Lexical and grammatical peculiarities of scientific-technical texts

A specific instance is consecutive interpretation where the interpreter is often set a time limit within which he is expected to report his translation no matter how long the original speech may have been. This implies selection, generalizations, and cutting through repetitions, incidental digressions, occasional slips or excessive embellishments.

It is obvious that in all similar cases the differences which can be revealed between the original text and its translation should not be ascribed to the translator's inefficiency or detract from the quality of his work. The pragmatic value of such translations clearly compensates for their lack of equivalence. Evidently there are different types of translation serving different purposes.

Linguistics and typology of texts.

By means of analysis the translator is to identify what type of texts needs to be translated. The same as during the asessment of translation it is rrequired to have a clear picture of the text type to avoid incorrect charateristics of text asessment. Typology of the texts that complies with translation process and spread for all types of texts is the reason of correct asessment of translation. There is a number of tries to develop such a typology of texts that will allow to make sonclusions regarding the principles of translation or regarding the choice of special methods of translation. This fact reveals the understanding that the methods of translation are not only identifird by readers group and specification of translation.

One of the visible achievements of modern linguistics is the impetuous development of its new branch - the linguistics of the text - within last decades. This new linguistic discipline, the object of which is the coherent text - the completed sequence of the statements, united with each other by semantic connections, has put before itself a task to state the essence of these connections and ways of their realization, to find out the system of grammatical categories of the text with its substantial and formal units, to describe the essence and organization of conditions of the human communication using the material of the text.

From this brief list of the purposes and tasks of the new trends its affinity to the theory of translation becomes clear. [12; 87]

The connection between linguistics of the text standing on the early stage of its development, and the theory of translation, first noticed Yuriy Nida. On his opinion, the theory of translation should take into account some common attributes of the texts, which he has named " the universals of discourse ". To them belong:

1). Various ways of marking of the beginning and the end of the text;

2). Ways of marking of transitions between internal divisions of the coherent text;

3). Temporary connection;

4). Spatial connections;

5). Logic relations (for example, the reason and the consequence);

6). Identification of discourse' participants;

7). Various means of apportionment of this or that elements for focusing on them the attention or for the emphasis;

8). Author involvement, that is, his position and his point of view. [15; 105]

The markers of the beginning and the end of the text include the standard formulas such as " once upon a time " (жили были) and " they lived happily ever after " (и стали они жить поживать, добра наживать).

The markers of internal transitions are the traditional ways of introduction of new divisions of the text such as “on the other hand, however... ” (однако, с другой стороны), “ then all of a sudden..." (и вдруг), “in contrast with all this” (в отличие от всего этого) еtc.

To the markers of the temporary relations belong prepositions of time, the temporary phrases such as “ the next morning ” (на следующее утро), “all that day ” (весь день), relative times such as Future Perfect and Past Perfect, sequence of tenses, e. g. “he said he came”, a sequence of events reflected by the order of words.

Among markers of the spatial relations there are spatial prepositions such as “long way off" (далеко-далеко), “ ten miles long” (длиной в десять миль), “it's a day's trip” (езды туда целый день).

Logic relations are marked with the help of modifying sentence adverbs, such as “moreover" (более), “ therefore" (поэтому), “ nevertheless” (тем не менее); conjunctions introducing subordinate clauses “if", “although", “because"; verbal forms (adverbial, gerundial), depending on the verb expressing the main event; lexical units, expressing the logic relation, such as “ he concluded" (он пришел к выводу), “he argued” (он возразил).

The markers of the consecutive indication on the same reviewer include personal pronouns (he, she, they), demonstrative pronouns (this, that) and synonyms (dog, animal, pet, puppy).

Participants and events can be put in front (to the “ linguistic proscenium”) or they can be removed on a background. We use the complex syntactic structure for this purpose, the hierarchy, with the help of which we mark a place of the participants and events in a described situation.

Participation of the author can be of two types - autobiographical (real or fictitious), the marker of which is the first person pronoun, and estimating, the marker of which are the estimating lexical units: “this was an ugly scene" (это была безобразная сцена).

Characterizing pointed features as “universals of discourse”, Yuriy Nida, at the same time, points out that in the different languages various means are used for their expression. [16; 79]

Thus, for translation it is obviously important, how “universals of discourse" are realized in contacting with each other languages during translation and the results of it for the structuring of the final text. Barhudarov N. S. gives the following example: “You goin' to court this morning? asked Jim. We had strolled over” (Мы подошли к ее забору - “Вы в суд пойдете? ” - спросил Джим). As the marker of temporary relation in English text the relative tense Past Perfect is used, but in Russian the order of sentences appropriates to the real order of events “Then I saw old Pancho come around the corner of the wagon" (Hemingway) (И тут вдруг старина Панчо стал огибать фургон. .) In this example the marker of internal transition then is represented by contextual equivalent и тут вдруг, appropriating to the stylistic norms of the given genre (the narration is in a colloquial manner given by the story-teller). “When he arrives in Paris next week our Foreign Secretary will have to spell out our position” (Когда министр иностранных дел посетит на следующей неделе Париж, он должен будет четко изложить нашу позицию).

The order of two correfent units is changing here during the translation - of a name and personal pronoun, because in Russian language the first pointing with the help of pronoun (such as “Когда он посетит Париж, наш министр иностранных дел..." in the given genre (the newspaper text) is unacceptable.

One of the problems of linguistics of the text traditionally connected with the theory of translation is the actual partitioning or the functional prospect of the sentence. Fruitful for the theory of translation is, in particular, ascending to F. Danesh idea of a thematic progression, according to which the theme cement the text, while rheme serves for transference of new information.

Yu. V. Vannicov has developed the scheme focused on the translation of the typology of texts. This scheme is based on 14 main typological attributes generalizing the properties of text from the point of view of practice of translation [4; 27]:

1). Linguistic organization;

2). Functional style;

3). Functional substyle;

4). Speech modus;

5). Dominant logic contents;

6). Subject (thematic) contents;

7). Form of speech presentation;

8). Genre differentiation;

9). Information primacy - non primacy;

10). Expressive - stylistic mentioning;

11). Basic pragmatic functions;

12). Concrete purposes;

13). Types of adequacy of the text;

14). Types of adequacy of translation.

To the linguistic organization belong oppositions of the texts with rigid structure (scientifically technical) and with soft structure (art). This attribute also takes into account the degree of copula of the text. The functional styles are pointed depending on sphere of communication (scientifically technical, social - business etc) [4; 28].

Typology created by Yu. V. Vannicov can be seemed a little bulky. But its dividing into parts makes it more adequate to the given task - the reflection of real variety of the texts.

The essential advantage of this typology is that it takes into account the presence of mixed and transitive cases as well. So, for example, Yu. V. Vannicov especially points out such functionally non-uniform texts as informing - ordering.

So, as a conclusion to chapter one of this work, it can be said that in the result of the factors mentioned above, different peculiarities might be revealed during translation. They are related to common features and differences between similar functional styles of languages as well as to specific conditions and tasks of translation activity of this type. In the outline of each functional style there are some certain peculiarities and their impact on the procedure and the way of translation are significant. Therefore, in this research work the peculiarities of scientific-technical materials based on electric devices manuals are studied. In the next chapter lexical and grammatical peculiarities have been reviewed.

2. Lexical and grammatical peculiarities of scientific-technical texts

In any scientific and technical text, irrespective of its contents and character, can be completely precisely translated from one language to other, even if in an artwork such branch of knowledge is required, for which in language of translation there is no appropriate nomenclature. In such cases the interpreter more often resorts to interpretation, but becoming of a necessary nomenclature of a realization in a sphere of production or those scientific circles, which are engaged in data by problems.

To ensure valuable translation, it is necessary to an interpreter to present the following requests:

1. The substantial acquaintance to a subject, which is treated in the original text.

2. Good enough knowledge of language of an artwork and its lexical and grammatical features in comparison to the native language.

3. Knowledge of the bases' theory of translation, and also receptions of technical translation and skill to use them.

4. Legible introducing about the character of scientific and technical functional style both in language of the original, and in the native language.

5. Acquaintance to accepted conventional signs, abbreviations (cuttings), systems of measures and weights, both in language of the original and in the native language.

Good possession of the native language and the right use of a nomenclature.

2.1 The characteristic of the scientific and technical language

Having studied the material of scientific-technical texts some of the characteriscts can be determined:

1. The absence of emotional colouring.

This feature basically also causes absolute convertibility of the scientific and technical texts, as the reader should not have stranger associations, he should not read between lines, be admired by the game of words and calamburs. The writer's purpose of the text is to describe either or other phenomenon or operation, this or that subject or process.

It is necessary to mark, that the English language differs by figurativeness, which cannot be transferred to Russian translation.

E. g. “The mother company bore a daughter in the Far East, granted her a dowry of 2.000.000 pounds and christened her…”

If to translate literally, it will sound so:

"Компания мать родила на Дальнем Востоке дочь, дала ей приданное в 2 млн. фунтов стерлингов и окрестила ее…"

After processing is obtained:

"Эта компания организовала на Дальнем Востоке дочернюю компанию и выделила ей капитал в 2 млн. фунтов стерлингов; новая компания стала именоваться…"

2.rushing to clearness and shortness.

The rushing to clearness discovers expression in application of legible grammar constructions and lexical units, and also in the wide use of a nomenclature. As a rule, the placed terms will be utilized conventional,, though meet and terminoids (terms, having circulation in a narrow orb), which considerably hamper translation. The rushing to a multiplicity expresses in wide application of infinitive, gerundial and subordinate clauses, abbreviations (cuttings) and conventional signs.

3. The special semantic load of some words of ordinary colloquial speech.

The rethinking of words of ordinary speech is one of productive methods of the new terms' construction.

E. g. to put out - in ordinary speech "гасить огонь", but for sailors - "выходить в море"

Stroke - in ordinary speech "удар", but for mechanic - "ход поршня"

Hoe - "мотыга", but for builders - "обратная лопата"

This property of words is an especially dangerous source of difficulties and errors for an initial translator.

4. Rate, distinct from literary language, of the words' use of the basic dictionary fund. The lexicon of the scientific and technical literature is much poorer than lexicon of art products. Therefore rate of separate elements of common lexicon of the scientific and technical literature is higher than rate of elements of lexicon of art products, thus the literary - book words and expressions, foreign drawings, scarcity of portable and contextual meanings treat to characteristic features of scientific and technical style.

5. Distinction from the literary language rate of the use and relative importance of some grammar shapes and constructions.

In the engineering literature Passive Voice is used in 16 times more often, than in art. The definition in the engineering literature is used in 3 times more often, than in art.

6. Scarcity of the idioms' use.

The idiomatic word collocations are original irresolvable expressions having particular sense, frequently independent from elements, included in them. The idioms always have some emotional colouring and consequently are not entered in the scientific and technical texts.

7. Application of abbreviations (cuttings) and conventional signs.

About some features of language of the scientific and technical literature and technique of tutoring translation.

Concept " the scientific and technical literature " combines, as is known different kinds of literature; the monographs, different textbooks, journal papers, descriptions, quick references. These aspects of the scientific and technical literature differ on language. In scientific and technical operations the material is stated briefly, exact and logically and at the same time completely enough and demonstrative. For all aspects of the scientific and technical literature is present much common, as enables to speak about common lexical and grammar features of the scientific and technical literature [17; 49].

The lexicon of the scientific and technical literature consists of common words and great many of the special terms.

One part of common words such as to work, to know, place, new is known for the pupil from school or other original course of the English language.

Other part of common words is unknown by the pupil and represents that basic lexical reserve, which they should acquire in learning process. This part of common words can conditionally be subdivided on some groups:

Words used in the scientific and technical literature in meanings, distinct from what pupils have acquired in original course. For example verb to offer in the scientific text more often is used in value "оказывать", instead of "предлагать".

To same group it is necessary to refer and some auxiliary words such as for, as, since, after. A feature of these words is that they can execute functions of different parts of speech. For example word for can be a preposition and conjunction, and is translated as "для", "в течение", and as a conjunction "так как".

Words, which on the first stage of tutoring usually are not studied.

E. g. to regard - рассматривать, считать.

to design - конструировать.

Here it is necessary to refer a great many of auxiliary words, not studied before, "on account of" - из-за, “due to “ - благодаря.

Words and word-combinations providing logical connections between separate parts of the text and providing the logic of an account.

E. g. to begin with - прежде всего

Furthermore - кроме того

Summing up - говоря вкратце

Word and word combinations serving for relational expression of the writer to the stated facts or for clarification of these facts.

E. g. needless to say - не вызывает сомнения

strictly speaking - строго говоря

The meanings of such words should be learnt.

Phraseological word combinations.

The feature of phraseological word combinations used in the scientific and technical literature is that they more or less neutral on colouring.

E. g. to be in a position - быть в состоянии

to be under way - осуществляться

to bring into action - начинать действавать

Phraseological word combinations play the important role in the offer and they are necessary for knowing.

The second stratum of the scientific and technical literature are the terms.

E. g. guidance - наведение

combustion chamber - камера сгорания

force of gravity - сила тяжести

If the expert well knows Russian nomenclature, having met in the text the unfamiliar term, he can guess without the dictionary by what appropriate Russian term is necessary to translate.

The greatest difficulty for understanding and translation is represented by the terms consisting not of one word, but from group of words. Disclosure of their meanings requires (demands) particular sequence of operations and knowledge of a method of translation of separate components. It is possible to recommend to start translation from the last word. Then under the order on the right to the left to translate words, facing to it, taking into account the semantic relations between the components.

E. g. If we translate the term "liquid-propellant power plant" - first of all it should be translated "power plant" - силовая установка, and then “propellant" - топливо, and the last word is “liquid" - жидкий. And we can easily translate the whole word combination:

"Силовая установка на жидком топливе"

It is necessary to take into account that many terms are polysemantic.

E. g. stage - in radiotechnics has several meanings:

Каскад;

2. Фаза, стадия

And in the rocket engineering - ступень ракеты.

Thus summing up, it is necessary to underscore, that the mastering of a strictly select and rather restricted amount of words enables the specialist to read the scientific and technical literature, not reverting to common English-Russian language and using only by special dictionaries. Some more examples are submitted in the Appendix 1.

2.2 Analysis of terminology in scientific-technical style

The purpose of science as a branch of human activity is to disclose by research the inner substance of things and phenomena of objective reality and find out the laws regulating them, thus enabling man to predict, control and direct their future development in order to improve the material and social life of mankind. The style of scientific prose is therefore mainly characterized by an arrangement of language means which will bring proofs to clinch a theory. The main function of scientific prose is proof. The selection of language means must therefore meet this principle requirement.

The genre of scientific works is mostly characteristic of the written form of language (scientific articles, monographs or textbooks), but it may also be found in its oral form (in scientific reports, lectures, discussions at conferences, etc); in the latter case this style has some features of colloquial speech.

The language of science is governed by the aim of the functional style of scientific prose, which is to prove a hypothesis, to create new concepts, to disclose the internal laws of existence, development, relations between different phenomena, etc. The language means used, therefore, tend to be objective, precise, unemotional, and devoid of any individuality; there is a striving for the most generalized form of expression.

The first and most noticeable feature of this style is the logical sequence of utterances with clear indication of their interrelations and interdependence, that is why in no other functional style there is such a developed and varied system of connectives as in scientific prose. The most frequently words used in scientific text are functional words; conjunctions and prepositions.

The first 100 most frequent words of this style comprises the following units:

a) prepositions: of, to, in, for, with, on, at, by, from, out, about, down;

b) prepositional phrases: in terms of; in view of, in spite of, in common with, on behalf of, as a result of; by means of, on the ground of, in case of;

c) conjunctional phrases: in order that, in case that, in spite of the fact that, on the ground that, for fear that;

d) pronouns: one, it, we, they;

e) notional words: people, time, two, like, man, made, years.

As scientific text is restricted to formal situations and, consequently, to formal style, it employs a special vocabulary which consists of two main groups: words associated with professional communication and a less exclusive group of so-called learned words. Here one can find numerous words that are used in scientific text and can be identified by their dry, matter-of-fact flavour, for example, comprise, compile, experimental, heterogeneous, homogeneous, conclusive, divergent, etc. Another group of learned word comprises mostly polysyllabic words drawn from the Romance languages and, though fully adapted to the English phonetic system, some of them continue to sound singularly foreign. Their very sound seems to create complex associations: deleterious, emollient, incommodious, meditation, illusionary.

A particularly important aspect of scientific and technological language is the subject-neutral vocabulary which cuts across different specialized domains. In particular, a great deal of scientific work involves giving instructions to act in a certain way, or reporting on the consequences of having so acted.

Several lexical categories can be identified within the language of scientific instruction and narrative:

Verbs of exposition: ascertain, assume, compare, construct, describe, determine, estimate, examine, explain, label, plot, record, test, verify.

Verbs of warning and advising: avoid, check, ensure, notice, prevent, remember, take care; also several negative items: not drop, not spill.

Verbs of manipulation: adjust, align, assemble, begin, boil, clamp, connect, cover, decrease, dilute, extract, fill, immerse, mix, prepare, release, rotate, switch on, take, weigh.

Adjectival modifiers and their related adverbs: careful (y), clockwise, continuous (ly), final (ly), gradual (ly), moderate (ly), periodic (ally), secure (ly), subsequent (ly), vertical (ly) (see Appendix 1).

The general vocabulary employed in scientific text bears its direct referential meaning, that is, words used in scientific text will always tend to be used in their primary logical meaning. Hardly a single word will be found here which is used in more than one meaning. Nor will there be any words with contextual meaning. Even the possibility of ambiguity is avoided.

Likewise neutral and common literary words used in scientific text will be explained, even if their meaning is slightly modified, either in the context or in a foot-note by a parenthesis, or an attributive phrase.

A second and no less important feature and, probably, the most conspicuous, is the use of terms specific to each given branch of science. Due to the rapid dissemination of scientific and technical ideas, particularly in the exact sciences, some scientific and technical terms begin to circulate outside the narrow field they belong to and eventually begin to develop new meanings. But the overwhelming majority of terms do not undergo this process of de-terminization and remain the property of scientific text. There they are born, develop new terminological meanings and there they die. No other field of human activity is so prolific in coining new words as science is. The necessity to penetrate deeper into the essence of things and phenomena gives rise to new concepts, which require new words to name them. A term will make more direct reference to something than a descriptive explanation, non-term. Furthermore, terms are coined so as to be self-explanatory to the greatest possible degree.

Conclusion

The translation is the multifaceted phenomenon and some aspects of it can be the subjects of the research of different sciences. In the frames of the science of translation psychological, literature critical, ethnographical and other points of translation as well as the history of translation in one or other country are being studied. According to the subject of research we use the knowledge of the psychology of translation, the theory of art and literary translation, ethnographical science of translation, historical science of translation and so on. The main place in the modern translation belongs to linguistic translation, which studies the translation as linguistic phenomenon. The different kinds of translation complement each other and strive to detailed description of the activity of the translation.

The theory of translation puts forward the following tasks:

1. To open and describe the common linguistic basis of translation, that is to show which peculiarities of linguistic systems and regularities of the language operation are the basis of the translating process, make this process possible and determine its character and borders;

2. To determine the translation as the subject of the linguistic research, to show its difference from the other kinds of linguistic mediation;

3. To work out the basis of classification of kinds of the translating activity;

4. To open the essence of the translating equivalence as the basis of the communicative identity of the original texts and the translation;

5. To work out the common principles and the peculiarities of construction of the peculiar and special translation theories for the different combinations of languages;

6. To work out the common principles of the scientific description of the translation process as actions of a translator of transforming the original text to the translating text;

7. To open the influence on the translating process of pragmatic and social linguistic factors;

8. To determine the idea “the translating norm” and to work out the principles.

In the result of this research it can be concluded that the main stylistic feature of scientific-technical texts is exact and clear interpertation of the material without any expressive elements that make the speech more emotionally saturated. There are almost no metaphors, metonomy transpositions and other stylistic features in sciectific-technical literature while they are widely used in literary works.

Although scientific texts is far from live coloquim language, it contains a number of neuteral phraseological units of technical specific. Main requirements for scientific-technical translation to comply with are precision (all items in ST shall be reflected in translation), conciseness (all items of ST shall be translated laconically), clearness (conciseness and laconism of TL shall not mess the lexics, its understanding), literarity (the text of the translation shall comply with common norms of literary language without use of sintactical structures of source language).

During the research it also can be revealed that common features of scientific-technical texts are:

1) saturation with specific terms and terminology units;

2) presence of grammatical and lexical structures;

3) difference in use of analogue stylistic features in SL and TL;

4) different use frequency of certain speech parts.

All terms are united into terminology systems that express notions of technics and science. The difficulties that appear during the translation of the terms are connected to imperfection of existing terminology systems. The most important among them are the phenomena of terminology sinonyms, omonyms and polisemantic units. All of this leads to the approach of context translation that is:

identifying of the word meaning due to its context;

selection of the proper context equivalent term;

creation of adequate text by means of selected context equivalent term.

The translation of scientific-technical texts shall give an exact meaning of the source text. Some deviations can be made due to the peculiarities of target language or stylistic issue. It is very important to prevent the loss of meaningful information contained in the source text.

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