LITMIR.BIZ

      "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 the 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 the stylistic colouring of the text. Since the text in TL must be as expressive as it is in SL and characterized by the same stylistic colouring, 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 nature.

      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 in English they 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)

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