fills in the case-gap, either because the syntax of the TL requires it or because a sentence in the SL text is ambiguous or otherwise linguistically defective. Implied case-gaps:
Implied case-gaps: These constitute the most important category for a translator: basically this is a semantic category, but there is often a syntactic compulsion to fill in the gap.
Optional case-partners: These are semantic and stylistic. The translator is at liberty to supply them or not as he wishes. This is partly a pragmatic decision, partly a decision dictated by reasons of exhaustiveness or style.
Supplementary information: This is ‘referential’. It consists of additional information, not given in the text, but which the translator chooses to supply from his knowledge of the situation and the cultural context.
(p132)Various types of case-partner: Faced with an incomplete verb or verbal noun or adjective, the translator may have to consider (in a possible order of priority) say: who does what, why, to whom, with what, how, when, where? Or more delicately: for what purpose does who do what to whom with what instrument, for what rwason, on what fround, in what manner, at what time, at what place?
(p133)As I see it, the most common missing case-partner is the direct object, in semantic terms, the thing directly affected.
Contrast and choice in translation (p134)
There are two aspects of translation, the contrastive mechanical, and the possible empty positions. The translator would normally fill in gaps for trivalent verbs only if the SL.
Some related issues (p135)
I take ‘purpose’ to be a special case, the overriding factor for the translator sequencing his sentences. I take it that in any informative text, the purpose should be foregrounded.
In particular the translator may have to determine whether each sentence is an addition, a detail, an example, a contrast, an opposition, a reservation, an aside, an afterthought, a consequence, etc. To some extent the sequence is indicated by the connectors, which may each have a variety, indeed a contrariety of meaning. Further, to some extent the sequence is based on the following tentative sentence sequence: (p136)
2. Previous event
1. Purpose (intention of Simultaneous event
sentence) Concession
Condition
Negative contrast
3. Main proposition 4. Result Subsequent event Specification of proposition
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Here all the subordinate clauses take the place of verb-partners. Whilst the above is the logical sequence, the purpose of function of a sentence is so often latent or obscure that the translator may have to foreground it by putting it in the first place. There are variations in many languages: it is common to put ‘purpose’ before ‘proposition’ if the subject remains the same and after the proposition if the subject changes. The proposition will come first if, instead of being a statement, it is a command, wish or question. The more inflected a language, the easier it is to change the word-order to emphasize the meaning. In this area, case-partner and concept tend to identify and case grammar and discourse analysis to merge.
Case-partners of adjectives and nouns
(p136)There are a large number of adjectives formed from verbs that imply case-partners; they are distinguished formed from verbs that imply case-partners; they are distinguished from present participles in denoting qualities or roles rather than single actions.
Secondly, there is a group ‘equative’ adjectives, often used with equative or copula verbs, which all signal a similar or identical object which is implied…They usually refer to the previous, occasionally the subsequent, sentence, therefore functioning as connectives, where the problem is often whether the reference is specific or general.
(p137) Thirdly, I note a type of adjective whose meaning is clarified only in context. Next I note certain adjectives which have implicit case-partners.
Nouns formed from adjectives and even more so nouns formed from verval adjectives present no special problems. The latter type is often transposed as a routine dejargonising process, which incidentally restores a case-partner. A problem may also arise from vagueness or bad writing in the text.
It should be noted that case-relations extend beyond implied nouns or pronouns to clauses within or outside the sentence.
The verb as a central element in keeping ‘communicative dynamism’: given that, in case grammar, the verb is the central element in a clause, it inevitably has a directive role in allotting emphasis (‘communicative dynamism’; see Firbas, 1972) to he most important component in a sentence.
Conclusion (p139)
However, case grammar’s function is only to sensitise the translator to these gaps and, in doing so, sometimes to compel him to abandon jargon constructions in non-authoritative texts, and it may well be said tht a translator who writes well and sensitively will intuitively perceive these gaps without knowing anything about case grammar.
Chapter 13 The Translation of Neologisms
Introduction (p140)
Neologisms are perhaps the non-literary and the non-literary and the professional translator’s biggest problem. New objects and processes are continually created in technology. New ideas and variations on feelings come from the media. Terms from the social sciences, slangs, dialect coming into the mainstream of language, transferred words, make up the rest. A few years ago,
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300 ‘new’ words were said to be counted in four successive numbers of the French weekly, L’Express. It has been stated that each language acquires 3000 new words annually. In fact, neologisms cannot be accurately quantified, since so many hover between acceptance and oblivion and many are short-lived, individual creations. What is obvious is that their number is increasing steeply and as we become more language- as well as self-conscious, articles, books and specialist and general dictionaries devoted to them appear more commonly. Since they usually arise first in a response to a particular need, a majority of them have a single meaning and can therefore be translated out of context, but many of them soon acquire new meanings in the TL.
Neologisms can be defined as newly coined lexical units or existing lexical units that acquire a new sense…most people like neologisms, and so the media and commercial interests exploit this liking. Multinationals, with their ingenious advertising, make efforts to convert their brand names in to eponyms (i.e., any word derived from a proper noun, including acronyms) and in appropriate cases you have to resist this attempt when you translate.
Old words with new senses (p141)
These do not normally refer to new objects or processes, and therefore are rarely technological. (p142) To sum up, old words with new senses tend to be non-cultural and non-technical. They are usually translated either by a word that already exists in the TL, or by a brief functional or descriptive term.
Existing collocations with new senses may be cultural or non-cultural; if the referent (concept or object) exists in the TL, there is usually a recognized translation or through-translation. If the concept does not exist or the TL speakers are not yet aware of it, an economical descriptive equivalent has to be given. There is also the possibility of devising a new collocation in inverted commas, which can later be slyly withdrawn.
New coinages (p142)
Nowadays, the main new coinages are brand or trade names (‘Bisto’, ‘Bacardi’, ‘Schwepes’, ‘Persil’, ‘oXo’) and these are usually transferred unless the product is marketed in the TL culture under another name; or the proper name may be replaced by a functional or generic term, if the trade name has no cultural or identifying significance.
(p143) In principle, in fiction, any kind of neologism should be recreated; if it is a derived word it should be replaced by the same or equivalent morphemes; if it is also phonaesthetic, it should be given phonemes producing analogous sound-effects.
Derived words (p142)
The great majority of neologisms are words derived by analogy from ancient Greek and Latin morphemes usually with suffixes such as –ismo, -ismus, -ija, etc., naturalized in the appropriate language. In some countries, this process has been combated and through-translation by way of the TL morpheme has been preferred. However, now that this word-forming procedure is employed mainly to designate scientific and technological rather than cultural institutional terms, the advance of these internationalisms is wide-spread. Normally, they have naturalized suffixes.
However, this does not mean that the translator can apply the process automatically…he has to
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consult the appropriate ISO glossary, to find out whether there is already a recognized translation; secondly, whether the referent yet exists in the TL culture; thirdly how important it is, and therefore whether it is worth ‘transplanting’ at all. If he thinks he is justified in transplanting it, and he believes himself to be the first translator to do so, he should put in inverted commas.
(p144)I think the translator has to distinguish the serious derived neologisms of industry from the snappy ingenious derived neologisms created by the media, including the advertisers, which may be short-lived.
In all derived words, you have to distinguish between terms which have a solid referential basis, and fulfil the conditions of internationalisms, which, whatever their future, do not at present warrant the formation of a TL neologism.
Abbreviations (p145)
Abbreviations have always been a common type of pseudo-neologism, probably more common in French than in English. Unless they coincide they are written out in the TL.
Collocations (p145)
New collocations are particularly common in the social sciences and in computer language.
Eponyms (p146)
Eponyms, in my definition any word derived from a proper name, are a growth industry in Romance languages and a more modest one in the English media….When they refer directly to the person, they are translated without difficulty but if they refer to the referent’s ideas or qualities, the translator may have to add these…When derived from objects, eponyms are usually brand names, and can be transferred only when they are equally well known and accepted in the TL…In general, the translator should curb the use of brand name eponyms. New eponyms deriving from geographical names appear to be rare—most commonly they originate from the products of the relevant area—in translation the generic term is added until the product is well enough known.
Phrasal words (p147)
New ‘phrasal words’ are restricted to English’s facility in converting verbs to nouns and are translated by their semantic equivalents. Note that phrasal words: (a) are often more economical than their translation; (b) usually occupy the peculiarly English register between ‘informal’ and ‘colloquial’, whilst their translations are more formal.
Transferred words (p147)
Newly transferred words keep only one sense of their foreign nationality; they are the words whose meanings are least dependent on their contexts.
Acronyms (p148)
Acronyms are an increasingly common feature of all non-literary texts, for reasons of brevity or euphony, and often to give the referent an artificial prestige to rouse people to find out what the letters stand for…Acronyms are frequently created within special topics and designate products,
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appliances and processes, depending on their degree of importance; in translation, thee is either a standard equivalent term or, if it does not yet exist, a descriptive term. Acronyms for institutions and names of companies are usually transferred.
Acronyms for international institutions, which themselves are usually through-translated, usually switch for each language, but some internationalisms usually written unpunctuated. When a national political or social organization becomes important, it is increasingly common to transfer its acronym and translate its name, but this may depend on the interests of the TL readership. Note that if the name of an organization is opaque, it is more important to state its function than to decode the initials.
Pseudo-neologisms (p148)
…pseudo-neologisms where, for instance, a generic word strands in for a specific word.
I have tried to give a comprehensive undogmatic view of how to translate the words that teeter on the edge of language, that may stay, may vanish, depending on the real or artificial needs of their users, many of them not yet ‘processed’ by language and therefore extra-contextual—others, designating new objects and processes, are assured of their place. And the only generalization I can make is that the translator should be neither favorable nor unfavorable in his view of new words. His responsibility is to see that the mental and the material words that is inhabited by people should be accurately and, where possible, economically reflected in language. This consideration overrides the rather large number of contextual factors with which this chapter has been concerned.
The creation of neologisms (p149)
In non-literary texts, you should not normally create neologisms. You create one only: (a) if you have authority; (b) if you compose it out of readily understood Graeco-Latin morphemes…As a translator, your job is to account for every SL word, and you therefore have to guess the word’s meaning: the external evidence suggests it is a light food or preparation; the internal evidence suggests that the product is made of flour.
The translator’s right to create neologisms: firstly, in a literary text, it is his duty to re-create any neologism he meets on the basis of the SL neologism; in other authoritative texts, he should normally do so. Secondly, when translating, a popular advertisement, he can create a neologism, usually with a strong phonaesthetic effect, if it appears to follow the sense of its SL ‘counterpart’ and is pragmatically effective. Thirdly, he can transfer an SL cultural word, if for one reason or another he thinks it important…He should acknowledge at least with inverted commas any neologism he creates. The more formal the language, the more conservative he should be in respect of neologisms.
Chapter 14 Technical Translation
Introduction (p151)
Technical translation is one part of specialized translation; institutional translation, the area of politics, commerce, finance, government etc., is the other. I take technical translation as potentially (but far from actually) non-cultural, therefore ‘universal’; the benefits of technology
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