Inglese 1, modulo C di Traduzione

ELENA GENNUSO

2022/2023

INGLESE 1 - TRADUZIONE

Esercitazione:

Audience: young people

Horror novel

“Rat guts”: budelle dei topi (fa riferimento ad uno scherzo che viene annunciato nel primo capitolo);

“Gret”: sorella del protagonista

Il protagonista è un ragazzo a cui hanno ucciso la famiglia e pertanto è andato a vivere con la sorella dallo zio.

Evidenziare i possibili problemi di traduzione.

“I don’t expect to get much sleep for the first night – new sourroundings, new bed, new life – but surprisingly I

drop off within minutes of climbing underneath the covers of the small first-floor bed I chose, and don’t wake until

close to ten in the morning.

I feel good as I use the en suite bathroom. Refreshed. The sun’s broken through the clouds and is shining directly

on to my bed when I come out of the bathroom. I lie on the covers and bask in the rays, smiling softly. For a moment

I thing of Gret’s en suite… the rat guts… the start of nightmares. But I’m in too good a mood to dwell on all that.

Shaking my thoughts free. I head downstairs for a late breakfast.

I’m finishing off my cornflakes and munching my third slice of toast when Dervish enters through the back door.

He’s been jogging. Red-faced, sweaty, panting”.

Traduzione: non mi aspetto di riuscire a dormire tanto dormire molto per la prima notte – nuovi ambienti, nuovo

letto, nuova vita – ma sorprendentemente mi addormento dopo qualche minuto mi sono addormentato pochi

minuti dopo essermi infilato sotto le coperte del lettino di sopra che ho scelto, e non mi sveglio fino a quando

non siano quasi le dieci del mattino.

Mi sento bene mentre uso il bagno privato. Rinfrescato. Il sole è apparso tra le nuvole e risplende direttamente

sul mio letto quando esco dal bagno. Mi distendo sulle lenzuola e mi godo i raggi, sorridendo dolcemente. Per un

momento penso al bagno privato di Gret… alle budella dei topi… l’inizio degli incubi. Ma sono troppo di buon

umore per rimuginare su tutto questo. Libero i miei pensieri, e mi dirigo giù per la mia tarda colazione.

Sto finendo i miei corn-flakes e masticando la mia terza fetta del toast quando Dervish entra dalla porta del retro.

Stava facendo jogging. Rosso in faccia, sudato, affannato.

Possibili problemi:

- Infilarsi sotto le coperte: “climbing underneath the covers”. Sarebbe “arrampicarsi sotto le coperte”;

- Lettino di sotto: “small first-floor bed”. Letteralmente sarebbe “piccolo lettino del piano inferiore”;

- È apparso: “sun’s broken through the clouds”. Letteralmente sarebbe “il sole ha fatto irruzione tra le

nuvole”, ma considerando il pubblico dei bambini, bisogna semplificare il lessico e renderlo più

comprensibile;

- Sorridendo dolcemente: “smiling softly”. Letteralmente sarebbe “sorridendo sofficemente”;

- Gret e Dervish sono due nomi propri, quindi nelle traduzioni conviene non tradurli;

- Affannato: “painting”. Letteralmente sarebbe “ansimando”, ma bisogna sempre considerare il pubblico.

I problemi relativi alla traduzione possono essere a livello grammaticale, sintattico, lessicale, culturale,

semantico… questo perché alcune strutture non possono essere tradotte in altre lingue, ma soprattutto a livello

lessicale. Alcuni termini inglesi sono più specifici rispetto all’italiano, il quale presenta più parole. Per questo

motivo a volte usiamo i sinonimi o termini più generali, perché non vi sono parole più specifiche.

ELENA GENNUSO

2022/2023

INGLESE 1 - TRADUZIONE

Equivalence at word level

The word is the “smallest unit of language that can be used by itself”. We can define the written

è word 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, but this is not strictly accurate because

meaning can be carried by units smaller than the word. If you consider a word such as “rebuild”, you will

note that there are two distinct elements of meaning in it: “re” and “build” > to build again.

Elements of meaning which are represented by several orthographic words in one language, may be represented by

one orthographic word in another, and vice versa. This suggests that there is no one-to-one correspondence

between orthographic words and elements of meaning within or across languages.

Some linguists have suggested the term “morpheme” to describe the minimal formal element of meaning

in language, as distinct from word, which may or may not contain several elements of meaning. Thus, an important

difference between morphemes and words is that a morpheme cannot contain more than one element of meaning

and cannot be further analyzed.

Some morphemes have grammatical functions such as marking plurality, gender and tense; or others change the

class of the word, from verb to adjective. Some words consist of one morpheme.

An orthographic word may therefore contain more than one formal element of meaning, but the boundaries of such

elements are not always clearly marked on the surface.

Lexical meaning

The lexical meaning of a word or lexical unit may be thought of as the specific value it has in particular linguistic

system and the “personality” it acquires through usage within that system.

We can distinguish 4 main types of meaning in words and utterances:

1. Prepositional meaning: it is the relationship between the word 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.

This type of meaning provides the basis on which we can judge if an utterance is true or false. When a

translation is described as “inaccurate”, it is often the prepositional meaning that is being called into

question. (In sostanza fa riferimento al significato dal vocabolario: denotative).

2. Expressive meaning: it is related to the speaker’s feelings or attitude rather than to what words and

utterances refer to.

Example: the difference between “don’t complain” and “don’t whinge” does not lie in their prepositional

meaning, 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 prepositional meaning but differ in their

expressive meaning. It is true also for words and utterances from different languages (ex: “famous” and

“fameux” in English and French have the same mean, but in English it is neutral and in French it is

negative).

The meaning of a word or lexical unit can be both prepositional and expressive. Words which contribute

completely to expressive meaning can be removed from an utterance without affecting its information

content.

3. Presupposed meaning arises from co-occurrence restrictions (on what other words or expressions we

expect to see before or after a particular lexical unit). These restrictions are of 2 types:

• Selectional: these are a function of propositional meaning of a word (ex: we expect a human

subject for the adjective “studious” and inanimate one for “geometrical”; if I say “to bake”, it is

obvious that after the verb there will be a word such as “bread” or “pizza”).

• Collocational: there are semantically arbitrary restrictions which do not follow logically from

the prepositional meaning of a word (ex: for instance, laws are “broken” in English, but in Arabic

they are “contradicted”).

4. Evoked meaning arises from a dialect and register variation:

• A dialect is a variety of language which has currency within a specific community or group of

speakers. It may be classified on geographical, temporal and social bases.

• A register is a variety of language that a language user considers appropriate to a specific

situation. Register variation arises from variations in:

Field of discourse: this is an abstract term of “what is going on” that is relevant to the

o speaker’s choices, that are made by different speakers depending on what king of actions

other than the immediate action of speaking they see themselves as participating in. For

example, linguistic choices will vary according to whether the speaker is taking part in a

football match or discussing football. ELENA GENNUSO

2022/2023

INGLESE 1 - TRADUZIONE

Tenor of discourse: abstract term for the relationship between the people taking part in the

o discourse. For example, the language people use varies depending on such interpersonal

relationship as mother/child, doctor/patient, etc.

Mode of discourse: an abstract term for the role that the language is playing (speech, essay,

o lecture…) and for its medium of transmission (spoken, written).

The only one lexical meaning that relates to the truth of falsehood of an utterance is the prepositional meaning. All

other types of lexical meaning contribute to the overall meaning of utterance or a text in subtle and complex ways

and are often much more difficult to analyze.

The problem of non-equivalence

It refers to situations that often pose difficulties for the translator and some attested strategies for dealing with

them. The choice of a suitable equivalent in a given context depends on a wide variety of factors which, some of

these may be strictly linguistic (lexical items) or extra-linguistic (dipende dal contest formale/informale, forme di

cortesia, ecc.) factors.

The choice of a suitable equivalent will always depend on the way both the writer of the source text and the producer

of the target text, choose to manipulate the linguistic systems in question.

It is sometimes useful to view the vocabulary of a language as a set of words referring to a series conceptual field.

These fields reflect the divisions and sub-divisions “imposed” by a given linguistic community. In linguistic, the

divisions are called semantic fields.

Fields are abstract concept (an example of semantic field would be the one of plants, or vehicles), and a large

number of semantic fields are common to all or most languages. The actual words and expressions under each field

are sometimes called lexical sets. Each semantic field will normally have several sub-divisions or lexical sets

under it, etc.

There are two main areas in which an understanding of semantic fields and lexical sets can be useful to a translator:

1. Appreciating the “value” that a word has in a given system. In addition, if you know what other

items are available in the same lexical set, you can understand not only what something is, but also what

it is not (ex: English has different divisions in the field of temperature “cold-cool”, but Arabic has no

difference).

2. Developing strategies for dealing with