Бутырская Т.М., Серебрякова
Н.П.
Карагандинский Государственный университет им. Е.А.
Букетова, Казахстан
THE LEVELS OF EQUIVALENCE IN TRANSLATION OF MARGARET MITCHELL NOVEL
“GONE WITH THE WIND”
In our modern world with its boundless
opportunities, blurred boarders, close relations between the representatives of
different countries, continents and nations the translation takes a special
place. Thanks to the translation people can understand each other, communicate,
share their opinions and information even if they speak different languages.
From this point of view the translation is the missing link, which helps the
system work, and connects so different at first sight people. Generally, it may seems that it is not so
difficult to make a proper and adequate translation, that it is enough just to
know two languages. In fact, the translation is not just a word-for-word
transfer of an original text into a target language. The translation is a
complex process, which includes the perfect knowledge of not only the language,
but of the culture, the peculiarities and mentality of people of the country
where the language-speakers live. It is necessary to choose that certain word
from the whole vocabulary of the language which would become native in the
target text. Actually, for the reader or the listener it is only the result
that matters, i.e. adequate perception of the translated text, preservation of
the same meaning and the same means by which the author of the original text presents
his ideas are of great importance. Thus the translation should not only be
close to the meaning of the original text but make the same impression and draw
the same picture as the original text. This phenomenon determines the existence
of such term as equivalence in the translation theory. We may say about the
quality and adequacy of translation measuring the semantic similarity between
the translated text and the original one.
Equivalence may be considered one of the translation peculiarities, and
some scholars even consider it worth mentioning in the definition of the
translation itself. For example, American linguist E. Nida states that “translation
is a substitute of an original with the closest natural equivalent in the
language of translation” [1,36], at the same time English scholar J. C. Catford determines
“translation as a substitute of a text in one language with an equivalent text
in another language” [2,33].
So, what is the equivalence? In broad sense the
equivalence is an equality of meaning. In the context of the translation theory
the equivalence is the preservation of relative similarity of cognitive,
semantic, stylistic and communicative information contained in the original
text [3,117].
According to the relative
translatability principle it should be noted that the complete identity of the translated
text to the original is impossible but this fact does not influence the
effectiveness of intercultural communication. The losses connected with the
difficulties of transforming the peculiarities of poetry, cultural or historic realms,
specific realms and other peculiarities of literary style are inevitable, but
that is important to realize that different semantic units may not match
together while translating even the simplest statements. Nowadays the theory of
the levels of equivalence by V.N. Komissarov can be considered as the leading
one [4,74]. According to this theory the relations of equivalence are established
between relevant levels of the original and translated texts during the
translating process. Different units of the original and target texts may be
equivalent to each other at all levels or only at one of them. The final aim of
the translation according to V.N. Komissarov is to establish the maximum degree
of equivalence at every existing level [5,132].
In
The equivalence of translation of the first type
is in the preservation of only those parts of the original text, which indicate
the common speech function in whole act of communication and represents the
purport of communication. Moreover after the reading of the text the response
or the reactive action is necessary.
We use such kind of translations when more
detailed translation of content is impossible that may lead to the
misunderstanding of the purport of communication. In the novel of Margaret
Mitchell “Gone With the Wind” Mammy says to Scarlett such phrase “After dinner comes the reckoning”[6,168] that can be translated into
Russian as «После обеда приходится платить». But by this words Mammy does not mean that Scarlett
will have to pay somebody for the dinner in her own house. That is why it would
be better to translate this sentence by finding the relevant Russian proverb «Любишь кататься, люби и саночки возить». From the second sentence it is obvious that we deal
with some advice. That the dinner itself does not make any sense and that the
statement should be understood wider as that any action leads to the next
action connected with the previous one and caused by it.
To the second type of equivalence it is peculiar
that common parts of the original content and the translated text not only have
the same purport of communication but also describes one and the same
extralinguistic situation. Communicative function of the text may not be
represented in other ways but through situation-oriented message. As the result
there is the probability and necessity to match situations described in
different ways.
We may speak
about the equivalence at the level of methods of situation description when in
translation the two preceding informative complexes are retained as well
as the method of describing the situation. In other words, it contains the same
general notions as the original. This means that the translation is a semantic
paraphrase of the original, preserving its basic semes and allowing their free
reshuffle in the sentence. Let us analyze this
type of equivalence on the following examples: «Rhett had the town's tenderest
sympathy and he neither knew nor cared. Scarlett had the town's dislike and,
for once, she would have welcomed the sympathy of old friends» [6,429], translated
in Russian as «Всеобщее искреннее сочувствие было на стороне Ретта, но он не догадывался об этом и не ценил этого. Но никто не жалел и не понимал Скарлетт, хотя это был
так нужно ей сейчас». Although the
meaning of both sentences remained the same and they both shows the attitude of
citizens to Rhett and Scarlett, we may not say that Russian and English
versions of the sentence are completely equal. The syntactic structure of two
English sentences is parallel, but this is not preserved in Russian variant,
but it does not make the Russian sentence inadequate.
To the equivalence on the level of the invariant
meaning of syntactic structures together with three preserved components of
content the usage of the same syntactic structures of the original text in
translation are peculiar. The structure of the original text bears some certain
information contained in the whole content of the translated text. The maximum possible preservation of syntactic
structures of original text within the target text makes the reproduction of
original content more proper. If we translate the following fragment “It can't
be true, she thought vehemently, trying to push back the fear. Doctors make
mistakes. I won't think it's true. I can't let myself think it's true. I'll scream if I do. I must think of something else” [6,398] as “это не может
быть правдой!- повторяла она страстно, пытаясь не заплакать. Доктора часто
ошибаются. Я не хочу думать, что все это правда. Я не могу позволить себе думать, что это
правда, иначе я закричу. Я подумаю об этом завтра” it will be an adequate translation. Despite the
absence of the complete identity of the translated text to the original one we
may still find the preserved parallelism of syntactic constructions, minor
changes in vocabulary and almost similar way of describing the situation, all
these allow us to say about the equivalence at the level of invariant meaning
of syntactic structures.
Last
but not least, the equivalence at the level of words semantics appears. It can be discovered when
we analyze their relations with the respective originals. Here we find the
maximum possible semantic similarity between texts in different languages.
These translations try to retain the meaning of all the words used in the
original text. Here we have four components preserved in previous type and one
more component: the maximum possible identity of separate semes constituting
the meaning of correlated words in the original and the translation. The degree
of this identity is determined by the possibility to reproduce some components
of original words’ meaning in translation. This in return depends on the way
how this or that component of the word is represented in words of target
language. The last type of the equivalence implies most close identity of
original to the translation through the usage of the similar syntactic
constructions, noncontroversial vocabulary and preservation of the form and
content of the original as in the translation of the fragment from the novel.
For instance, “At these words, the sob came
freely to Scarlett's throat and she clapped her hand over her mouth. Now, she was going to bawl like a child and
cry out: "I've been a devil!”.[6,
361] The translation in Russian is:”При этих словах рыдания подступили к горлу Скарлетт и она зажала рот рукой. Сейчас она заплачет как ребёнок и закричит: «Я была
настоящим дьяволом!”». As we can see from
the example all the units are word-for-word translated, we may even say that this
is metaphrastic translation, because the main semantic meaning of the words is
used, the sequence and word order of words and constructions is preserved.
There are no such often used transformations as generalization, omission or specification.
But in spite of all these the sentence sounds in Russian as harmonic and
beautiful as in English. It provokes the same feelings and emotions as the
original sentence.
Consequently, considering that the specificity
of the translation is quite different from all other kinds of language activity.
Of course, complete identity of the
translation to the source text is impossible, but, nevertheless, according to
the theory of communication, interlingual communication is established. Translation
itself does not suppose the creation of identical text and the absence of such
identity does not serve as proof to the impossibility of translation. The
losses of some elements of the translated text do not mean that this text is
untranslatable. Inability to translate any peculiarity of the original text is
only singular example of the common principle of nonidentical character of the
content of two texts in different languages. The absence of identity does not
prevent the translation from having the same communicative functions as the
original text has. The equivalence helps us to determine the degree of similarity
of the translation and the original. There are a lot of phenomena which
influence the translation: different conditions, various themes of a translated
text, genre and style, sociocultural context. But, eventually, the equivalence
is the only standard which allows us to determine the quality and accuracy of
the translation.
Reference:
1. Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies / edited
by Mona Baker.
2. Komissarov V., Vvedenie v sovremennoe perevodovedenie
–
3. Hatim, B., Munday, J. Translation. An Advanced
Resource Book.
4. Munday,
Jeremy, Introducing Translation Studies. Theories and Applications,
5.
Виноградов В.С. Введение в переводоведение (общие и
лексические вопросы). — М.: Издательство института общего среднего образования
РАО, 2001, — 224 с.
6. Margaret Mitchel. Gone With the Wind.