the response can vary. What really matters here is whether it is phonetically prominent. Only then can the Russian translations be equivalent to the English question with the communicative center on 'Carl'. Most likely, the research subjects can easily predict the nucleus position in the corresponding Russian sentence without reading it aloud. One of the subjects introduced the Russian particle 'to' in his translation of this sentence to highlight the word it refers to. Its usage definitely contributes to communicative center signaling and proves the ability of L1 Russian learners to involve variable linguistic means when conveying the communicative intention of the speaker:
- Karl-to chto zdes'delal?
Two Russian lexical units highlighted in italics were offered by three participants when translating the question with the communicative center on the adverb 'here':
- What did Carl do here?
1) Chto Karl delal imenno zdes'?
2) Chto zdes' - to Karl delal?
3) Zdes' - to chto Karl delal?
The issue of the evaluation of the translations and their correspondence to the Russian language norm is beyond the limits of this research. Nevertheless, there have been registered examples which can definitely be of interest for further research from the point of view of the translation equivalence:
- What did Carl do here?
- Pochemu tut Karl byl?
Emphasis on the adverbial modifier of the place ('tut') in non-final position in the Russian sentence allows the person asking about Carl's presence in this place to express surprise. Moving the adverbial modifier of place to final position where it receives the greatest degree of prominence proves to be a more common strategy used by the Russian subjects; an absolute majority of EFL learners replicated the English word order when translating the English variant:
- Chto Karl delal zdes'?
Presented below are the translations which show similar results. Along with word order changes, Russian subjects used various lexical means, which in the situation of absence of the sentence stress, helped them mark the communicative center:
- Liza is at school.
1) - Why is she there today?
- Pochemu ona tam imenno segodnya?
2) - Why is she there today?
Pochemu imenno v shkole ona segodnya?
Pochemu ona imenno tam segodnya?
3) - Why is she there today?
Pochemu zhe ona segodnya v shkole?
Po kakoj prichine ona v shkole segodnya?
Pochemu voobshche ona v shkole segodnya?
Even so, following the English sentence pattern of keeping the adverbial modifier of time in final position remains the most frequently translation strategy option chosen by absolute majority of the Russian subjects:
Pochemu ona tam imenno segodnya?
The second set of experimental material consists of the sentences with potentially different emphatic stress location. Emotions are proved to be a significant factor for successful communication [Alba-Jues and Larina 2018]. Rendering and transferring emotional coloring into a foreign language can be a challenging task even for
an experienced translator [Petrova and Rodiono-va 2016]. Emphatic stress can be placed on words containing emotional meaning or on intensifiers which make them the most phonetically prominent lexical elements in a sentence:
John says you've met each other.
1) - As for me, I've never seen him.
2) - As for me, I've never seen him.
Half of the subjects kept the syntactic structure of the English phrase in translations of the first variant:
1) - As for me, I've never seen him.
- Chto kasaetsya menya, ya nikogda ne videl ego.
- Chto kasaetsya menya, ya nikogda ne byl znakom s nim.
These Russian translations with the final pronoun can contain the idea of contrast, if pronounced with the nucleus in final position, which doesn't seem to be reasonable. The findings correspond with the few and fragmentary observations of modern translations from English into Russian characterized by the so-called 'strange' word order [Pavlova; Kalinin 2015].
Moreover, the translations presented by the Russian subjects do not reflect the difference between a neutral utterance and its possible variant with the communicative center on the adverb 'never', which is undoubtedly more emotional. Most subjects (90%) demonstrated similar (neutral) emotional coloring of translations with different word order:
1) As for me, I've never seen him.
Chto kasaetsya menya, ya nikogda ne videl ego.
2) As for me, I've never seen him.
Chto kasaetsya menya, ya nikogda ego ne videl.
As the position of the pronoun in the Russian utterance, which does not have strict limitations in comparison with the English one, it can demonstrate variation.
Poor ability of the Russian subjects to identify the difference between neutral and emphatic variants on the first stage of the experimental research could account for their difficulties in conveying emotional coloring in translation. If in oral speech emotional coloring can be reached by putting nucleus on the Russian adverb 'nikogda', then in written translation the subjects should have used certain lexical means to support the emphasis, but they failed to do so.
When translating examples with the intensifier 'really', the experiment participants chose to use various lexical means to express different degrees of surprise and doubt:
- Her new earrings were gorgeous!
- Did you really like them?
About 90% of the Russian learners presented two variants of translation:
1) Did you really like them?
- Tebe oni ponravilis'?
2) Did you really like them?
- Oni tebe dejstvitel'no ponravilis'?
The latter variant of translation can be read in Russian with the nucleus either on the verb or the adverb. These two will differ in emotional coloring, as the utterance with the highlighted final verb does not correspond to the English variant 'Did you really like them?', where the speaker expresses genuine doubt.
Only two Russian subjects (13%) demonstrated the ability of conveying the difference in the degree of emphasis in their translations by adding the Russian equivalent of 'really' 'dejstvitel'no', and the adverbs 'ser'ozno', 'po-nastoyash-chemu':
2) Did you really like them?
- Tebe ser'yozno oni ponravilis'?
Oni tebe po-nastoyashchemu ponravilis'?
These translations reflect that the intention of the speaker to show the opinion of his partner about the earrings does not coincide with his point of view. In the absolute majority of the Russian translations, the subjects avoided using additional lexical means for reinforcing the reaction of the speaker.
To sum up, the Russian EFL learners demonstrate less diversity in the translation of the sentences belonging to the second group. Conveying emotional coloring seems to be more challenging in spite of the fact that the Russian language uses similar linguistic means for expressing intensification. Signaling different types of emotions as well as their perception in L2 is an extremely important area for study as emphasis for intensity can cause difficulties even when perceived in Li [Landgraf 2014]. The results of the translation experiment correspond with the data obtained during the first part of the research. Russian Li speakers faced difficulties in identifying variation between the degree of emphasis in the examples with stressed and unstressed intensifiers.
The inability to perceive the linguistic means of highlighting the communicative center may lead to the failure of conveying the communicative intention in both L2 speech and in translation from L2 into L1. This proves the connection between linguistic and translation competences and the impact of linguistic competence development on the quality of translation [Metwally 2020]. Mastering the linguistic competence, or in this case, mastering the ability to identify communicative structure of an utterance and the location of its communicative center leads to the ability to choose the correct linguistic means in the process of translation.
Another point that is worth mentioning is the ability to predict the nucleus location in oral speech on the bases of the written utterances. The Russian subjects were not asked to mark the communicative center position in the Russian sentences, so it is difficult to predict what the oral interpretations of the translations could be. Yet, some of the experiment participants used additional linguistic tools for highlighting the communicative center and produced equivalent translations. Studying the mechanisms responsible for the decisions of the readers on the location of the nucleus and conveying them in translation from L2 into L1 is a prospective field for further research.
Conclusions. The study was aimed at revealing and describing language means used by the Russian EFL learners in the process of translating written utterances from L2 (English) into L1 (Russian). The analysis of experimental sentences with different places of communicative center proves that Russian students used different means to express communicative weight of lexical items in the English written utterances. Word order variation, namely bringing the most semantically important element to the strong final position, was observed to be the most commonly used strategy. In the examples of this type in oral speech, the potential sentence stress would be realized on the last word of an utterance. At the same time, not all the translations with word order changes can be considered equivalent to the English sentences, as they do not always lead to changes in the communicative intention of the speaker. The study of translation options identifies examples of syntactic
replication, including phrases with the final position of pronouns. The use of lexical means for communicative center marking in the translation from English into Russian by the Russian subjects was also registered. These words allowed the experiment participants to demonstrate the difference between variants with different places of potential logical stress and pairs of sentences which differ in the degree of emphasis. It can be assumed, that when translating written sentences, the Russian subjects understand the meaning of the English phrase on the ground of nucleus potential position, which is normally associated with the communicative center location. The research results can help to achieve one of the main goals in the process of mastering a foreign language - to develop the ability to correctly formulate a statement in a foreign language, as well as to understand and to interpret the communicative meaning of the perceived language message. The study is the first step in analyzing the characteristic features of communicative variants in translation
from English into Russian. The results obtained are significant for the translation theory and practice, which include the challenging task of translation by machine further development, allow outlining the perspective for a deeper study of mechanisms responsible for choosing translation strategies by the L1 Russian EFL learners.
In the experiment conducted within this study, the place of the communicative center, and accordingly, the potential place of the sentence stress was marked by the author. Providing subjects with 'freedom'in carrying out the procedure of identifying the communicative center location in the English sentences and texts can most likely be a more challenging task. Identifying the best translation options requires a separate study. Other fields for future experimental research could include: evaluation of the correspondence of the translated sentences to the language norms and the assessment of their equivalence performed by native Russian speakers, as well as, an analysis of translations from Russian into English made by native English speakers.
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Данные об авторе
Макарова Елена Николаевна - доктор филологических наук, доцент, заведующий кафедрой делового иностранного языка, Уральский государственный экономический университет (Екатеринбург, Россия).
Адрес: 620144, Россия, Екатеринбург, ул. 8 Марта, 62/45.
E-mail: [email protected].
Author's information
Makarova Elena Nikolaevna - Doctor of Philology, Associate Professor, Head of Business Foreign Languages Department, Ural State University of Economics (Ekaterinburg, Russia).
