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The classes of sense units which do not undergo any structural transformations
Not all sense units need to be structurally transformed in the process of translation, a considerable number
of them are transplanted to the target language in the form, meaning and structure of the original, i.e.,
unchanged or little changed, and namely:
1) most of genuine internationalisms, some idiomatic expressions, culturally biased notions:
computerization – комп’ютеризація, democratic system – демократична система, finite la commedia –
фініта ля комедія (ділу кінець), veni, vidi, vici – прийшов, побачив, переміг, etc.
2) many loan internationalisms which maintain in the target language the same meaning and often the
same structural form but have a different phonetic structure (sounding): agreement/concord (gram.) –
узгодження, adjoinment/juxtaposition – прилягання, standard of living – життєвий рівень, etc.
3) almost all proper nouns of various subclasses (names of people, family names and geographical names,
etc.): Cronin – Кронін, Newton – Ньютон, Ohio – Огайо, General Motors Corp. – корпорація “Дженерал
Моторз”, etc.
Lexical transformations change the semantic core of a translated word. The causes of
lexical transformations are:
1. Different vision of the same objects of reality in the source and the target
languages (vision of their different aspects), which is reflected in their different
usage;
2. Different semantic structure of a word in the source language and the target-
language (even words, which seem to have the same meaning in two languages
are not identical);
1. Differences in semantic structures of the correlated words. The corresponding words may
signify the same object - referent or concept of reality - by reflecting their different aspects and
so the words' denotational meanings can't coincide fully.
E.g.: instant coffee - розчинна кава;
drawing room - вітальня;
herring-bone - в ялинку.
2. The polysemantic characteristics of the words in two languages that are not commensurable
(непропорційні), i.e. the corresponding words have a different number of meanings and,
moreover, some of these meanings are quite dissimilar.
3. Different lexical and grammatical valency (combinability) of the corresponding lexical units:
E.g.: trains run - поїзди ходять.
4. Peculiar usages of words caused by extra-linguistic factors (differences in the ways of life,
customs, traditions, etc):
E.g.: The city is built on terraces rising from the lake
E.g.: No smoking.
– antonymic translation;
The necessity to resort to antonymic translation may be
caused by various peculiarities of SL and TL lexical
systems: a) in Ukrainian the negative prefix “не” coincides in
its form with the negative particle не, while in English they
differ (un-, in-, im-, etc. and the negative suffix -less on the
one hand and the particle "not" on the other hand); so it is
quite normal to say "not impossible" in English, while in
Ukrainian "не неможливо" is bad;We need to use antonym
“Можливо»
– the compensation technique.
Suppose a character uses the word "fool-proof" which is
certainly a sign of the colloquial register. In Ukrainian there
is no colloquial synonym of the word "надійний" or
"безпечний". So the colloquial "fool-proof" is translated by
the neutral "абсолютно надійник" and the speech of the
character loses its stylistic coloring. This loss is inevitable,
but it is necessary to find a way of compensation. It is quite
possible to find a neutral utterance in the speech of the
same character that can be translated colloquially, e.g. "I got
nothing". Taken separately it should be translated "Я нічого
не отримав" or "Мені нічого не дали", but it allows to make
up for the lost colloquial marker: "Я залишився з носом.)".
It results in getting one neutral and one colloquial utterance
both in the original and in the translated texts.