Examples of Translating on the Level of Words

Much more often we translate on the level of words, when each word in the English sentence his its equivalent in Ukrainian:

He came home.	Він прийшов додому.
My brother lives in Moscow.	Мій брат живе в Москві.
I looked at her.	Я подивився на неї.
Who told you this?	Хто вам це сказав?

Equivalents are found on the word level, as words here are the only units of translation, as it is impossible to set morpheme correlation (and more over – phoneme) in general (came – при-йшо-в, home – до-дом-у).

You should keep in mind, that when saying about translation unit, we keep in mind the units of the SL. Therefore we say about translation on level of words also in those cases, when the word in the SL corresponds not to one, but a few words (or the whole word-combination) in the TL:

Tributaries of Thames snake their way under central London.

Притоки Темзи, звиваючись, прокладають шлях під центром Лондона.

In order to adequately translate the verb “to snake” we should ascend to the level of word combinations, as one verb „прокладати“ is not enough to convey the broader meaning of the English verb, implying the currents of these rives are meandering.

... Jane and her mother were sort of snubbing her (J. Salinger “The Catcher in the Rye”).

... Джейн ті її мати дивляться на неї з погордою.

The English word snub complies with the word-combination „дивитися з погордою“; however, we consider this case as the translation on the word level, because the unit of the SL, for which the equivalent has been found, is a word. In such cases (which occur very often) one can say about poly-level correspondence,having in mind, that the translation unit in the SL is rendered in the TL by the unit, which belongs to another level (as a rule, higher, though reverse cases are also possible). In the cases, when translation unit in SL and its equivalent in TL are on the same level of the language hierarchy, one can say about mono-level correspondence (for example, morpheme in SL complies with the morpheme in TL, word – with word).

Translation on the word level is limited in the sphere of application, though. Usually in a sentence only a few words receive word equivalents, and others do not have them, and translation of the rest of a sentence is fulfilled on higher level: level of word-combinations. Only in a few cases the whole sentence is translated on the word level. As usual, these are very simple sentences with elementary structure. A rare example of word-for-word translation of the sentence with rather complicated structure is given in the book of Levitskaya, Fiterman:

The Soviet proposal is an endeavor to create an atmosphere which will lead to further negotiations between the former allies and between two German Governments (Newspaper).

Радянська пропозиція є намаганням створити таку атмосферу, яка приведе до подальших переговорів між колишніми союзниками та між обома германськими урядами.

However, even here in the Ukrainian sentence, in accordance with grammatical structure of the Ukrainian, there are no equivalents to English articles. The infinitival particle to and auxiliary verb will are rendered in Ukrainian not by words, but morphemes (forms of Infinitive and Future Tense).

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