THE LEVELS OF EQUIVALENCE IN TRANSLATION OF MARGARET MITCHELL NOVEL “GONE WITH THE WIND”

Бутырская Т.М., Серебрякова Н.П.
Карагандинский Государственный университет им. Е.А. Букетова, Казахстан
THE LEVELS OF EQUIVALENCE IN TRANSLATION OF MARGARET MITCHELL NOVEL “GONE WITH THE WIND”
In our modern world with its boundless opportunities, blurred boarders, close relations between the representatives of different countries, continents and nations the translation takes a special place. Thanks to the translation people can understand each other, communicate, share their opinions and information even if they speak different languages. From this point of view the translation is the missing link, which helps the system work, and connects so different at first sight people. Generally, it may seems that it is not so difficult to make a proper and adequate translation, that it is enough just to know two languages. In fact, the translation is not just a word-for-word transfer of an original text into a target language. The translation is a complex process, which includes the perfect knowledge of not only the language, but of the culture, the peculiarities and mentality of people of the country where the language-speakers live. It is necessary to choose that certain word from the whole vocabulary of the language which would become native in the target text. Actually, for the reader or the listener it is only the result that matters, i.e. adequate perception of the translated text, preservation of the same meaning and the same means by which the author of the original text presents his ideas are of great importance. Thus the translation should not only be close to the meaning of the original text but make the same impression and draw the same picture as the original text. This phenomenon determines the existence of such term as equivalence in the translation theory. We may say about the quality and adequacy of translation measuring the semantic similarity between the translated text and the original one.
Equivalence may be considered one of the translation peculiarities, and some scholars even consider it worth mentioning in the definition of the translation itself. For example, American linguist E. Nida states that “translation is a substitute of an original with the closest natural equivalent in the language of translation” [1,36], at the same time English scholar J. C. Catford determines “translation as a substitute of a text in one language with an equivalent text in another language” [2,33] .
So, what is the equivalence? In broad sense the equivalence is an equality of meaning. In the context of the translation theory the equivalence is the preservation of relative similarity of cognitive, semantic, stylistic and communicative information contained in the original text [3,117].
According to the relative translatability principle it should be noted that the complete identity of the translated text to the original is impossible but this fact does not influence the effectiveness of intercultural communication. The losses connected with the difficulties of transforming the peculiarities of poetry, cultural or historic realms, specific realms and other peculiarities of literary style are inevitable, but that is important to realize that different semantic units may not match together while translating even the simplest statements. Nowadays the theory of the levels of equivalence by V.N. Komissarov can be considered as the leading one [4,74]. According to this theory the relations of equivalence are established between relevant levels of the original and translated texts during the translating process. Different units of the original and target texts may be equivalent to each other at all levels or only at one of them. The final aim of the translation according to V.N. Komissarov is to establish the maximum degree of equivalence at every existing level [5,132].
In 1990 in his book “The theory of translation (linguistic aspects)” V.N. Komissarov had represented the theory of the levels of equivalence according to which there are five substantial levels with the full equivalence of elements at all five levels or only at few of them, but the equivalence of translation is in the maximum identity of all the levels of the original and target texts. V.N. Komissarov distinguishes the following five levels: the level of the purport of communication; the level of identification of situation; the level of methods of situation description; the level of invariant meaning of syntactic structures; the level of words semantics [2,96].
The equivalence of translation of the first type is in the preservation of only those parts of the original text, which indicate the common speech function in whole act of communication and represents the purport of communication. Moreover after the reading of the text the response or the reactive action is necessary.
We use such kind of translations when more detailed translation of content is impossible that may lead to the misunderstanding of the purport of communication. In the novel of Margaret Mitchell “Gone With the Wind” Mammy says to Scarlett such phrase “ After dinner comes the reckoning ” [6,168] that can be translated into Russian as « После обеда приходится платить ». But by this words Mammy does not mean that Scarlett will have to pay somebody for the dinner in her own house. That is why it would be better to translate this sentence by finding the relevant Russian proverb « Любишь кататься , люби и саночки возить ». From the second sentence it is obvious that we deal with some advice. That the dinner itself does not make any sense and that the statement should be understood wider as that any action leads to the next action connected with the previous one and caused by it.
To the second type of equivalence it is peculiar that common parts of the original content and the translated text not only have the same purport of communication but also describes one and the same extralinguistic situation. Communicative function of the text may not be represented in other ways but through situation-oriented message. As the result there is the probability and necessity to match situations described in different ways.
We may speak about the equivalence at the level of methods of situation description when in translation the two preceding informative complexes are retained as well as the method of describing the situation. In other words, it contains the same general notions as the original. This means that the translation is a semantic paraphrase of the original, preserving its basic semes and allowing their free reshuffle in the sentence. Let us analyze this type of equivalence on the following examples: «Rhett had the town's tenderest sympathy and he neither knew nor cared. Scarlett had the town's dislike and, for once, she would have welcomed the sympathy of old friends» [6,429], translated in Russian as « Всеобщее искреннее сочувствие было на стороне Ретта , но он не догадывался об этом и не ценил этого . Но никто не жалел и не понимал Скарлетт, хотя это был так нужно ей сейчас». Although the meaning of both sentences remained the same and they both shows the attitude of citizens to Rhett and Scarlett, we may not say that Russian and English versions of the sentence are completely equal. The syntactic structure of two English sentences is parallel, but this is not preserved in Russian variant, but it does not make the Russian sentence inadequate.
To the equivalence on the level of the invariant meaning of syntactic structures together with three preserved components of content the usage of the same syntactic structures of the original text in translation are peculiar. The structure of the original text bears some certain information contained in the whole content of the translated text. The maximum possible preservation of syntactic structures of original text within the target text makes the reproduction of original content more proper. If we translate the following fragment “It can't be true, she thought vehemently, trying to push back the fear. Doctors make mistakes. I won't think it's true. I can't let myself think it's true. I'll scream if I do. I must think of something else” [6,398] as “это не может быть правдой!- повторяла она страстно, пытаясь не заплакать. Доктора часто ошибаются. Я не хочу думать, что все это правда. Я не могу позволить себе думать, что это правда, иначе я закричу. Я подумаю об этом завтра ” it will be an adequate translation. Despite the absence of the complete identity of the translated text to the original one we may still find the preserved parallelism of syntactic constructions, minor changes in vocabulary and almost similar way of describing the situation, all these allow us to say about the equivalence at the level of invariant meaning of syntactic structures.
Last but not least, the equivalence at the level of words semantics appears. It can be discovered when we analyze their relations with the respective originals. Here we find the maximum possible semantic similarity between texts in different languages. These translations try to retain the meaning of all the words used in the original text. Here we have four components preserved in previous type and one more component: the maximum possible identity of separate semes constituting the meaning of correlated words in the original and the translation. The degree of this identity is determined by the possibility to reproduce some components of original words’ meaning in translation. This in return depends on the way how this or that component of the word is represented in words of target language. The last type of the equivalence implies most close identity of original to the translation through the usage of the similar syntactic constructions, noncontroversial vocabulary and preservation of the form and content of the original as in the translation of the fragment from the novel. For instance, “At these words, the sob came freely to Scarlett's throat and she clapped her hand over her mouth. Now, she was going to bawl like a child and cry out: "I've been a devil!”.[6, 361] The translation in Russian is:” При этих словах рыдания подступили к горлу Скарлетт и она зажала рот рукой . Сейчас она заплачет как ребёнок и закричит: «Я была настоящим дьяволом!”». As we can see from the example all the units are word-for-word translated, we may even say that this is metaphrastic translation, because the main semantic meaning of the words is used, the sequence and word order of words and constructions is preserved. There are no such often used transformations as generalization, omission or specification. But in spite of all these the sentence sounds in Russian as harmonic and beautiful as in English. It provokes the same feelings and emotions as the original sentence.
Consequently, considering that the specificity of the translation is quite different from all other kinds of language activity. Of course, complete identity of the translation to the source text is impossible, but, nevertheless, according to the theory of communication, interlingual communication is established. Translation itself does not suppose the creation of identical text and the absence of such identity does not serve as proof to the impossibility of translation. The losses of some elements of the translated text do not mean that this text is untranslatable. Inability to translate any peculiarity of the original text is only singular example of the common principle of nonidentical character of the content of two texts in different languages. The absence of identity does not prevent the translation from having the same communicative functions as the original text has. The equivalence helps us to determine the degree of similarity of the translation and the original. There are a lot of phenomena which influence the translation: different conditions, various themes of a translated text, genre and style, sociocultural context. But, eventually, the equivalence is the only standard which allows us to determine the quality and accuracy of the translation.
Reference:
1. Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies / edited by Mona Baker. London and New York , 1998. -655p.
2. Komissarov V., Vvedenie v sovremennoe perevodovedenie – Moscow : “Prosveshenie”, -1989. -280p.
3. Hatim, B., Munday, J. Translation. An Advanced Resource Book. New York , 2004.
4. Munday, Jeremy, Introducing Translation Studies. Theories and Applications , New York / London , Routledge, 2008.- 256 p.
5. Виноградов В.С. Введение в переводоведение (общие и лексические вопросы). — М.: Издательство института общего среднего образования РАО, 2001, — 224 с.
6. Margaret Mitchel. Gone With the Wind. New York : Scribner, 2009.- 1037 p.