Loan Translation Research Articles

English-Estonian code-copying: Comparing blogs and vlogs

AbstractThe article focuses on a comparison of English-Estonian code-copying in blogs and in vlogs. This paper applies a usage-based approach, combining a cognitive angle with the code-copying framework. The aim is to provide a holistic view on contact-induced language change by applying bottom-up analysis of naturalistic multilingual language use. In contact linguistic literature it has been observed that there is a preference for insertions vs. alternations depending on sociolinguistic setting (community type, generation, proficiency) and structural properties of the languages involved. Research on English-Estonian language contacts has shown that in blogs there is no clear preference for either. From a different point of view, it has been observed that lexical impact (global copying in the terms of code-copying framework) precedes semantic and structural impact (selective copying) but provide no explanation. Comparisons between blogs (750 entries and 275,263 words from 45 bloggers) and vlogs (5,5 hours, approximately 36,854 words from 5 vloggers) shows that global copies and alternations heavily prevail over other types of copying, yet the number of selective copies is somewhat higher in vlogs and of mixed copies in blogs. Selective copies are loan translations rather than structural changes. We assume that (1) prevalence of global copies and alternations depends on genre norms (blogs and vlogs are constructed as non-monolingual, highly individualized genres); (2) as selective copies are mostly loan translations, it implies the role of meaning and cognitive aspects: idioms and fixed expressions are figurative and cognitively prominent; combinational properties and grammatical meanings are abstract; so, the more abstract the meaning is, the more cognitive effort and time is required for entrenchment and conventionalization; (3) copying and alternation is denser in vlogs because the genre is oral and spontaneous vs. written, edited genre of blog.

English Calques in Bangla

Two hundred years of colonial rule brought the Anglophones in close proximity to the Banglophones. This long time interaction resulted in bilingualism which ultimately paved the way for lexical penetration from English into Bangla. This influx is manifest in the corpus of the Bangla language. Viddyasagar in his Shobdosongroho (1823, Quoted in Musa and Ilyas, 2002:11) compiled a list of 40 English loanwords in Bangla. Within the timespan of nearly two centuries, according to Musa and Ilyas (2002), the lexical loan got multiplied by almost 88 times. Side by side borrowing direct anglicisms, Bangla has also borrowed hosts of indirect loans in the form of ‘calques’ or ‘translation loans’ from English. The prime focus of this paper is to trace the mechanisms by which Bangla produces calques from English sources. The results of this study reveal that Bangla has four types of calques – single-word, multi-word, phrasal, and acronymic. While our data mostly conform to the global typology of calques, interestingly enough, Bangla has constructed a special class of calques which we have dubbed as ‘Acronymic calques’. Translation acronyms are yet to be registered in the typology of calques. This curious calque type attested by our data can be added to the global typology of loan translations.

Major Translation Methods Used in Legal Documents: Translation of a Marriage Contract from Arabic into English

Throughout history, the use of translation methods has constituted a source of lots of debates; some scholars advocate literal translation, others advocate free translation. In legal translation which is a special and specialized area of translational activity, and where documents are characterized by brevity, economy, and neatness to prevent fraud, additions, omissions or alterations in the text, mistakes or mistranslations can lead to disastrous repercussions. The present study deals primarily with the methods that translators of legal texts follow and adopt when rendering a legal document. A concise account of translation theories that have been adopted and are still being applied to legal translation is offered to attempt to show the main views towards the application of such translation theories to legal translation. Major methods often used in the translation of legal documents are then presented, discussing their validity to legal translation. This presentation includes literal translation, free translation, the functional approach to translation, transliteration & transcription, loan translation, adaptation, description by definitions, lexical expansion, and descriptive substitution. The empirical part of this study is concerned with the analysis of a marriage contract translated from Arabic into English in an attempt to shed some light on the major methods adopted by the translator of this document and the reason behind using such methods.

음성언어가 수어에 미치는 영향에 관한 고찰 : 한중 수어에 나타난 차용어의 유형과 수용양상

It is well established that sign languages are distinct languages with their own structure, but they also have loan words using their own constraint parameter rules or strategies. Firstly, grammatical borrowings from spoken languages can be found across most sign languages. Secondly, these foreign forms examined here commonly appear as a combination of loan translation and the use of manual alphabet such as Korean alphabet fingerspelling signs, Chinese haracter signs and English alphabet fingerspelling signs respectively. Thirdly, KSL and CSL commonly offer a unique perspective in discovering how aspects of cognition interact with spoken languages. Additional scientific and logical research on the cross-modal linguistic study between spoken languages and sign languages is obviously needed.

Rendering Lexical and Grammatical Peculiarities of Chinese Scientific Literature into English and Ukrainian

The article is devoted to the analyses of Chinese scientific literature lexis and grammar and their reproduction by means of the English and Ukrainian languages. As the result of the research the most frequent translation operations to achieve of an adequacy are discovered. They are search of equivalent, concretization, loan translation, omission, grammatical replacement, sentence fragmentation, etc. Key words: scientific text, Chinese, translation operations, lexical and grammatical features.

TECHNIQUES OF DIPLOMATIC DISCOURSE TRANSLATION FROM RUSSIAN INTO ARABIC

The aim of the given study consists in exploring the techniques of translation of the texts of Russian diplomatic discourse into Arabic. Full texts of speeches, speech transcripts and opening remarks of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation S. V. Lavrov published on the site of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2004 to 2018 and the available translations of these texts into Arabic served as material of analysis. The paper also analyzes the quotations from S.V. Lavrov’s speeches translated into Arabic and published on other Arabic sites. The paper considers the interpretation of the terms of “translation techniques”, “translation transformations” and “translation equivalents” in the works on translation studies. In general, all the terms are used to denote various methods of changing the source text used by translators in their professional activity. As long as translation difficulties bring about the necessity to carry out interlingual changes demanding reorganization at different linguistic levels, the authors of the article prefer the term “transformations”. While considering translation equivalents, it is important to differentiate between microtranslation (regular equivalents for translation of the source language units by means of the corresponding target language units) and macrotranslation (non-regular equivalents, which are occasional and contextually bound). The analysis of translations of S. V. Lavrov’s speeches has shown that translators use some transformations. These transformations can be subdivided into lexical (transcriptions/transliterations while translating proper names and international words and loan translations), lexico-semantic (concretization, generalization, modulation), lexico-grammatical (antonymic translation - substitution of a negative construction by a positive one in the target language and vice versa -, compensation), and syntactic (word-for-word translation, permutation, substitution, sentence division, addition, omission, including stylistic correction of the source text containing pleonasms). While analyzing the translation transformations in the translations of the texts of S. V. Lavrov’s speeches, the authors noted the absence of two techniques: the technique of sentence uniting and the technique of descriptive translation. This fact can be explained by the accuracy typical of diplomatic discourse translation.

Об огне. Магистерская диссертация

The text of Kant’s first dissertation is a translation from Latin from an academic publication of a collection of Kant’s works: Kant, I. Meditationum quarundam de igne succincta delineatio... In: Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed., 1910. Kants Gesammelte Schriften. 1. Abhandling: Werke. Band I: Vorkritische Schriften I, 1747-1756. Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1910, pp. 369-384. The publication is available at https://korpora.zim.uni-duisburg- essen.de/kant/aa01/ [Accessed 10 March 2019]. Pagination and illustrations are from the same publication, the page numbers are in square brackets at the beginning of the page. Page footnotes, if indicated, draw on the commentaries of Lewis White Beck, the translator of the dissertation into English from the following edition: Kant, I., 2012. Natur­al Science, edited by E. Watkins, translated by L. W. Beck, J. B. Edwards, O. Reinhardt, M. Schönfeld and E. Watkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 713-714. It was important for the translator to follow the course of Kant’s thought and as far as possible preserve his style, including recurring words. Natural science terminology keeps as close as possible to the dissertation text, so instead of the term “gas”, which Kant does not use, the translator resorts to a loan-translation “elastic liquid,” harking back to the Russian term упругая жидкость (elastic liquid) which was proposed by Mikhail V. Lomonosov but did not catch on. For the same reason the translator uses the loan translation “moment” instead of the more common “motive force”. “Gradus”, however, is always translated as “degree” for the sake of uniformity. All the translator’s additions to the Kantian text are within square brackets. When the meaning of a word is translated in a form that departs from the original meaning due to context the Latin original is attached within round brackets in the grammatical form used by Kant. To facilitate understanding, long compound sentences of the Kantian text are sometimes broken up into several simple sentences. The structure of the text and title page format have been preserved. The translator would like to express sincere gratitude to Alexei N. Krouglov and Svyatopolk N. Yeschenko for their valuable advice, remarks and help and support in preparing this publication.

Major Translation Methods Used in Legal Documents: Translation of a Marriage Contract from Arabic into English

Throughout history, the use of translation methods has constituted a source of lots of debates; some scholars advocate literal translation, others advocate free translation. In legal translation which is a special and specialized area of translational activity, and where documents are characterized by brevity, economy, and neatness to prevent fraud, additions, omissions or alterations in the text, mistakes or mistranslations can lead to disastrous repercussions. The present study deals primarily with the methods that translators of legal texts follow and adopt when rendering a legal document. A concise account of translation theories that have been adopted and are still being applied to legal translation is offered to attempt to show the main views towards the application of such translation theories to legal translation. Major methods often used in the translation of legal documents are then presented, discussing their validity to legal translation. This presentation includes literal translation, free translation, the functional approach to translation, transliteration & transcription, loan translation, adaptation, description by definitions, lexical expansion, and descriptive substitution. The empirical part of this study is concerned with the analysis of a marriage contract translated from Arabic into English in an attempt to shed some light on the major methods adopted by the translator of this document and the reason behind using such methods.

Перевод социолектных текстов

A moment's reflection suffices to convince one that no language is homogeneous, being represented by a set of language variants or language existential forms, reflecting the hetero­geneous character of the national culture. Notwithstanding variable nature of language, lin­guistic theorizing has been mostly based on standardized languages forms, rather than on natu­ral speech dialects. The present research addresses the fundamental issue of variability within a language and aims at studying the specific fragment of the Russian language of the XXth centu­ry — Soviet camp sociolect within the frameworks of contrastive sociolectology. Sociolect nature of the source text is viewed as one of the factors increasing the degree of text untranslatability. The author dwells on the nature of adaptation interventions, which a trans­lator needs to perform to render the specificity of the Soviet camp social dialect in English. The analysis of the ways in which translators processed the source texts under consideration reveals the twofold strategy aimed at maintaining a proper balance between replicating the sociolect text specificity and making the translation readable to the target recipients. Combin­ing explanatory translation, loose translation, occasional equivalents with loan translation translators achieve clarity of the translation, preserving at the same time apparent non-nativeness of the target text, which helps to avoid leveling the sociolect nature of the source texts.

Орфографічні й лексико-семантичні анормативи в публіцистичних текстах культурно-мовної тематики

The problem of language accuracy in publicistic texts hasn’t lost its actuality due to the great number of deviations from the language norms. The analysis of journalistic materials, which deal with the cultural and educational topics, has demonstrated that the language norms are broken in them rather often. The objective of the research is to systematize the most frequently used mistakes in the journalistic materials on cultural-linguistic topics, and to define the reasons of their occurrence. For reaching this objective 85 articles and interviews devoted to the issues of language policy and culture of speech taken from popular Internet publicistic sources were chosen and analyzed. The number of collected mistakes (anormative lexis) is over 400. The following methods were used during the research of the selected material: the method of entire selection for choosing the texts and collecting the examples of anormative lexis from cross-media sources; the descriptive method for defining the essence of deviation from the language norm and for finding the reasons of this phenomenon; the methods of analysis and synthesis for systematizing and classifying the selected anormative lexis. The fulfilled research allows to assert that the publicistic texts devoted to cultural-linguistic issues contain less number of norm deviations than texts of other thematic spheres. Thus, they contain less number of mistakes in usage of paronyms, there were no cases of inappropriate usage of little known terms and rarely used words. However, due to the influence of the Russian language the frequency of word-building and semantic loan translation is still high. It can be explained by the lack of clear delimitation of two languages in the consciousness of texts’ authors. The permanent improvement of language competence of journalists and editors, paying attention to the complicated examples of word spelling and to the usage of definite lexical units will promote thorough improvement of language culture of mass media staff.

VIOLATION OF LINGUISTIC NORMS IN TRANSLATION IN В1-С1 STUDENTS

The present study features speech errors Italian students make in translation as the most complex form of speech activity. The examined speech errors were made by both students at the Higher School of Translation and budding traslators. The low quality of technical translation and the large number of translation errors determined the scope of the present research: to draw the scientists’ attention to the problem in question, to generalize the translation practice, and to work out recommendations on preventing translation errors. The research employed general scientific methods (generalization, analysis, synthesis) and empirical research methods. The author puts forward some possible causes of error making, e.g. interlingual and cross-language interference, loan translations, etc. The author gives examples of the most typical student errors, indicates the specific reasons behind them, and offers recommendations for error prevention. The results of this study can be used for training and practical purposes. The author comes to the conclusion that it is impossible not to make errors due to the fact that the students cannot overcome interference while in their native linguistic environment. However, it is quite possible to reduce the number of errors. The article is composed of three parts. The introduction specifies the aims and tasks of the work. The main body of the article introduces some specific examples of student errors. In the conclusion, the author sums up recommendations for effective work in the learning process.

ON RENDERING ODESA REALIA IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION AND NON-FICTION TEXTS

The article focuses on rendering non-equivalent lexis in English language fiction and nonfiction texts. Research has been done on the basis of the following texts: Odessa Tales by Isaac Babel, Moonlight in Odessa by Janet Skeslien Charles, journals – The Odessa Review and The Awesome Odesa and Internet resources. The final objective of the work is to describe local Odesa realia and systematize the ways of their rendering. The objective determined the tasks of the research: to analyse different scholar definitions of the term “realia” and formulate own definition; to outline relevant for linguistics and translation studies classifications of realia and the ways of their rendering, to single out 400 examples (obtained by random selection) from the texts given; to determine the place of each realia in semantic classifications and the classification of rendering realia. Our study relies substantially on the application of linguistic descriptive methodology and devices. The research gives recommendations to the enhancement of the S. Vlahov and S. Florin’s classification as it ignores some reality phenomena. The paper singles out the most frequent kinds of Odesa realia-localisms and the ways of their rendering. The work discovers that realia concerned society and politics and loan translation, half-calque and mix translation as ways of rendering realia are the most frequently used in fiction as well as non-fiction texts. The research highlights the ways of rendering realia which occurred to be omitted in the S. Vlahov and S. Florin’s classification. The prospects of the research lie in elaborating a bilingual glossary of the Odesa realia to fulfil professional needs of translators, interpreters, guides, culture and history researchers.

Cultural Perspective in The Translation of Slang Expressions in Subtitle Die Hard 3

The paper focuses upon the problem of trans-cultural transfer in subtitling of Die Hard 3 movie dialogues. Language and culture may thus be seen as being closely related and both aspects must be considered for translation. The methodology of the research involves analysis of the type and function of slang expressions and their translating strategies viewed from cultural perspective. The data reveal that in translation process the translator used the effect of softening. The consideration of the target reader is taken account in choosing the translation strategies. As the result, the authors found 7 specific slang expressions that were translated using loan translation. Meanwhile, the total number of general slang expressions from the mivie was 90. There are six strategies applied by the translator to translate the slang expressions that belong to general slang type. They are; (1) Translating General Slang using common word or phrase of similar expressive meaning, (2) Translating General Slang using Shift or Translating General Slang using Transposition, (3) Translating General Slang using Ommision, (4) Translating General Slang using Cultural Equivalent, (5) Translating General Slang using Swearing Words in Target Language, and (6) Translating General Slang using Synonymy.

ОПТИМИЗАЦИЯ СИНХРОННОГО ПЕРЕВОДА НА РУССКИЙ ЯЗЫК

Статья посвящена анализу ошибок, возникающих в процессе применения стратегий синхронного перевода, и их классификации в зависимости от степени риска информационных потерь. Рассматриваются такие недостатки синхронного перевода, как неясность или двусмысленность высказывания, появление отвлекающего комического эффекта, необходимость дополнительного времени и усилий на обдумывание, калькирование, нарушение литературных норм, ведущее к имиджевым потерям. Ставится задача выработать дидактические рекомендации для улучшения качества синхронного перевода в целях облегчения его восприятия адресатом. The paper looks into ways of identifying and analyzing mistakes typical of simultaneous interpretation into Russian (not contingent on the source language). The strategies of simultaneous interpretation are first examined as a cause of misused speech patterns which result in information losses. The findings revealed the following factors affecting the quality of simultaneous interpretation: ambiguity of an utterance, a comic connotation impeding interpretation, lack of time to think a phrase over, loan translation, violation of literary norms.The study aims at developing theoretical foundations for didactic guidelines and a system of exercises to boost the quality of simultaneous interpretation into Russian. The analysis is based on the records of simultaneous interpretation of the world leaders speeches into Russian at the 72nd UN General Assembly featured on the UN official site. The paper consists of three parts. The introduction describes relevant features of simultaneous interpretation as communicative activity: time limit, linear character, split attention of the interpreter as well as the strategies of simultaneous interpretation which are more likely than other translation techniques to impair the quality of translation. The authors classification of common mistakes is based on the assessment of the communicative effect retained in the target text. The body of the paper focuses on certain types of translation mistakes, their causes and recommendations as to how to avoid them. The author points out the downsides of probabilistic forecasting method, which entails extensive tautology, mistakes in defining functional sentence perspective and distorting grammatical sentence structure. It was also found that the linear strategy might provoke cognitive metaphoric mismatches in a complex sentence. It is argued that conference interpreters tend to ignore the basic differences in the linguistic maps of the world, looking instead for commonly matched words. Finally, the author concludes that good quality simultaneous interpretation calls for a comprehensive approach based on dynamic, cognitive, denotative, interpretative, communicative models of translation. This approach requires mutual effort of specialists from different research areas: Russian philology, translation and interpretation, cognitive science.

Grammatical Influences (Morphological) of Albanian Language in the Languages of Minorities in the Region of Prizren

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to prove the presence of calques (loan translation) of Albanian language in the languages of minorities (Gorani community, Bosnian community) in the region of Prizren. We will make an effort to provide evidence for the role of Albanian as a donor language through daily contacts with the members of the above-mentioned communities. The corpus of this study will be the edited volume of songs and folk tales from minority areas, respectively from the population of Gorani and Bosnian ethnicity and their dialects. The research will be focused in minority areas in the municipality of Dragash (Sharr) where Gorani people live, as well as in other areas of minority language speakers, mainly in Zhupa, in the municipality of Prizren. The paper will be important in enlightening the facts of using the structure of Albanian, both in the spoken language of the minority community and that of Albanian community. The cases where certain elements of Albanian language are encountered in another language, where Albanian appears as a donor language, will be considered as important. The reason which has pushed us to conduct the research regarding the presence of Albanian elements, basically morphological, in a non-Albanian speaking community in Kosovar society, respectively in the multi-ethnic society of Prizren, is the way of speaking of this minority community and the confirmation of the impact of Albanian language and ethno-culture on this minority language since ancient times to the present.

Neología sintagmática anglicada en español: Calcos y préstamos

As results from studies carried out by the Antena Chilena de Neologia - Universidad de Concepcion suggest, lexical units from English are one of the prolific forms of innovation in Spanish, especially due to the linguistic and cultural influence of the United States. Neological word formations of this origin, such as loanwords and loan translations from English, and hybrid word formations are evident in Spanish. Previous research has proven that English loan words are significant today in lexical innovation in different varieties of Spanish (Goddard, 1980; Lorenzo 1996; Gimeno & Gimeno, 2003; Novotna, 2007); therefore, it was interesting to examine other types of Anglicized neological formations. This study focuses on the presence of Anglicized phrases in Spanish, i.e., loan translations from English and hybrid formations containing English loanwords. The sample was obtained from neological syntagmatic units formed either by English calque or hybrid formations consisting of a patrimonial word and an English loanword, collected from Chilean press between 2003 and 2014. The analysis was performed according to recurrence, grammatical configuration, and domains where these Anglicized neologisms were used. The results determined that loan translations were more frequent than hybrid formations, that the syntagmatic combinations consisted of a variety of grammatical structures, predominantly noun phrases, and that both types of neological units were overridingly used in specific domains.

A typological analysis of calque in Romanian maritime terminology

The linguistic contact between French and Romanian had major effects on the formation of the Romanian maritime terminology. There are three major ways in which this linguistic influence took place: the loan, the calque (loan translation) and the translation. The purpose of the present paper is to draw a typology of calque, taking as reference the classification and the theory expressed by the Romanian linguist Theodor Hristea. Our analysis will cover only certain types of calques because the structure of the Romanian maritime terminology is necessarily limited to some recurrent categories, such as: lexical calque, semantic calque, phraseological calque (idiomatic and non-idiomatic) and grammatical calque. It appears that most of the linguistic calques existing in the Romanian maritime vocabulary are lexical in nature. Moreover, the semantic calque has provided us with one of the richest sources of linguistic material, especially since the calque also deals with the cases of metaphorization, metonymy, synecdoche, and manifests itself in parallel with the passage from one register to another of a maritime term. In the complex classification of the non-idiomatic phraseological calques, we will use the morphological criterion to analyse the maritime phraseological units according to the parts of speech they comprise. Thus, we can have constructions following the patterns: noun + noun (Nominative), noun + noun (Genitive), noun + preposition + noun, noun + adjective, adjective + noun, etc.

J.-Sp. <em>puertas de rey (es)</em> 'royal courts'

La expresión puertas de rey (es), documentada sólo en tres versiones de un solo romance recogido en la isla de Rodas, en 1911, corresponde al antiguo español puerta del rey, con el sentido 'corte del rey', que consta en Calila y Dimna y en el Libro de los çient capítulos. El concepto puerta = corte existe en muchos idiomas antiguos y modernos del Próximo Oriente: árabe clásico bāb al-malik; turco otomano qāpu; persa y urdù darbār; babilonio bābu; hebreo ša'ar y arameo ṭĕra'; egipcio tardío 'ryt; antiguo persa *duvar; griego clásico thúrai; latín norteafricano porta. La forma antigua española sin duda tiene su origen en el mismo original árabe de Kalila wa-Dimna, mientras que la judeoespañola reflejará un calco semántico hecho a base del turco otomano qāpu, de acuerdo con otras muchas influencias del turco y de las lenguas balcánicas en el judeoespañol oriental.

Akkadian substrate words and meanings surfacing in Neo-Aramaic

Abstract The present article concerns twelve cases of Akkadian lexical influences on Aramaic that are not manifest until the modern period. These are added to several cases already discussed in scholarly works, and include ten substrate words and two loan translations, all in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA), and in one case of loan translation apparently also in Western Neo-Aramaic (assuming a westward diffusion of the innovation involved). As most Akkadian lexical influences which surface in Neo-Aramaic are confined to NENA, it seems that the main reasons for the lack of their attestation in pre-modern Aramaic is the strictly vernacular nature of the remote progenitor of NENA, and the fact that the history of this dialect group is not attested.

Sadlovska O. S. Rendering English-Language Realia in Ukrainian Film-Translation

The article deals with the peculiarities and ways of rendering English-language realia in Ukrainian film translation defined as a special type of audio-visual translation in which an important role is played by extra-lingual factors and which presents a perspective research direction in terms of pragmatic adaptation. Modern translation study pays special attention to the adequacy of reproduction in the target language of the peculiarities of the source culture. The latter are coded in realia viewed as words and word combinations thatname unique phenomena present in the life of the source community and absent from the life of the target community. As a result, such vocabulary items do not have regular correspondences in the target language and should be rendered in translation in a specific way. The research allows singing out means and ways of rendering realia in film translation in view of domestication and foreignization strategies. The former aims at making the target text understandable for the Ukrainian community by means of transposition on the connotative level, hyperonymic substitution, using target language realia with the similar function. In this case the form is ignored in order to preserve in the target text the pragmatic potential of the source text. Implementing transcription, transliteration and loan translation the translator manages to preserve the unique atmosphere of the source culture, although it can make the process of understanding problematic.