ABSTRACT
This work was done purposefully to concretely shed light on the translation of meaning of hyponyms and hyperonyms without compromising the quality of the translated text. The work was based on the theory of semantic relation based on the translation of “la Question Educative au Burkina-Faso, Regards Pluriels” and the analysis of the translated text. Sources consulted in writing this project were the Internet, Books, periodicals were referred to. Specialised and general online dictionaries such as Linguee, EU Multi Lingual Term Base, Reverso were also used. The work establishes that hyponyms and hyperonyms are an integral part the theory of semantic relations whose meanings are hierarchical in nature. It also affirms that translating appropriately the meaning of hyponyms and hyperonyms increases the quality of the translation. Keywords: Translation, Semantic Relation. Meaning, Hyponyms, Hyperonyms
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… I
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. II
List of acronyms and abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………… III
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… V
Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. VI
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1
Evolution of Translation………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1
Definition of Translation……………………………………………………………………………………… 3
Chapter One…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
Semantics…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6
Hyperonyms and Hyponyms……………………………………………………………………………… 9
Chapter Two…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
Translation of a Source Text……………………………………………………………………………………. 12
Chapter three………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 99
Plan of Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………… 100
Brief Description of Source Text……………………………………………………………………. 101
Side by Side Analysis with the Original Text………………………………………………… 101
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 106
References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 108
Glossary………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 110
INTRODUCTION
Evolution of Translation
The history of translation is as old as humankind. However, various attempts have been made to delve into the study of the history of translation .From 40 BCE onwards, with the writings of Cicero, Saint Jerome through to our current generation, the meaning of the word “Translation” can be described as trying to ascribe meaning to an oral or a written document in one (source language) into a different language (target language).Jakobson (1959:35)
Translation is an activity done on languages: the activity of changing a text in one spoken
/written language into another language. “If language were simply a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts, it would be easy to translate from one language to another. One would simply replace French name for a concept with the English name …Each language articulates or organizes the world differently. Languages do not simply name existing categories, they articulate their own” (Culler, 1978:21-22). Clearly, any theory of translation must draw up its source from a theory of language –a general linguistic theory (Catford: 1965 p1).
Apart from translation being used as a means to spread the Gospel, it is also used for commerce, the spread of knowledge, civilization and recently, diplomacy etc.
It will be improper to write any piece on translation without tackling the historical perspective of translation as a subject of study. The theory of translation, according to Steiner, can be divided into four parts: Firstly, writings on the law governing translation, the main feature of which are: evidence- based translation, i.e. based on the practical experiences of the translator. The second is characterised by the theory on the interpretation of the Gospel (hermeneutics) and the
development of teaching methodologies. The third stage is the advent of machine translation, such as Google toolskit, Google Advanced Search, Matecat etc .The last stage is the development of translation in relation to philosophy of exploring the fundamental nature of reality in translation. Translation Studies is still undergoing evolutions and transformations.
It is crystal clear that all the theoreticians of translation favour the translation of the meaning or sense of whatever is said or written because the “meaning” or the “sense” is the invariant. Cicero also favoured the meaning for meaning translation. He laid the foundation for meaning-based translation which is the most essential in the translation profession. In the opinion of Saint Jerome, the translator captures the ideas of the target language and tries to avoid sending across the ideas in the source language text anything that does not favour sense for sense or word for word (being faithful to the source text) which he stands for.
However, Alex Fraser states the following as his guidelines on translation: The translators should be able to capture the idea or meaning of the target language without using the exact wording of the source language. The translator should be able to give the whole message of the source text. The translations should flow like a native speaker rattling/reading his mother tongue.
This reminds us that, the thought of Cicero is quite clear and that supports meaning-based translations and must follow the source language style. So, it can be said that Cicero‟s meaning- based translation laid the basic foundation that translations should be able to express meaning. This approach laid the primary rule that translation has to be understandable. Saint Jerome, the famous translator of the Greek Bible into Latin, strongly favours Cicero‟s view. In Saint Jerome‟s eyes, the translator captures the ideas of another language without necessarily sending across words in the source language, without necessarily transferring the words that expressed
these concepts in the original language. Towards the end of eighteenth century, in 1791, Alexander Fraser Tyler published a volume entitled “The Principles of Translation”, the first systematic study in English of the translation processes. (Bassnet: p69). Tyler also favours the meaning for meaning translation by taking into consideration the structure and composition.
Translation as an academic work is only about 60 years old (J.S. Holmes1972:73). Before, it was only used for language teaching, i.e. Comparative Language Studies. Language, as we say, is the tool for translation. Without language, there will be no translation. Translation as an area of study is still undergoing evolution, especially in the area of Computer-Assisted Translation. The early translators have done significant work to help the discipline to progress. Translation studies is still a young discipline and with a promising future.
Definition of Translation
In this part, we will present the definition of translation and the various theories of translation. Based on the two theological sources, there was a need for people to communicate in different languages because of social interaction.
The beauty and the faithfulness of the translation will only be seen if the translator has some degree of freedom to translate the document in the target language structure, style, culture in order to get a meaningful translation.
The three types of translation, proposed by Jakobson are: Intralingual Translation or Rewording
is an interpretation of verbal or non-verbal signs by means of others signs of the same language
code, Inter-lingual translation or translation proper: is an interpretation of verbal or non-verbal signs by means of some other language for easy comprehension by a reader and Intersemiotic translation or transmutation, is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. e.g. Translation from verbal art into music, dance, cinema or painting and vice versa. (Jakobson1959:233) In the same vein, (Paz 1971:20) opens his extremely insightful essay titled “literature and letters” with these words, “When we learn to speak, we are learning to translate”, the child who asks the mother the meaning of a word is really asking her to translate the unfamiliar term. Eg. The process of learning a language is simply learning how to translate, if a girl demands from the elder sister the meaning of word which she does not understand. The girl is simply asking her elder sister to translate for her the unfamiliar term which is out of her vocabulary.
In this sense, translation into the same language is essentially different from translation between two languages. Therefore, translation attempts to bring out the meaning as close as possible to the original meaning of the source text.
What is meaning? Words do not have meaning except when used in context. They are conditions under which we can have meaning such as state of mind, the condition, the age of the person, the circumstance. The meaning of a word is what you intend to say. Historically, the most compelling idea concerning meaning has been that meaning is some sort of entity or thing. “There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as the sense of a word”, but meaning is only found in context in which a word is used – the circumstances, state of mind, reference, universe of discourse belonging to it. The meaning of a word is the intent which it is desired to convey – the intention of the user. In linguistics, meaning is the information or concepts that a sender intends to convey or actually conveys in communicating with a receiver of the message.
However, the Oxford Advance Dictionary defines meaning as (1) the idea or intention one wants to carry across through a language medium. (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary 1974) defines meaning as: (1).What I am carrying across through language (Import). (2) What I want to carry across or have in mind to carry across (3) Important standard (4a) Reasonable linkage in meaning of words or phrases (4b) Reasonable extension of meaning of a word or phrase
In translation, the essential element is the conveyance of message from one person to another through a verbal or non-verbal medium without distorting the meaning. Special attention should be paid in translating because the moment the meaning is lost, it will result in what is called gibberish. However, to clearly explain the linkages of meaning between hyponyms and hyperonyms is that, it is applicable to elements of the same group of words or grammatical units.
This work seeks to explain further the methods used in translating hyperonyms and hyponyms and present a detailed analysis of the translated work and proffer solutions to translation problems identified. The work is divided into three chapters. Chapter one deals with the theory of semantic relations of hyponyms and hyperonyms .While chapter two is the translation of “La Question Educative au Burkina-Faso, Regards Pluriels” into English. The last chapter will deal with the analysis of the translated text. Our thesis will be anchored on the theory of semantic relation between words. Some of the methodology we shall be adopting is the use of the Internet, terminology databases and the reading of parallel texts to get the actual meaning of the source document to enable us get an accurate rendition of source text.
CHAPTER ONE SEMANTICS
In this section, we will deal with Semantics which is a broad area of the study of meaning and our work seeks to tackle hyperonym and hyponym which is a subset of semantics. According to Michel Bréal in his book titled “Semantics: Studies in the Science of Meaning” He defined Semantics as the study of language and its meaning. As a word, Semantics was first used by Michel Bréal, a French philologist in 1883, and can be used to describe how words can have different meanings for different people, due to their experiential and emotional backgrounds.
“The meaning of a word, phrase and sentence in a language depended on the context”. In semantic analysis, there is always the tendency to lay emphasis on what the word actually means, rather than what an interlocutor may want the words to mean in a special situation (Yule: 1985:114) Semantic helps us to understand the nature of language and how words acquire their meanings. In linguistics, we usually differentiate between two complementary approaches to this area of study. Semantics analysis operates at two stages: word stage and sentence stage. The former analysis the rapport words have with each other within the same language.
The first explores the relationships words have with each other within a language system, their meaning, which can be defined in terms of synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, homonymy and hyponymy. As we remember from De Saussure‟s theory, since the relationship between words and their referents is merely symbolic – they are signs – each word derives a meaning not from the real world but from its existence within a semantic field of related signs. At the word level, the analysis of the various components of a sentence breaks down the meaning of a word into components. For example, the components of the word man would be: Adult-Male-Human.
Using these components, semanticists build grids which define the words of a particular field according to the presence or absence of a particular component. Of course, grammatical words such as and, but, for do not lend themselves to this analysis. But, above all, the components mentioned could be endlessly broken down into smaller ones. So this method can be useful as a means of classification but not as a theory of meaning. At the sentence level, semanticists are mainly concerned with the truth value of linguistic expressions.
By this division, one can conclude that the key word here in all the definitions cited above is the word meaning. Meaning is an essential element in the conveyance of messages, ideas in translation etc.
Semantics is an area of study that deals with how words gradually acquire their meaning through usage and put into practice the new word acquired by communication. Meaning and linguistic/or semantics is the study of how language organizes and expresses meanings. (Kreidler 1998:p60) Semantics is the study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. It can also be defined as “the analysis of meaning,” In semantic analysis, it is always an attempt to focus on what words conventionally mean, rather than what the speaker intends to say. (Semantic relations ,meaning relations).Three disciplines are concerned with the systematic studies of “meaning.” These are: Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics. These three disciplines each has a particular way of defining meaning from its own point of view. In the narrow sense, semantic relations are the relations between concepts or meanings.
HYPONYMY AND HYPERONYMY
In this section, we will tackle issues pertaining to hyponyms and hyperonyms.That is the main objective of our work. Hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is included within that of another word, its hyperonym or hypernym. In simpler terms, a hyponym shares a relationship with its hypernym. For example, Carrot,Pumpkin,Cabbage andCauliflower are all hyponyms of Vegetable (their hypernym).
Hyponymy is the meaning of one form of a word is included in the meaning of another,the relationship is described as hyponymy:when we consider hyponymous relations,we are essentially looking at the meaning of some words in some hierarchical relationship (G.Yule 1947:p119)
A hierarchical sense relation which exists between two terms in which the sense of one is included in the other. (G.Finch: 2000:p166). The more general term is called superordinate or Hypernym.Much of vocabulary is linked by such system of inclusion:Red is a hyponym of colour,flute of musical instrument and hammer of tool. In the above definitions ,the key word is hierarchical,the words must follow each other in an hierarchical order.
Hyponymy is the relationship between words whose meanings overlap.We also have co- hyponyms operating at the same word level. Animal is hyperonym ,while Goat,Cow,Dog,Fowl hyponyms and Rabbit.Goat,Cow,Fowl and Rabbit are called co-hyponyms.Vegetable is a hyperonym while carrot ,lettuce ,Spinash,cabbage are co-hyponyms because they are different types of vegatables. Hyponyms and hyperonyms can also be a translation unit.In this case ,the meaning of the word or sentence is seen as a unit.The word “thing” can be seen as hyponym eg. Things are going bad.In this sense, “things” refers to a vague concept which means so many
ideas, etc.Things are going bad can mean financies are not good,sick,not performing well in class etc.
