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TRANSLATION STUDIES:
THEORY AND PRACTICE
International ScientificJournal
H
vol^ne 1 1 issue 1
YEREVAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Department of Translation Studies
TRANSLATION STUDIES: THEORY AND
PRACTICE
International Scientific Journal volume 1 I issue 1
YEREVAN-2021
Translating Terminology of Media Texts Dealing with Art and Culture (in German-Russian Texts)
Albina Boyarkina
Saint Petersburg State University
Abstract: This article discusses the problems of translating Russian-German media texts related to culture and art. In the descriptions of artistic works and their impact, we find a large amount of emotional-expressive vocabulary, adjectives, extended metaphors and comparisons, and on the level of syntax - a large number of parallelisms or emotional reversals, which cause certain difficulties in the process of translation. However, sometimes translating special terminology is no less difficult, especially when the terms are new and do not have established equivalents recognized by the scholarly community or even when, rarely though, terms are used with ironic nuances. In this case translators resort to transliteration or borrowing. However, the use of calques in the translation of new terminology leads to the violation of the norms of the target language and inaccuracies in the transfer of meaning. The professional jargon acquires an additional contextual meaning, which is not always detected and appropriately rendered by the translator. The translation of texts containing terms relating to culture and art requires consultation with a specialist in the field who will be able to interpret the terminological meaning of the lexical unit and help translate it accurately.
Key words: translation, media texts, texts related to culture and art, specific terminology, musicological terminology
1. Introduction
Media texts dealing with art and culture are often considered quite difficult to translate. The specific content and terminology of such texts must be taken into account by the translator. What's more, in the descriptions of works and their impact, we find a large amount of emotional vocabulary such as sometimes exaggerated positive assessments, extended metaphors and comparisons, various clichés, and at the level of syntax - a large number of parallelisms or rhetorical questions. Archaic vocabulary, which is characteristic of scientific discourse on a given topic, is less common in media texts. And while in more professional texts the adherence to a lofty style remains relevant, in newspaper and magazine articles on culture and the arts the main stylistic colouring approaches the colloquial which also causes certain translation difficulties.
Using the example of German and Russian-language media texts from 2020-2021 relating to culture and art (the sections "Art" and "Culture" in the news magazines Kommersant, Vedomosti, Spiegel, Stern, DW), this article examines the problems of translation of special terminology, which in the Russian-language scientific literature
are addressed in the following publications: Komissarov 2011, Kutina 1964, Leichik 1973, Leichik 1991, Lotte 1982, Superanskaia 2012.
2. Special Terms in Texts Dealing with Art and Culture
One of the peculiarities of the texts about culture and art is that they are highly terminological. The vocabulary related to art has no rigid boundaries within the term 'field of art' and can refer simultaneously to several fields (music, theatre, ballet, painting, cinema, etc.). This can be called general art terms and it refers to different types of art and can be used in new contexts, often with metaphorical transposition. General art terms as well as specialist terminology and professionalisms cause major problems in translation.
Traditionally, art terminology in Russian in different spheres has had many borrowings from different donor languages - ballet terminology is based on French, music terminology on Italian, art terminology proper has Greek and Latin roots. For example, in Russian media texts related to ballet, the specific terminology is usually left in French, and written either in Roman letters or transliterated: 'па-де-дё' (Fr. 'pas de deux'), 'фуэте' (Fr. 'fouetté') and 'Арабеск' (Fr. 'Arabesque'). Musical performance terms are either written in Italian or transcribed: 'allegro' (It. 'Allegro'), 'adagio' (It. 'Adagio'). When translating this vocabulary, the main techniques are transposition (direct transfer of a lexeme) and transcription.
New interpretations of terms or completely new terms are much more problematic in translation. For example, new terms, such as those associated with management in the arts (appointments in the theater, a company's name) or terminology associated with new dance trends find their way into Russian from English and are often simply transliterated. For instance, there is no unambiguous translation into Russian of the English term 'director' as far as ballet is concerned. In Russian opera and ballet theaters or ballet companies, it is hard to know exactly what the director manages. At the Bolshoi Theatre the ballet company has an artistic director and a head. The same is true for the Mariinsky Theatre. At the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Saint-Petersburg there is an artistic director of the theater, and a chief ballet-master. At the Paris Opera, this position is called Directeur de la Danse (Director of Dance), at the Metropolitan Opera, it is Dance Director, at Covent Garden, simply Director. The transliteration of this term into Russian does not give a full idea of what is meant, whether it is the artistic director of a theatre, the managing director, or just the director of a ballet company. The same issue arises with the terms choreographer/balett-master, director/producer, and theatre designer (production designer, costume designer, lighting designer).
A separate translation issue is the translation of new special terms. For example, the designation of names to the new trends in dance and bodybuilding causes great difficulty for translators. Terms like the English 'bodywork' (practical exercises for the body aimed at deep relaxation and general health), 'mind body' (a discipline aimed at conscious work on the body), 'sensory awareness' (a 'sensual consciousness' system of exercises with a meditative orientation, aiming at reviving a natural perception of the world) are all terms relating to part of a trend of body-oriented therapies, which is new
Translating Terminology of Media Texts Dealing with Art and Culture
in Russia. These terms have not yet found an unambiguous translation in scientific use. Thus, the term 'bodywork' is often simply transcribed and grammatically adapted as 'бодиворк.'
The term 'mind body' is either transliterated or translated literally as 'тело-ум' (literally 'body-mind'), which conveys no meaning in Russian. If the original English word is not provided in brackets, such translation is likely to be seen as a mistake. 'Sensory awareness' is translated literally as 'чувственное сознавание,' and it is only the specialists of the field that can associate it with a new trend of body-oriented therapy.
Because there are no Russian equivalents for these terms, most of the time translators resort to transliteration, but transliteration often does not make complete sense. These new concepts must first undergo scientific 'adaptation,' more specifcially, they must be approached from a scientific standpoint in order to find their final form in the target language and to function as a term on their own. Probably the only way to translate them at this stage is to provide a detailed description.
3. Musicological Terminology
Musicological terminology in Russian is traditionally preserved in Italian or is transliterated from Italian, such as tempo designations 'andante,' 'presto,' or genres such as 'sonata,' or musical forms such as 'rondo' and 'aria.' Along with Italian musical terms we use terms in Latin and Greek (e.g. the names of the parts of a mass: 'Kyrie eleison,' 'Gloria,' 'Agnus Dei') and borrowings from other European languages ('suite' from the French 'suite,' 'Singspiel' from German). That is to say musical terminology is not quite homogeneous in itself. However, it has already gone through a period of scientific adaptation and when translating traditional musical terms, translators usually have no issues whatsoever.
A comparative analysis of articles about music in German-language and Russian-language media (Коммерсант, Ведомости, Spiegel, Stern) reveals the following features: these texts have a high proportion of borrowings from English, especially in German-language texts. We find both borrowings and hybrid forms, with elements of adaptation (soapig die Handlung, Echo-Klassik-Verleihung, die Top-Interpreten, ein Open-Air-Konzert, Crossover, Superstars, Elektrosound, Sound, Songs, im Musical, E-Gitarre, Pin-up). In German-language texts we also find new names for musical genres (die Medienoper, Liebestragikomödie, die Jugendstiloper, Märchenoper, Sprechoper) and a large number of authorial vocabulary expressed by composites (Bühnengeschichte, Operninszenierung, Musiktheaterinszenierung, Bühnen-Essay, Bühnen-Ballettauftritt, Stimmvirtuosen, Personenregie). In Russian-language media texts, terms borrowed from English can also be found, but in articles about music there are far fewer of them than, for example, in articles about films or contemporary art.
A certain author's musical terms that can be found in scientific literature, such as 'Klangschlüssel' in the theory of the German musicologist Hugo Riemann, translated into Russian as 'созвук,' 'sonic,' 'sonorous' (Boyarkina 2014), are not used in media texts.
On the other hand, musical texts contain quite a lot of bold authorial vocabulary (продолжают ставить узловые вещи, обильное сценическое мельтешение, тягучее статично-разреженное марево - keep staging knotty things, abundant stage flicker, lingering static - sparse morass) and professionalisms (низы, верха, лирико-колоратурный окрас, верхние ноты, грудные ноты, драмсопрано, меццовые обертона - lows, tops, lyric-coloratura, top notes, chest notes, dramasoprano, mezzo overtones). The latter present great difficulties in translation, especially given that they are not always recognized as professionalisms, not only in media texts, but even in scientific or memoir-epistolary literature (Boyarkina 2015).
A comparison of the original and translated texts in the culture section (as in the German and Russian versions of the Deutsche Welle website) reveals the following features:
1) In translation there is a fairly flexible approach to the overall structure of the text - the entire text fragments or parts of sentences are eliminated, while there is a 'smoothing' of ideological accents, simplification of the text by reducing the detail, proper names are ommited. There are possible replacements of syntactic structures, unreasonable transformations, free translation.
2) Inaccurate and semantic errors in translation appear due to the use of loan tranlation, which leads to atypical combinations (отрасль культуры) and the violation of the norms of the target language (kein Gehör zu finden - чувствовать себя неуслышанной; legt dann nicht mehr unbedingt den Fokus auf Beethoven - и фокус уже совсем не обязательно будет лежать на творчестве Бетховена). The desire to explain realities and terms leads to unwarranted lexical additions and explications (Das ist interessant zu beobachten - Интересно наблюдать за актуальной дискуссией; üben ohne Tastatur - без прикосновения к клавишам фортепиано).
3) Two opposite phenomena are observed: on the one hand, English-language borrowings are replaced by their analogues (Star-Pianist Daniil Trifonov - Даниила Трифонова называют одним из самых ярких современных пианистов и непревзойденным виртуозом; ich Hardcore Star-Wars-Fan bin - я заядлый фанат 'Звездных войн'), on the other hand, borrowings from English are actively used (Sie haben einmal vom 'mentalen Üben' gesprochen - Как-то вы говорили о так называемом 'ментальном тренинге'), which are sometimes left untranslated (Sie sind in Berlin zuletzt mit dem Opus Klassik ausgezeichnet worden - Недавно вы были удостоены престижной премии Opus Klassik).
4) The style of the translated text approaches the spoken word (Das Coronavirus brachte einige Aufnahmeprojekte zum Stillstand - Из-за пандемии коронавируса застопорилось несколько моих проектов).
5) New terms are actively introduced, which are thematically related not only to art, but also to the current situation in the world - pandemic and coronavirus, in doing so variability and duplicuty of the introduced terms can be observed.
Translating Terminology of Media Texts Dealing with Art and Culture
4. Conclusion
To conclude, we would like to emphasize that in the translation of specialized terminology in texts related to musicology and dance, translators tend to use variants that already exist and can be found in dictionaries. Translation problems arise either when the terms are new and do not have 'scientifically established' equivalents -translators then resort to transliteration or borrowing - or if the terms are used humorously, which is very rare.
In music, terms of professional jargon or slang (especially vulgar expressions), are unofficial synonyms of other terms. They indicate the use of a term but indirectly or contextually so. However, they are not always detected and treated appropriately by the translator. That is when a creative approach is required, as is, of course, consulting a specialist in the field, who will be able to give the whole expression if needs be, estimate the register, and help translate the terminological meaning of the lexical unit.
References
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Кутина, Лидия Л. 1964. Формирование языка русской науки (терминология математики, астрономии, географии в первой трети XVIII века). Москва, Ленинград: Издательство «Наука." Лейчик, Владимир М. 1973. «Термины-синонимы, дублеты, эквиваленты, варианты». Актуальные проблемы лексикологии и словообразования. Вып. 2, стр. 103-107. Новосибирск. Лейчик, Владимир М. 1991. «Термин и научная теория» // Научный и общественно - политический текст. стр. 20-26. Москва: Издательство «Наука». Лотте, Д. С. 1982. Вопросы заимствования и упорядочения иноязычных терминов
и терминоэлементов. Москва: Издательство «Наука». Суперанская, А. В., Н. В. Подольская, Н. В Васильева. 2012. Общая терминология: Вопросы теории. Москва: Либроком.
Received: 26/06/2020 Revised: 12/04/2021 Accepted: 19/04/2021
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