General Science Words Absent in БАРС.

Considerable difficulties confronting the translators are caused by general science words which are used in scientific and technical literature but they are not met in common dictionaries. For example: configure, reconfigure, overpredict, under-predict, burgeoning, second-sourced, challenging, pioneering, demonstrated, documented, classically, conceptually, equivalently, intimately, normally, routinely, lookalike, iff, etc. Most of these neologisms are created by means of traditional word-building patterns of current English, including well-known roots, suffixes, prefixes. However, their translation into the target language has proved no easy task. The word “ specifically ” occurs in the beginning of sentence and functions as logical cohesion. It is translated into Russian with a wide range of equivalents. These are: «в частности», «например», «так», «характерно, что», «точнее (говоря)», «(более) конкретно», «в основном», «главным образом», «более того», «более определенно», «дело в том, что», «в связи с этим», «с целью». The most frequent one is the equivalent «в частности»:

Specifically, the summation in (12) can be rearranged as follows: …

В частности, суммирование в формуле (12) может быть перестроено следующим образом:…

The frequency of the verb “ to configure ” is steadily increasing in scientific and technical literature. There is no such verb in dictionaries. A translator is to exert considerable efforts to make his decision. The basic communicatively equal substitutes which interpret context meanings of this verb in scientific and technical literature are as follows: «строить», «построить», «перестроить», «настроить», «создавать (конфигурацию, структуру)», «иметь (придавать) структуру», «обеспечивать», «реализовывать», «укомплектовать», «компоновать», «представлять собой», «иметь», «состоять», «содержать», «включать», «подключать», «входить», «объединять», «формировать», «организовывать», «разрабатывать», «проектировать».

The most interesting from aforesaid neologisms is the word “ iff ”, which came into being not long ago. It is rather uncommon both semantically and structurally. This conjunction represents the reduction or condensed version of “ if and only if ” and is interpreted into Russian as follows: «тогда и только тогда, когда», «только (лишь) в том случае, если (когда)»:

…a state-space realization is minimal iff it is of size m+n

…реализация в пространстве минимальна тогда и только тогда, когда она имеет размерность n+m.

Misleading Words.

This is a very large and heterogeneous group, which includes international and pseudointernational words, paronyms, etc. International vocabulary presents the largest difficulty for translators of scientific and technical literature. International words are the words, which can be found in many languages, and, to some degree, have graphic, phonetic, grammatic and semantic similarity. They play an especially prominent part in various terminological systems and among words denoting abstract notions. International words constitute about 50 percent of all significant words in scientific literature.

The main meanings of such general science international words as, for example, candidate, scenario, battle, companion, history, dramatic, talent, avenue, etc., are almost never realized in general science usage. Moreover, in scientific and technical translation it is necessary to choose other equivalents many of which are absent in dictionaries. For example, the noun “ niche ” is usually interpreted as «использование», «применение», «область (сфера) использования (применения)». All of these are general science language equivalents of word “niche”. The adjective “ optimistic ” is often translated as «завышенный», not «оптимистический». For example, optimistic length – «завышенная длина». The international adverb “ routinely ” is getting new meanings. These are: «регулярно», «стандартно», «часто», «постоянно», «обычно», «обычным способом», «широко (применяться)», «повседневно», «программно», «без труда», «без особых усилий». The adverb is absent in БАРС. A translator tends to interpret it incorrectly using a basic word form: «рутинно», «рутинным способом». Such wrong equivalents should be avoided.

Wrong interpretation of English international words into Russian leads either to distortion of source meaning or to violation of stylistic standards of Russian. In the following example the meaning of an English phrase was not expressed. The phrase “ marginally larger ” was translated as «маргинально больше» (instead of «немного больше»). It is incomprehensible for a Russian specialist. The noun “ balance ” and adjective “balanced” in general science language usage are interpreted not as «баланс» and «сбалансированный», but as equivalents «соотношение», «сочетание», «симметричный», «центрированный», that are not their international analogues.

In scientific and technical literature many English general science international words begin to be completed in new ways and enriched with new meanings. They are never translated by their false Russian equivalents.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-10