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Baker Equivalence at Word Level - Types of Meaning Class File

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Sophia Kryzhyk
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48 views5 pages

Baker Equivalence at Word Level - Types of Meaning Class File

Uploaded by

Sophia Kryzhyk
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1

MONA BAKER „IN OTHER WORDS”

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL


Translation problems arising from lack of equivalence at word level

What does a translator do when there is no word in the target language


which expresses the same meaning as the source language word?
Before we look at specific types of non-equivalence and the various
strategies which can be used for dealing with them, it is important to establish
what a word is, whether or not it is the main unit of meaning in language, what
kinds of meaning it can convey, and how languages differ in the way they
choose to express certain meanings but not others.

THE WORD IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES


What is a word?
As translators, we are primarily concerned with communicating the
overall meaning of a stretch of language. To achieve this, we need to start by
decoding the units and structures which carry that meaning.
The smallest unit which we would expect to possess individual meaning is
the word. Defined loosely, the word is ‘the smallest unit of language that can
be used by itself’. For our present purposes, we can define the written word
with more precision as any sequence of letters with an orthographic space on
either side.
Many of us think of the word as the basic meaningful
element in a language. This is not strictly accurate. Meaning
can be carried by units smaller than the word.
More often, however, it is carried by units much more
complex than the single word and by various structures
and linguistic devices.
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Is there a one-to-one relationship between word and meaning?


rebuild - there are two distinct elements of meaning in it: re and build, i.e.
‘to build again’
disbelieve - ‘not to believe’

Elements of meaning which are represented by several orthographic


words in one language, say English, may be represented by one orthographic
word in another, and vice versa:
tennis player - tenisçi in Turkish
if it is cheap - yasukattara in Japanese
the verb type - pasar a maquina in Spanish

This suggests that there is no one-to-one correspondence between


orthographic words and elements of meaning within or across languages.

LEXICAL MEANING
The lexical meaning of a word or lexical unit may be thought of as the
specific value it has in a particular linguistic system and the ‘personality’ it
acquires through usage within that system. It is rarely possible to analyse a
word, pattern, or structure into distinct components of meaning; the way in
which language works is much too complex to allow that. Nevertheless, it is
sometimes useful to play down the complexities of language temporarily in
order both to appreciate them and to be able to handle them better in the long
run.

FOUR MAIN TYPES OF MEANING IN WORDS AND UTTERANCES


(utterances being stretches of written or spoken text):
 propositional meaning
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 expressive meaning
 presupposed meaning
 evoked meaning

PROPOSITIONAL VS EXPRESSIVE MEANING


The propositional meaning of a word or an utterance arises from the
relation between it and what it refers to or describes in a real or imaginary
world, as conceived by the speakers of the particular language to which the word
or utterance belongs. It is this type of meaning which provides the basis on
which we can judge an utterance as true or false.
shirt - a piece of clothing worn on the upper part of the body
For instance, the propositional meaning of shirt is ‘a piece of clothing
worn on the upper part of the body’. It would be inaccurate to use shirt, under
normal circumstances, to refer to a piece of clothing worn on the foot, such as
socks.

Inaccuracy of translation
When a translation is described as ‘inaccurate’, it is often
the propositional meaning that is being called into question.
Expressive meaning cannot be judged as true or false.
It relates to the speaker’s feelings or attitude rather than to what words
and utterances refer to.
Don’t complain - Don’t whinge
The difference between Don’t complain and Don’t whinge does not lie in
their propositional meanings but in the expressiveness of whinge, which
suggests that the speaker finds the action annoying. Two or more words or
utterances can therefore have the same propositional meaning but differ in their
expressive meanings.
******
4

famous in English - fameux in French → both items mean ‘well-known’


famous - neutral in English, it has no inherent evaluative meaning or
connotation
fameux - is potentially evaluative and can be readily used in some contexts
in a derogatory way (for example, une femme fameuse means, roughly, ‘a
woman of ill repute’).
 the meaning of a word or lexical unit can be both propositional and
expressive e.g. whinge,
 propositional only, e.g. book
 expressive only, e.g. bloody

PRESUPPOSED MEANING
Presupposed meaning arises from co-occurrence restrictions, i.e.
restrictions on what other words or expressions we expect to see before or after a
particular lexical unit. These restrictions are of two types:
1. Selectional restrictions - these are a function of the propositional
meaning of a word. We expect a human subject for the adjective
studious and an inanimate one for geometrical. Selectional restrictions
are deliberately violated in the case of figurative language but are
otherwise strictly observed.
2. Collocational restrictions - these are semantically arbitrary
restrictions which do not follow logically from the propositional meaning of a
word, e.g.
 laws are broken in English, but in Arabic they are ‘contradicted’
 teeth are brushed in English, but in German and Italian they are
‘polished’, in Polish they are ‘washed’, and in Russian they are
‘cleaned’
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The difference between selectional and collocational restrictions is not


always as clear cut as the examples given above might imply.

EVOKED MEANING
Evoked meaning arises from dialect and register variation.
A dialect is a variety of language which has currency within a specific
community or group of speakers.
Register is a variety of language that a language user considers
appropriate to a specific situation.

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