Lexical problems of translating the names of new phenomena in social life

Abstract. The article explores different types of lexical inconsistencies a translator faces when interpreting texts of a socio-political nature, and provides an explanation to some techniques that can be probably used to overcome problems when translating media texts.

Keywords: lexical layer, translation, meaning, correspondences, context, neologisms, socio-political text.

The lexical layer of any language is recognized to be quite flexible and very sensitive to changes. Lexical field represents the interrelation of various spheres of public life (political, socio-economical, for example) with the language system. That is why transformations in this sphere occur continuously, making it unstable.

This fact creates a number of translation problems for a novice specialist of this direction. One of them is the inability to see translation problems. Replacing the words of the original with the words of the target language is a translation fault called literalism. L.S. Barkhudarov defined a literal translation as the one carried out at a level lower than it is necessary. [1] If a thought can be expressed in the same way as it is expressed in the original, in this case there is a correspondence at both formal and semantic levels.

Each language is an original and specific phenomenon, and frequent coincidences are quite rare when comparing languages in translation. The meaning of the original is conveyed using translation correspondences. This creates the need for all kinds of translation transformations.

Describing the subject situation in English, one can use different predicate or configuration of attributes. “The predominant use of verb forms is distinctive to English. The Russian language, on the contrary, is characterized by a wider use of objectified actions and signs, which come out more frequently than in English. Intralinguistic factors can also lead to translation transformations, such as compatibility and change in communicative structure of the sentence.”  [2]

Lexical units of English and Russian here are show various types of semantic correspondences between each other:

About one-third of the total vocabulary of the English language constitute words and phrases that are equal in meaning of its Russian adequation (i.e. fully correspond). Regardless of context, they are always transmitted constantly with the same equivalent.

Most of these words are terms: agenda - ‘повестка дня’; indictment - ‘обвинительный акт’.

Second group includes English words, which have different correspondences in the Russian language. So, let us take the English adjective ‘definite’. It can be translated as ‘определенный’, ‘точный’, ‘ясный’, ‘конкретный’ into Russian. All these nominations have something in common: definite opinion – ‘определенное мнение’; definite statement – ‘недвусмысленное заявление’; definite dimensions – ‘точные размеры’.

Context plays an important role, when choosing the right match for the words of this type.

3) The English lexicon is polysemantic in general. It means, that such kind of words have several interpretations, when translated into Russian. Quite often they have nothing in common.

A huge amount of English words (like football, manager, antenna), are just like Russian ones both in form and sound. The size of this vocabulary increases over time because of globalization. International words are often confused with “pseudo-international”, which can have different meanings in Russian and English, despite its external similarity: ‘progress’ is not just ‘прогресс’, it can be ‘успехи, достижения, развитие’ as well; ‘leader’ is both ‘лидер’, and ‘руководитель, глава (делегации)’.

There are so-called “false friends”, i.e. words similar to Russian ones in phonetic and graphic form, but with absolutely another denotation. These group belongs to the layer of hardly translated vocabulary we discussed above: prospect – ‘перспектива’ (а не ‘проспект’); decade – ‘десятилетие’ (а не ‘декада’); momentous – ‘важный’ (а не ‘моментальный’).

The context helps to translate this lexical units adequately: He was careless about his personal prospects. – Он не заботился о своем будущем.

The English socio-political dictionary is constantly updated with neologisms. These are new words and new meanings of already existing words that arise as a result of socio-political changes, the advances in technology and science. Neologisms arise when a word is used in a different, new context, when existing words can acquire new shades of meaning or new meanings. For example, the word ‘confrontation’ at first carried the meaning of ‘очная ставка, сличение, сопоставление’, but later transformed into ‘столкновение, противостояние, противоборство’.  [3]

Affixation is another productive method to form neologisms: reintroduce ‘повторно вносить на рассмотрение’; decentralize ‘децентрализовать’. Some neologisms were formed as a result of the expansion of the meaning of the old word. For example, the word ‘trash’ has the meaning разрушать’, ‘громить’, ‘портить’ in the American English: to go out trashing equals to go out for things to destroy - ‘заниматься порчей имущества’. When translating neologisms into Russian, the translator must, understand its implicit meaning by analyzing its structure.

The large amount of terms determines English socio-political. Most of the them are unambiguous: they assigned a specific meaning. Ambiguous terms create some obstacles in translation: engine – машина, двигатель, паровоз’; device – ‘устройство, аппарат, машина, эмблема, символ’; attorney – ‘прокурор; поверенный’.

The literacy of the translation of terminological vocabulary depends on the competence of a specialist, which requires knowledge of the conceptual content of the terms, as well as the ability to distinguish the denotation from the surrounding reality. Here are a few examples of military terms: Navy – ‘военно-морской флот’; company − ‘рота’; intelligence – ‘разведка’.

If the first term is unambiguous, the rest may reveal their terminological meaning only in context.

But many lexical units do not have correspondences in the vocabulary of the target language. Such lexical units belong to “non-equivalent vocabulary” and are transmitted using the following methods:

1) Transliteration and transcription. The method of transliteration is the transfer of an English word into Russian using the reproduction of its graphic form – letter composition: Baltimore − ‘Балтимор’; ‘Washington Post’ − ‘Вашингтон Пост’.

Transcription conveys the sound image of the lexical unit, not its literal composition: ‘General Motors’ – ‘Дженерал моторс’; ‘Guardian’ – ‘Гардиан’; ‘know-how’ – ‘ноу-хау’.

2) Tracing. It translates the parts of an English lexical unit with the subsequent combination of the translated parts: backbencher – ‘заднескамеечник’; shuttle diplomacy – ‘челночная дипломатия’; White House – ‘Белый дом’.

3) Descriptive translation is a detailed explanation of a word or phrase translated. The need for this type of translation arises when target language does not possess the indicated realia (maverick – ‘государственный деятель, занимающий отличную от других позицию’). Another case is the peculiarities of combinability of words in English (better-late-than-never admission – признание, сделанное по принципу «лучше поздно, чем никогда»).

Some politically correct words do have an equivalent, however, the amount of them is relatively small. For example, ‘indigenous people’ (instead of natives) have the equivalent ‘исконное население’. In some cases, the translation uses partial correspondences, which are not a stable fact of translation, i.e. they are not a constant dictionary correspondence.

The general pattern of socio-political translation corresponds to the following words by L.N. Soboleva: “... the measure of accuracy varies depending on the purpose of the translation, the nature of the text to be translated and the reader to whom the translation is intended”. To conclude, this type of translation is one of the most popular directions due to the increasing intensity of international contacts and the amount of socio-political texts published annually. That is why conveying the original intent is of a great importance.