TRANSLATION OF PHRASES

Usually translation of free phrases does not cause any specific difficulties. The main thing to be remembered here is the interplay of the meanings of components, because every component should be translated in such a way as to form the whole meaning of the phrase. In the English language, however, there are some types of phrases, which deserve special attention due to peculiarities of their semantic structure. Fist of all it refers to phrases with preposed attributes. All these phrases are built according to the pattern ATTRIBUTE + (ATTRIBUTE +...) + SUBSTANTIVE but their semantic structure may vary considerably. Preposed attributes may denote properties and qualities of the substantive itself or of other attributes (cf. "south-coast convalescent camp" - where both "south-coast" and "convalescent" characterize "camp" - and "free educational institution" where "free" is not connected semantically with "institution"); besides properties and qualities, they may denote some notion with which the substantive is connected, they may express local, temporal and other characteristics. That is why it is often impossible or at least undesirable to translate such phrases using similar Russian constructions, since in Russian semantic relations between a preposed attribute and a substantive are rather uniform: if a "happy man" is certainly "счастливый человек", "a medical man" can hardly be translated as "медицинский человек". There may be several attributes in a phrase and they are not necessarily expressed by adjectives. Very often the function of a preposed attribute is fulfilled by a noun (the "stone wall" type of phrases) which, in its turn, may also have an attribute (e.g. "the front door key"). Sometimes it is not easy to see which of the nouns is characterized by a particular attribute (does "retail philanthropy business" mean "business of retail philanthropy" or "retail business of philanthropy"?). Such ambiguity is practically impossible in Russian attributive phrases.

Another peculiarity of English phrases with preposed attributes is that an attribute may modify a noun which is as it were omitted and only implied (e.g. "dry pruning" does not mean that the process of pruning is dry, the word "dry" denotes the state of branches that are being pruned).

These semantic and structural peculiarities should be taken into consideration when translating attributive phrases with preposed attributes. First of all it is necessary to translate the final noun, which is always the main word in such a phrase. Then one should single out sense groups within the phrase and analyze relations between them. If all these groups modify the final noun they may be translated in the same succession as they are in English, or in a different succession, according to the norms of the Russian language. If they modify each other in consecutive order the reverse way of translation is often recommended:

1 2 3

" Strategic ArmsLimitationTreaty " - " Договороб ограничении

1 2

стратегических вооружений "

There are several ways of translating such attributive phrases.

1. A preposed attribute may be translated with the help of a corresponding Russian preposed attribute: "a fine day" -

"чудесный день", "matrimonial ad" - "брачное объявление".

2. A postpositional attribute may be used in Russian: "always-at-ease-girls" - "девушки, всегда чувствующие себя непринужденно". Often these postpositional attributes are expressed by nouns in the genitive case: "opposition leader" ­"лидер оппозиции".

3. A preposed attribute of an English phrase may be expressed in Russian by a postpositional attribute joined to the modified noun by a preposition (usually N + prep + N): "highway robbery" - "грабеж на большой дороге", "youth unemployment" ­"безработица среди молодежи".

4. A preposed attribute may be rendered in translation by an apposition: "her millionaire friend" - "ее друг-миллионер".

5. Sometimes one of the components of an English phrase (usually the preposed attribute itself) is best translated descriptively, i.e. by a group of words: "a bargain counter" ­"прилавок (отдел) товаров по сниженным ценам".

6. When translating English attributive phrases with preposed attributes it is often advisable or even necessary to rearrange components of the phrase and transfer the attribute to another noun (present in or omitted from the phrase): "free educational institutions" - "бесплатные учебные заведения", though in English the word "free" is connected with "educational" and not with "institutions"; "Parliamentary Labour Party" - "парламентская фракция лейбористcкой партии" (the word "парламентская" here is an attribute to the noun "фракция", introduced into the phrase according to the norms of the Russian language); "the nine Common Market foreign ministers" - "девять министров иностранных дел стран Общего рынка", where two nouns are introduced ("дел" and "стран") to show real semantic connections.

For the purposes of translation an attribute may be transferred to another noun used in the same sentence outside the phrase. E.g. "dismal array of titles" in Mark Twain's "Running for Governor" should rather be translated as "набор ужасных прозвищ", though in English the adjective "dismal" modifies the noun "array”, and not "titles".

7. Very often English attributive phrases are translated with the help of Russian adverbial phrases, especially in case of English

to be

to have

to give + A + N phrases:

to take

"to give a loud whistle" - "громко свистнуть", "to have a good dinner" - "хорошо (вкусно, как следует и т.д.) пообедать", etc.

8. Finally there are cases when due to different reasons it is impossible to preserve the structure of a sentence including an attributive phrase with a preposed attribute, so the structure of the sentence is changed completely: “a girl with whom he had previously had a slight party-going acquaintance " - "девушка, с которой он раньше лишь иногда встречался на вечеринках".

The choice of a particular way to translate preposed attributes is predetermined mainly by semantic relations between the components of a phrase, grammatical norm, and combinability of words in TL.

There is a specific type of preposed attributes in English - attributes with inner predication. Their translation mainly depends on their stylistic properties. If such an attribute is rather extended and used for the purpose of irony, it is usually translated by means of a subordinate clause (mostly an object clause): "one of those quick Send-me-two-hundred-by-messenger­old-man-or-my-head-goes-in-the-gas-oven touches"(P.G.Wodehouse) - "одна из тех наскоро написанных записок, в которых обычно пишут: "Пришли мне, старина..." If it is not very long and no special ironical effect is intended it is better to find some laconic variant of translation using a preposed or postpositional attribute or sometimes even a noun without any attribute (if the meaning of this noun includes the characteristics which in English are expressed by the attributive phrase): "a 'God, you are wonderful' type of woman" - "восторженная женщина", "a grab-it-and-run... counter" - "место, где можно наскоро перекусить" or "забегаловка".

* * *

Speaking about set phrases it is first of all necessary to differentiate between figurative and non-figurative set phrases. Non-figurative set phrases are translated according to the principles that have already been discussed in connection with words and free phrases. The main guiding principle here is to remember the norms of TL.

Figurative set phrases deserve special discussion. The main peculiarity of these phraseological units is their specific meaning that often cannot be deduced from the meanings of their components. It is the meaning of the whole, not of separate words, that should be rendered in translation. Based on imagery, phraseological units serve to make the text more expressive; they are also often responsible for stylistic coloring of the text. Since the text in TL must be as expressive as it is in SL and characterized by the same stylistic coloring, it becomes very important to find an adequate variant of translating every phraseological unit.

There are four main ways to translate an image-bearing phraseological unit: 1) the image may be preserved as it is; 2) it may be partially changed; 3) it may be replaced by an utterly different image, and 4) a translated version may contain no image at all.

1. They usually preserve the image (and even the structure) of the so-called international phraseological units. Such units are mostly based on some historical, mythological, biblical, etc. references: "In the seventh heaven" - "на седьмом небе", "to go through the fire and water" - "пройти (сквозь) огонь и воду", "a blue stocking" - "синий чулок", "not to see the wood for the trees"- "за деревьями леса не видеть", etc. Such phraseological units of SL and TL are called equivalents. In case of equivalents, there arise no difficulties of stylistic or any other character.

Sometimes it is possible to preserve the image underlying a phraseological unit in SL even in the case when there is no corresponding unit in TL. It is achieved through loan translation: "no man can make a good coat with bad cloth" -"из плохого материала хорошего платья не сошьешь", "nothing comes out of the sack but what was in it" - "из мешка не вынешь больше, чем в нем было" (or - "ничего, кроме того, что в нем было"), etc. However, this means may be resorted to only if the image is absolutely transparent for the people speaking TL, that is if the figurative meaning of the phraseological unit is easily and unmistakably deduced from its direct meaning. In this case the translated version is no longer phraseological, but it remains figurative, so it renders the idea of the original phraseological unit and adds to the expressiveness of the whole text. If the image is not transparent and the meaning of the whole (and mainly its figurative meaning) cannot be deduced from the lexical meanings of the components, loan translation is absolutely impossible. "To send somebody to Coventry" (бойкотировать) cannot be translated as "послать в Ковентри", and translating "to find a mare's nest" ("попасть пальцем в небо") as "найти гнездо кобылы" one really finds a mare's nest.

2. It often happens that phraseological units of SL and TL express the same idea and are based upon similar though not identical images. They both express the idea figuratively and the imagery underlying them is basically the same. In such cases it is possible to ignore slight differences between the images and though in the phraseological unit of TL the image is partially changed in comparison with that of SL, it can still be accepted as an adequate translated version: "a fine suit doesn't make a gentleman" - "не одежда красит человека", "at a. glance (at a glimpse)" - "с первого. взгляда", "a burnt child dreads the fire" - "обжегшись на молоке, на воду дует". In the last example the difference between the English and the Russian variants seems to be rather serious: there is practically no lexical correspondence between the words. But the image is nearly the same - he who once was burnt is afraid of everything which is hot (hence the same generalized figurative meaning). Some more examples: "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush " - "лучше синица в руке, чем журавль в небе ", "look not a gift horse in the mouth " - "дареному коню в зубы не смотрят", "to lay by for a rainy day" - "отложить про черный день", etc.

3. Since the phraseological stock of every language reflects the history and culture of the people speaking the language, many ideas which are common to all peoples are expressed differently in different languages: in Russian we say "когда рак на горе свистнет", while Englishmen say "when pigs fly", in Russian ­"рыбак рыбака видит издалека", and in English - "birds of a feather flock together". Since the meaning of the first phraseological unit is in no way connected with either crayfish or pigs the lexical way of wording the idea ("something never going to happen") is of secondary importance. The main task here is to find a phraseological unit of TL expressing the same idea and belonging to the same stylistic register (стилистический регистр) as the original phraseological unit. The same is true about the second example. The complete substitution of the image does not in any way change the general meaning of the proverb. "У семи нянек дитя без глазу" is an adequate translation of the English "Too many cooks spoil the broth" because of complete coincidence of meaning and stylistic reference.

So in all the cases when phraseological units of SL have no equivalents in TL and in TL there are no expressions based on the same image, complete substitution of image (i.e. use of phraseological analogues) is recommended.

4. In SL there may exist phraseological units that have neither equivalents nor analogues in TL. The idea expressed in these units has no fixed expression in TL. If the image underlying them is not transparent and loan translation is impossible, such phraseological units are translated descriptively, i.e. by free phases which are neither phraseological nor figurative: "a skeleton in the cupboard" - ­"семейная тайна" (an attempt to translate it as "скелет в шкафу" leads to utter misrepresentation of sense), "get the right (wrong) end of the stick" - "оказаться в выгодном (невыгодном) положении", "in a whole skin" - "благополучно, без повреждений", etc.

These are the main ways of translating figurative phraseological units.

When translating phraseological units it is necessary to remember that some of them have a definite national character, which makes their translation rather difficult. On the one hand, it is not always easy to preserve the national "flavour" in translation, on the other - there is always a danger of introducing national elements of TL. Semantically "to carry coals to Newcastle" and "ездить в Тулу со своим самоваром" are analogues, nevertheless one can hardly insert Тула in a text translated from English. In such cases it is advisable to find (or coin, if necessary) a neutral expression with the same figurative meaning: "носить уголь в шахту (воду в реку, дрова в лес и т.д.)". There should be no "коломенская верста" or "Тришкин кафтан" or "щи лаптем хлебать" in a Russian translation of any foreign text.