Д. ф. н. Панченко Е.И.

Днепропетровский национальный университет имени Олеся Гончара, Украина

SOME OBSTACLES IN TRANSLATION

A translator or an interpreter often meets some specific obstacles on a smooth way of their work. They can be classified as follows:

– obstacles in the original text;

– obstacles in the process of translation;

– obstacles connected with the receiver;

– obstacles in the target text.

Obstacles in the original text may be connected with:

– text integrity – external and internal and text coherence;

– linguistic mistakes (phonetic, lexical etc.);

– mechanical or technical mistakes.

Text integrity and coherence are of importance when the parts of the text are strongly connected and the fracture of the text elements chain destroys the text. This obstacle can be illustrated by the translation of Agatha Christie story «A Strange Jest» which is based on an old saying «All my eye and Betty Martin».

Various mistakes can be illustrated by well-known examples of word order breaking which cannot be translated correctly:

Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.

We take your bags and send them in all directions.

Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.

Talking about technical mistakes we should bear in mind a great role of punctuation. The following two texts differ only in punctuation, though their content is quite opposite.

Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior.

You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours? Gloria.

And the other variant:

Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?Yours, Gloria.

Mechanical mistakes can be also presented by all sorts of m isprints, rong numbers etc.

Obstacles in the process of translation are explained by the level of the translator’s k nowledge of SL, TL, mixture of language and speech, imperative and dispositive language norms etc.

A person who knows language but does not know speech can speak like this:

– Итак, было ли особ тьма и тьма? – спросил он любезно, беря быка за рога.

– Или не голубила его одна особа? – спросил наш Шерлок Холмс, не сводя с нас пронзительного взгляда.

The example from I. Khmelevskaya novel describes a Danish policeman who knew Polish, but only its old bookish variant.

Thinking about imperative and dispositive norms don’t forget about at least two possible variants of pronunciation of the following words: forehead, often, kilometer, poseidon, schedule etc.

Another obstacle in the process of translation is connected with certain u predictability which is peculiar for some people and needs translation with elements of editing. Let’s illustrate it by some Bushisms.

I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."

Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?"

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we .

The Recipient may create a lot of obstacles in the translation process. Here of importance are the l ack of background when a translator has to give explanations, meaning barrier, communicative barrier, psychological barrier.

And last but not least the secondary text and its presentation also may create some problems by its form or content. These may be problems connected with its readability and convenience or extralinguistic problems of political, sexual or age correctness etc.

The problems we face while translating however, if we were to share them, discuss them with colleagues and try to solve them, could help us grow in our profession.

Thus, what are some common problems that we face as translators? We have gone to great lengths to master the twists and turns of our own language, its rules and idiosyncrasies. Not to mention a new language, one that we grasp almost as our own, that we know so much about, but always with so much more to learn. And we have a specialty, or a topic we prefer, or one that comes easily to us. But we also have the thousands of topics that we know nearly nothing about, that are hard for us to figure out, and that the mere thought of having to translate frightens us. Even in best case scenarios, no translation is «ideal.» We have all had experiences with the client who doesn’t understand what we do, the time and the effort that we put into it. Not everyone understands that we are not machines that you enter words into and then a little while later the translation pops out automatically.

The problems we face while translating however, if we were to share them, discuss them with colleagues and try to solve them, could help us grow in our profession.