Polysemy in translation

Another issue to be considered when dealing with translation is polysemy. One and the same word may have more than one meaning, A word that has more than one meaning is called polysemantic. Polysemy is inherent in the very nature of words and notions, as they always contain a generalization of several traits of the object. Some of these traits are common with other objects. Hence the possibility of identical names for objects possessing common features. Thus polysemy is characteristic of many words in many languages. But it is more characteristic of English as compared to Ukrainian.

Consider some of the variants of a very frequent and consequently polysemantic word run used in both direct and figurative meanings: бігти, рухатися. простягатися, линяти (про фарбу), керувати, управляти, функціонувати, курсувати тощо.

Another example where the familiarity with American cultural context facilitates the appropriate word choice or meaning:

We have information on how to vote and how to obtain ballots for federal and state elections (Consular Services for American Citizens).

The word state is polysemantic: 1. a condition in which a person or a thing is; 2. the government or political organization of a country; 3. any of the smaller partly self-governing areas make up certain nations: the fifty states of the US. Thus the word state can be translated into Ukrainian as стан (матерії), фізичний або емоційний стан; держава; та штат. An adequate Ukrainian translation is: Ми володіємо інформацією стосовно голосування та отримання бюлетенів для участі у федеральних виборах та виборах до штату.

A Ukrainian word знімати is polysemantic:

-знімати гроші в банкоматі – to withdraw money from an ATM

-знімати одяг – to take off one’s clothes

-знімати вершки- to skim milk

Відкривати:

Двері (to open); ключем (to unlock) таємниці; секрети (to reveal); Америку (to discover); пам’ятник (to unveil)

Polysemy and semantic structures exist only in language, not in speech. The sum total of many contexts in which the word may occur permits us to observe and record cases of identical meaning and cases that differ in meaning. They are registered and classified by lexicographers and found in dictionaries. It is important to distinguish between the lexical meaning of a word and its semantic structure in language. The meaning in speech is contextual.

Polysemy does not interfere with the communicative function of the language because in every particular case the situation and the context, i.e. environment of the word, cancel all the unnecessary meanings and make speech unambiguous.

Case study

Translation is an integral algorithm of equivalence, idiomaticity and culture which is maintained by the sound balance of the deep and surface structure. When ignored, it can lead to misunderstanding and failure of communication. In a dubbed Ukrainian version of the American movie Sex and the City one of the main characters, whose name was Miranda, asked her friend who had been interrogated at the police station whether they had read Miranda rights to her. Word-for-word Ukrainian translation (слова Міранди) distorted the sense and resulted in miscommunication. The idiomatic American expression to inform/read/tell Miranda rights is a technical legal term and is to be translated in to Ukrainian as зачитати затриманому його права. The interpreter was not aware of the cultural implication of this expression. Culture note will make up for this gap: In the US the legal rights that a person being arrested by the police must be told about. These include the right to remain silent and the right to get advice from a lawyer. These rights were established by the Miranda decision in the US Supreme Court in 1966, in the case of Miranda vs Arizona.

This is to prove that the course in Translation and Interpreting is regarded as a Meeting between Languages and Cultures.

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