LESSON 10: UNIT 5 (cont.) THE ANALYSIS OF MEANING (for homework, see last three slides) - denotation - componential analysis - connotation - collocation The American Eugene Nida, who coordinated the translation of the Bible from English into a variety of African and South American indigenous languages, made a distinction between two types of meaning: referential (or denotative) meaning and connotative meaning (see HM 34-35)
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LESSON 10: UNIT 5 (cont.) THE ANALYSIS OF
MEANING (for homework, see last three slides)
- denotation
- componential analysis
- connotation
- collocation
The American Eugene Nida, who coordinated the translation of the
Bible from English into a variety of African and South American
indigenous languages, made a distinction between two types of
meaning: referential (or denotative) meaning and connotative
meaning (see HM 34-35)
Denotation and referential meaning:
Italian ‘sperare’ arguably covers a wider semantic field
than the English ‘hope’.
Speriamo che tutto vada bene. Let’s hope everything
goes well. BUT:
Spero di rivederti presto.
Non speravo che saresti ritornato.
Sperare in Dio
Speriamo che tutto vada bene. Let’s hope everything
goes well. BUT:
Spero di rivederti presto. I’m looking forward to
seeing you soon.
Non speravo che saresti ritornato. I wasn’t expecting
you to come back.
Sperare in Dio To trust in God.
There can be pairs of words in a TL that differ from one
another by only a single (and therefore important)
component of meaning. The SL may have only one term
for both of these meanings. Or the writer/speaker of the
ST may have deliberately chosen a single term that
covers both meanings:
E.g., ST Viveva ancora per quello che di lei si sentiva
vivere nell’anima e nella carne, …. TT He still lived
for her, for what he felt still living in his soul and flesh
… (not ‘meat’ = human food ). See section on collocation
below.
Another example of a pair of words that differ from one
another only by a single component of meaning is:
see vs show (‘show’ has the additional meaning of
‘cause to see’)
Compare with Italian: see vedere; show fare
vedere. (The same verb is used but it is preceded by an
auxiliary verb)
U. Eco (2003: 32) gives the example of how the single
term ‘topo’ covers the same semantic space that is
covered by ‘mouse’ and ‘rat’ in English. ‘… in Italian,
even though the difference between a ‘topo’ and a ‘ratto’
is recorded in dictionaries, in everyday language one can
use ‘topo’ even for a big rat – perhaps stretching it to
‘topone’ or ‘topaccio’– but ‘ratto’ is used only in
technical texts.’
Over to you: translate: ‘How now! A rat?’ (Hamlet, Act
III, scene iv)
For Eco (2003: 32) it is correct to translate this as ‘Cosa
c’è, un topo?’ or ‘Come? Un topo’. ‘Topo’ (rather than
‘ratto’) is sufficient for communicating the intended
meanings of ‘surprise, instinctive alarm and an impulse
to kill’.
In contrast, the Italian translation of the rodent mentioned
in A. Camus’ La peste will require, ‘if not a ratto, at least
a grosso topo or a topo di chiavica’. A plague (‘una
pesta’) is not usually carried by mice but by rats. (The
French word that is used by Camus is ‘un rat’.)
Translate the contemporary idiom: ‘Mmm, I smell a rat’
C’è qualcosa che non va!
Another reason for incorrect translation of a term is
under-translation (Dodds 198).
E.g., the translation of ‘poltrona’ as generic ‘chair’ (rather
than the more specific ‘armchair’) would be a case of
under-translation in that the translator only renders the
common components and misses altogether the
distinctive components of the source language word. Part
of the meaning would be ‘lost’.
Yet another reason for incorrect translation can be the
failure to distinguish between homonyms (i.e., two or
more words that have the same sound and spelling (i.e.,
the same form) but different semantic meanings.
The destruction of the Monte Cassino monastery during
WW2 was due to a translator confusing the German word
‘Abt’ (= Abbot) with an abbreviation of ‘Abteilung
(battalion).
(see HM: 36-7)
HOMEWORK (lesson 9) : Finally, when the SL has
words that are closely related in terms of meaning, it is
important for the translator to be aware of the
components of denotive meaning which distinguish them.
Can you translate the different (but partly overlapping)
denotative meanings of these pairs:
congress / conference || aggravate /irritate || libel