Введение в теорию и практику перевода (на материале английского языка)

1. A word in one of the languages may have more meanings than the corresponding word of the other language, so that the meaning of the latter is as it were included in the meaning of the former, e.g. the English noun "finish" and the Russian noun "финиш" both denote "the conclusion, end", which completely exhausts the meaning of the Russian word. The English word "finish", however, also denotes "that which finishes, completes or perfects", which corresponds to the Russian words "окончание", "отделка", "аппретура". Thus the meaning of the word "finish" includes the meaning of the word "финиш", but is not exhausted by it. This is the first variant of semantic relations characterized by partial coincidence of meanings.

2. The second variant of semantic relations between partially corresponding words may be described as intersection. It means that both the words have some meaning (or even meanings) in common, but at the same time each word has some other meanings which do not coincide. E.g.: the English word "cup" and the Russian "чашка" both mean "a drinking-vessel", besides which the word "cup" means "an ornamental vessel offered as a prize for an athletic contest" (in Russian – "кубок"), while the Russian "чашка" denotes also "круглая и плоская тарелка, подвешенная к коромыслу весов", which corresponds to the English word "pan". Thus the meanings of these two words ("cup" and "чашка") intersect in one point only – i.e. they both denote a drinking-vessel.

3. The third variant of relations within this type is somewhat more complicated. The fact is that different peoples reflect reality in different ways, and these differences find their manifestation in the languages which the peoples speak. It is well known that to the speakers of English it seems quite necessary to differentiate between a hand and an arm, while in Russian we usually do not feel it so very important and use the word "рука" to denote both the notions (cf. also "watch" and "clock" – "часы", "mirror" and "looking glass" – "зеркало", etc.). On the other hand we usually differentiate between "вишня" and "черешня", while for the speakers of English there exists one notion ("cherry"), as well as "клубника" and "земляника" are both called "strawberry"; we think that "почка" and "бутон" are quite different things, while in English they always call it "a bud", no matter whether it is going to form a leaf or a blossom.

It does not mean, of course, that we cannot express the difference between a hand and an arm in Russian or that English speaking people do not see any difference between a leaf bud and a blossom bud. They do, but traditionally some aspects of reality are reflected as differentiated notions in the mind of one people and as undifferentiated notion in the mind of another people. Theoretically speaking, every language can express everything, but it differs from other languages in what it should express.

This group of words demands special attention because it often causes trouble in the process of translation (for instance, try to translate the following sentence into Russian: "They both married their cousins").

In all the cases when the meanings of words coincide partially there arises a problem of choosing the right variant of translation. This choice should be based on two factors: on the knowledge of possible semantic relations between the words of SL and TL and on the information derived from the context.

III. Finally, in one of the languages there may exist words which have no correspondences in the other language at all (безэквивалентная лексика). They are usually proper names not used or even known in other countries (personal names such as Aubrey, Hope, Игорь, Галина, etc.; place-names such as Hindley, Catmose, Молитовка, Урень, etc.), and names of specifically national notions and phenomena (such as muffin, drugstore, startup, самовар, щи, агитбригада, стройотрядовец, etc.).

Context and its role in translation

The meaning of equivalents practically does not depend on the context, so to translate them one should merely look them up in a dictionary. The demand to consult dictionaries is essential. No guesswork is allowed in translation: a word should be either known or looked up; otherwise there is always a risk of translation the word "data" as "дата" or "billet" as "билет" or writing some other nonsense of the kind.

It is much more difficult to translate those words of SL that are characterized by partial correspondence to the words of TL. Such words are mostly polysemantic. That is why in order to translate them correctly it is necessary first of all to state which particular meaning of such a word is realized in the utterance. The most reliable indicator in this case is the context in which the word is used.