The main difficulties
of translating from English into Kazakh and vice versa
This work examines methods of translation of
proverbs and sayings, phraseological units and its difficulties in the process
of translation from English into Kazakh and vice versa. In addition, views
the Kazakh and English proverbs and sayings, their similarities and
distinctions. There are a lot of methods of translation, but the author chose
only the most used methods: descriptive, calque and explicatory methods of
translation.
Nothing defines a culture as distinctly as
its language, and the element of language that best encapsulates a society's
values and beliefs is its proverbs and sayings. A proverb is a simple and
concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on
common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often
metaphorical. If a proverb is distinguished by particularly good phrasing, it
may be known as an aphorism. Proverbs are often borrowed from similar languages
and cultures, and sometimes come down to the present through more than one
language. Both the Bible (Book of Proverbs) and medieval Latin have played a
considerable role in distributing proverbs across Europe, although almost every
culture has examples of its own. Also proverbs are short and pithy sayings that
express some traditionally held truth. They are usually metaphorical and often,
for the sake of memorability, alliterative.
From the perspective of language form,
English proverbs and sayings are characterized by religious structure, concise
form, deep moral, bold image, unique geography and ethnic characteristics, and
from the perspective of cultural backgrounds, they are associated with
religious beliefs, habits and customs, fables and myth, and culture and art. So
it is not an easy job to translate them precisely, because these
characteristics make difficulties for us to translate English proverbs and if
we want to keep the original proverb's language form and taste.
Moreover, because of the differences of
religious beliefs, habits and customs, fables and myth, and culture and art,
English proverbs, sayings and Kazakh proverbs and sayings carry on the
different national cultural characteristics and information. If we do not know
these cultural backgrounds, we cannot understand the English proverbs and
saying’s connotation and cannot translate them precisely. To our Kazakh people
with a little cultural knowledge about English, it is very difficult for us to
understand and translate English proverbs. So when studying English, we should
try to study its culture firstly. A list of most of the commonly-used proverbs
in the English language, with links to the meaning and origin of many of them.
Many proverbs have been absorbed into English having been known earlier in
other languages. The list here is specifically of English proverbs and the
dates given are those when the proverb first appeared in English.
Proverbs are found in many parts of the
world, but some areas seem to have richer stores of proverbs than others (such
as West Africa), while others have hardly any (North and South America).
Proverbs are often borrowed across lines of
language, religion, and even time. For example, a proverb of the approximate
form “No flies enter a mouth that is shut” is currently found in Spain,
Ethiopia, and many countries. It is embraced as a true local proverb in many
places and should not be excluded in any collection of proverbs because the
neighbors share it. However, though it has gone through multiple languages and
millennia, the proverb can be traced back to an ancient Babylonian proverb.
Typical stylistic features of proverbs are:
-alliteration (Forgive and forget)
-parallelism (Nothing ventured, nothing
gained)
-rhyme (When the cat is away, the mice will
play)
-ellipsis (Once bitten, twice shy)
Another subcategory is wellerisms, named
after Sam Weller from Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers. They are
constructed in a triadic manner, which consists of a statement (often a
proverb), an identification of a speaker (person or animal) and a phrase that
places the statement into an unexpected situation. Ex.: “Every evil is followed
by some good,” as the man said when his wife died the day after he became
bankrupt.
Yet another category of proverb is the
anti-proverb, also called Perverb. In such cases, people twist familiar
proverbs to change the meaning. Sometimes the result is merely humorous, but
the most spectacular examples result in the opposite meaning of the standard
proverb. Examples include, "Nerds of a feather flock together", "Early
to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and likely to talk about
it," and "Absence makes the heart grow wander". Anti-proverbs
are common on T-shirts, such as "If at first you don't succeed, skydiving
is not for you."A similar form is proverbial expressions (“to bite the
dust”). The difference is that proverbs are unchangeable sentences, while
proverbial expressions permit alterations to fit the grammar of the context.
[4] The place of proverbs and sayings with respect to set expressions is a controversial
issue. Proverbs have much in common with set expressions, because their lexical
components are also constant, their meaning is traditional and mostly
figurative, and they are introduced into speech ready-made. That is why some
scholars following V.V. Vinogradov think proverbs must be studied together with
phraseological units. Others like J. Casares and N.N. Amosova think that unless
they regularly form parts of other sentences it is erroneous to include them
into the system of language, because they are independent units of
communication. N.N. Amosova even thinks that there is no more reason to
consider them as part of phraseology than, for instance, riddles and children’s
counts. This standpoint is hardly acceptable especially if we do not agree with
the narrow limits of phraseology offered by this author. Riddles and counts are
not as a rule included into utterances in the process of communication, whereas
proverbs are. Whether they are included into an utterance as independent
sentences or as part of sentences is immaterial. If we follow that line of
reasoning, we shall have to exclude all interjections such as Hang it (all)!
because they are also syntactically independent. As to the argument that in
many proverbs the meaning of component parts does not show any specific changes
when compared to the meaning of the same words in free combinations, it must be
pointed out that in this respect they do not differ from very many set
expressions, especially those which are emotionally neutral.
Another
reason why proverbs must be taken into consideration together with set
expressions is that they often form the basis of set expressions. E. g. the
last straw breaks the camel’s back : : the last straw; a drowning man will
clutch at a straw : clutch at a straw; it is useless to lock the stable door
when the steed is stolen : lock the stable door ‘to take precautions when the
accident they are meant to prevent has already happened’.
Now a phraseological units semantics are
complex entity and there are five aspects of its meaning that will influence
the translator’s choice of an equivalent in the target language . They are the
ph. unit’s figurative meaning its literal sense, its emotive character,
stylistic register and national colouring. The figurative meaning is the basic
element of the ph. unit’s semantics. Thus “red tape” means bureaucracy, “to
kick the bucket”, and “to wash dirty linen in public” also refer, respectively,
to a coloured tape, an upset pail and a kind laundering, though in most cases
this aspect is subordinate and serves as a basis for the metaphorical use.
Phraselogical units can be positive, negative or neutral. It is clear that “to
kill two birds with one stone” is good, which has Kazakh equivalent “бір оқпен екі қоянды ату”, “to find a mare’s nest” is a
ludicrous mistake, while “Rome was not built in a day” is a neutral statement
of fact. They can also differ in their stylistic usage: they may be bookish (to
show one’s true colour ) or colloquial (to be a pain in a neck). Besides
phraselogical units can be nationally coloured, that is include some words
which mark it as the product of a certain nation. For instance , “to set the
Thames on fire” and “to carry coals to Newcastle” are unmistakably British. The
complex character of the phraselogical unit’s semantics makes its translation
no easy matter. But there are some additional factors which complicate the task
of adequate identification, understanding and translation of ph. units. First,
ph. units can be mistaken for a free word combination, especially if its
literal sense is not “exotic”(to have butterflies in one’s stomach), but rather
trivial (to measure one’s length, to lex one’s hair down). Second , ph. unit
may be identical in form to a target language ph. unit, but have a different
figurative meaning. Thus, the English to lead somebody by the nose implies a
total domination of one person by other (cf. “алдау”) and
“to stretch one’s legs” means to take a stroll (cf. “қыдыру” ). Third, phraselogical units
can be wrongly interpreted due to its association with a similar, if not
identical target language unit. For instance, “to pull the devil by the tail”,
that is to be in trouble may be misunderstood by the translator under the
influence of the Kazakh ph. unit “еріккен шал сақалымен ойнайды”. Forth, a wrong interpretation of a source language ph. unit
may be caused by another source language ph. unit similar in form and different
in meaning . Cf. “to make good time” and “to have a good time”. Fifth,
phraselogical unit may have a broader range of application than its target
language counterpart apparently identical in form and meaning. For instance the
English “to get out of hand ” is equivalent to the Kazakh “тыңдамау” and the latter is often used
to translate it.For instance, The children got out of hand while their parents
were away.
As it is known the translation has a lot of
method of translation as word-for-word translation, literal translation,
faithful, semantic, descriptive, idiomatic, communicative, analogues way of
translation, explicatory and the last one calque. We can use each of them in
the process of translation of proverbs, sayings and phraseological units. For
instance when we translated this proverb “Speak of the devil and he is sure
sure to appear” we used analogues method of translation, because we have such
analogue in Kazakh language as “Кімді айтсан, сол келеді” and also by translating this proverb “Mother thinks of
children , children – about games” we used analogues method, too. It has
analogue in Kazakh language as “Аннаның көңілі балада, баланың көңілі далада”.[3] In other cases we have used descriptive method and calque.
For instance “If you have an ugly mug do not be offended at mirror” – “Бетің қисық болса, айнаға өкпелеме” there were used the method of
translation calque, cause translating this proverb we transferred the structure
of the word from source language to the target language. And we come to
conclusion that the most difficult method of translation is analogues because
it is not easy to find the same analogue of the proverb, and the easiest is
calque cause there we just transfer the structure of the proverb into target
language.
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