scholarly journals Translation of colour terms: An empirical approach toward word-translation from English into Estonian

Author(s):  
Mari Uusküla

Translation of colour terms hovers somewhere between cognitive linguistics and translation studies and has therefore remained relatively understudied as a topic, despite the popularity of cross-linguistic colour term studies in the languages of the world. Although colour terms form a relatively small and restricted semantic domain, translating a colour term into another language can cause a massive headache to anyone who has ever tried to seek an appropriate equivalent for it in another language. The article describes how a group of translators and non-translators translated single, mainly simplex secondary colour terms from English into Estonian. Four main translation strategies can be discerned: literal translation, abstraction change or hyponymy, information change or omission and descriptive translation techniques. In addition, the study shows that translation experience and translation education is an advantage even if one translates small units of texts. Kokkuvõte. Mari Uusküla: Empiiriline lähenemine värvinimede tõlkimisele inglise-eesti suunal. Värvinimede tõlkimist võiks pidada keele teaduse ja tõlketeaduse siirdealaks, kuna tõlketeadus tegeleb põhiliselt suuremate üksuste uurimisega kui selleks on sõnad, kognitiivne semantika aga huvitub ka üksiksõnadest. Teemat võib pidada aktuaalseks ja uudseks, sest värvi nimede tõlkimist on süstemaatiliselt uuritud vähe sellele vaatamata, et huvi värvinimede vastu eri maailma keeltes on jätkuvalt suur. Artikkel kirjeldab, kuidas kakskümmend vabatahtlikku, kelle hulgas leidus nii tõlkijaid kui ka mittetõlkijaid (s.t. inimesi, kes oma igapäevaelus ega -töös tõlkimisega ei tegele), tõlkisid inglise keelest eesti keelde kakskümmend objektist tuletatud värvinime (nt lemon, chocolate ja rose). Värvinimede tõlkimisel kerkis esile neli põhilist tõlkestrateegiat: otsetõlge, abstraheerimine või hüponüümia kasutamine, informatsiooni muutmine või väljajätt ning kirjeldav tõlge. Lisaks näitab läbiviidud uurimus, et tõlke kogemusega ja tõlkeharidust omavatel inimestel on tõlkimisel selge eelis, isegi kui tõlgitavateks üksusteks on üksiksõnad.

Target ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Sandra Peña-Cervel ◽  
Carla Ovejas-Ramírez

Abstract This article provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the translation of English drama film titles into Peninsular Spanish, drawing on cognitive modelling and following preliminary findings in Peña-Cervel (2016). Our study is consistent with the epistemological and ontological grounding of Cognitive Linguistics (Samaniego-Fernández 2007) and contributes to satisfying one of the major challenges Rojo-López and Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2013a, 10) identify for present-day Translation Studies: To reveal the conceptual substratum that guides the translation process. Our approach does not rely on an exhaustive classification of clear-cut and well-defined translation techniques, but rather on a broad distinction between direct and oblique strategies. We demonstrate how the notion of cognitive operation, as proposed by Ruiz de Mendoza-Ibáñez and Galera-Masegosa (2014), can help elucidate the sometimes seemingly arbitrary relationship between original English titles and their counterparts in Spanish, especially in cases of traditionally so-called free translations. Stands-for relations, such as expansion and reduction, are shown to play a fundamental role in the translation process and the fruitful combination of cognitive operations into conceptual complexes is explored. Our study attempts to go beyond descriptive adequacy in order to achieve explanatory adequacy.


2009 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Soriano ◽  
Javier Valenzuela

This study explores the reasons why colour words and emotion words are frequently associated in the different languages of the world. One of them is connotative overlap between the colour term and the emotion term. A new experimental methodology, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), is used to investigate the implicit connotative structure of the Peninsular Spanish colour terms rojo (red), azul (blue), verde (green) and amarillo (yellow) in terms of Osgood’s universal semantic dimensions: Evaluation (good—bad), Activity (excited—relaxed) and Potency (strong—weak). The results show a connotative profile compatible with the previous literature, except for the valence (good—bad) of some of the colour terms, which is reversed. We suggest reasons for both these similarities and differences with previous studies and propose further research to test these implicit connotations and their effect on the association of colour with emotion words.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. 115-123
Author(s):  
Erlina Zulkifli Mahmud ◽  
Taufik Ampera ◽  
Inu Isnaeni Sidiq

This article discusses how Indonesian dishes in an Indonesian source novel are translated into the English target novel. The ingredients of the dishes may be universal as they can be found in any other dishes all over the world but the names given to the dishes can be very unique. This uniqueness in Translation Studies may lead to a case of untranslatability as it has no direct equivalence or no one-to-one equivalence known as non-equivalence. For this non-equivalence case Baker proposes 8 translation strategies under the name of translation strategy for non-equivalence at word level used by professional translators.  What strategies are used in translating the Indonesian dishes based on Baker’s taxonomy and what semantic components are involved in the English equivalences are the objectives of this research. Using a mixed method; descriptive, contrastive, qualitative methods, the phenomena found in the source novel and in the target novel are compared, then documented into a description just the way they are, then analyzed to be identified according to the objectives of the research. The results show that not all translation strategies are used in translating the Indonesian dishes in the novel and the semantic components involved in the English equivalences are mostly ingredients then followed by process, performance, and taste. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 211-224
Author(s):  
Alexandra I. Chivarzina

The basic colour term for blue is extremely rare in the plant nomination in comparison with the widespread derivatives of the other colour terms as “white”, “black”, “red” or even “yellow”. One can fi nd a few examples of such names recorded in the dictionaries of the Balkan Slavic dialects. Within the framework of this study, the material of the colour terms in the names of mushrooms was also taken into account, as mushrooms are supposed to be close to plants in the naive picture of the world. The “blue” can appear diff erently depending on the object of nomination: in the names of fl owers and fruits, the blue is recorded mainly in competing forms of the roots +модарand +син, and in the mushroom names there are forms of the roots +модар, +виолет-, as well as +плав — which is characteristic for the dialect continuum of the Serbian language. When analyzing the total corpus of lexemes one can notice an obvious pre-dominance of the element +модар in comparison with the basic and most common at this period lexemes of Bulg., Mac., Serb. синand плав. The root +модар is used in the meaning of the border colour between blue and purple. Therefore, it corresponds better to the nomination of plant and mushroom, whose colours can vary in shades and in intensity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (33) ◽  
pp. 60-68
Author(s):  
Claudio Salmeri

This article studies the development of the translation theories in the second half of the twentieth century, a period during which significant theoretical contributions were made in translation circles. These contributions had a profound impact on the practice of translation. The individuals who contributed to the present state of translation theory worked in translation circles, and this article examines their contributions. A selected history of theoretical developments, focusing on the most important ideas relevant to translation work, is presented in order to examine the impact of such theories on the practice of translation. It has become commonplace to believe that the deconstructionist and poststructuralist views on translation have opened new perspectives in Translation Studies. The aim of this paper is to highlight the main tenets of the major authors of these theories. The attention is especially drawn to a well-known controversy related to the concept of equivalence and translation strategies. This paper presents the main criticism made by the poststructuralist translation views on interpretation. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khairani Hayat Situmorang ◽  
I. W. Dirgeyasa ◽  
Zainuddin Zainuddin

The research dealt with Metaphor Sentences. The aims of this study were: (1) to find out the translation strategies of metaphors are used in The Magic of Thinking Big and (2) to describe the translation strategies maintain metaphors in The Magic of Thinking Big. The research was conducted by using qualitative design. The data of this study were sentences. The data were collected through documentary technique and the instrument was the documentary sheet. The technique of data analysis was descriptive. The finding of this study revealed that: (1) The metaphor in The magic of Thinking Big were translated by applying six translation strategies, namely: word for word Translation (5.3%) lieral translation (4.3%), faithful translation (57.5%), Free translation (3.2%), communicative translation (30.5%) and discursive creation was found (2.2%). (2) The metaphors are maintained that found in the Magic of Thinking Big are original metaphors turned into another original metaphors, stock metaphors turned into another stock metaphors, adapted metaphors turned into adapted metaphors, dead metaphors turned into dead metaphors, original metaphor turned into stock metaphor, stock metaphor turned into original metaphor, meanwhile, 10 original metaphors and 1 dead metaphor are no longer classified as metaphors. Language has special characteristic that is metaphor sentences, therefore in the case of translating of metaphor sentences in which their concept in unknown for readers, the translator often faces the problems to find out the translation strategies to translate metaphor in a source language (SL) and how the metaphor sentences are maintained in the target language (TL).Keywords : Metaphor, Translation Strategies, Maintain Metaphor


2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102110021
Author(s):  
Esperança Bielsa

This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer an approach to contemporary interconnectedness that escapes from both methodological nationalism and what can be designated as the monolingual vision, providing substantive perspectives on the proliferation of contact zones or borderlands in a diversity of domains. The article centrally argues for a sociological perspective that examines not just the circulation of meaning but translation as a process of linguistic transformation that is necessarily embodied in words. Only if this more material aspect of translation is attended to can the nature of translation as an ordinary social process be fully grasped and its intervention in meaning-making activities explored. This has far-ranging implications for any reflexive account of the production of sociological works and interpretations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-452
Author(s):  
Mathura Umachandran

Abstract We live in an age of globalized and globalizing phenomena: the contemporary agenda of academic inquiry takes in ‘networks’, ‘connectivity’, and other modes of articulating complex structures of human activity. In Comparative Literature and beyond, the idea of world literature has borne the weight of idealist intercultural understanding, the hopes of translation studies, and the anxieties around the failure of communication. Erich Auerbach offers a touchstone in the conceptual genealogy of world literature (Weltliteratur). This article illuminates how Auerbach’s Weltliteratur is predicated on a polemic with German philhellenism, tracked through Auerbach’s declaration that his idea is ‘ungoethisch’. Auerbach’s revisions to Weltliteratur constituted a strategy to render it a historicist concept. Since Auerbach’s notion of historicism was itself derived from nineteenth-century German humanism, this essay argues that Auerbach was attempting to go with Goethe beyond Goethe. Finally, this essay assesses how successful Auerbach’s decoupling of Weltliteratur from universalism, under the sign of Goethe and the Greeks. I suggest that Weltliteratur is still a pertinent concept today because of Auerbach’s intervention to install historicist and dialectical resources therein.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina Savitskaya ◽  

In the field of cognitive linguistics it is accepted that, before developing its capacity for abstract and theoretical thought, the human mind went through the stage of reflecting reality through concrete images and thus has inherited old cognitive patterns. Even abstract notions of the modern civilization are based on traditional concrete images, and it is all fixed in natural language units. By way of illustration, the author analyzes the cognitive pattern “сleanness / dirtiness” as a constituent part of the English linguoculture, looking at the whole range of its verbal realization and demonstrating its influence on language-based thinking and modeling of reality. Comparing meanings of language units with their inner forms enabled the author to establish the connection between abstract notions and concrete images within cognitive patterns. Using the method of internal comparison and applying the results of etymological reconstruction of language units’ inner form made it possible to see how the world is viewed by representatives of the English linguoculture. Apparently, in the English linguoculture images of cleanness / dirtiness symbolize mainly two thematic areas: that of morality and that of renewal. Since every ethnic group has its own axiological dominants (key values) that determine the expressiveness of verbal invectives, one can draw the conclusion that people perceive and comprehend world fragments through the prism of mental stereo-types fixed in the inner form of language units. Sometimes, in relation to specific language units, a conflict arises between the inner form which retains traditional thinking and a meaning that reflects modern reality. Still, linguoculture is a constantly evolving entity, and its de-velopment entails breaking established stereotypes and creating new ones. Linguistically, the victory of the new over the old is manifested in the “dying out” of the verbal support for pre-vious cognitive patterns, which leads to “reprogramming” (“recoding”) of linguoculture rep-resentatives’ mentality.


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