Scribd
Upload
0 views

Magazine Social Media by Slidesgo

Chapter 2 discusses the concept of words and their meanings across different languages, emphasizing that there is no one-to-one correspondence between words and meanings. It introduces morphemes as the smallest units of meaning and explores various types of lexical meanings, including propositional and expressive meanings. The chapter also addresses the challenges of non-equivalence in translation and presents strategies for translators to handle these issues effectively.

Uploaded by

Fhatur Ananda Sidiq
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0 views

Magazine Social Media by Slidesgo

Chapter 2 discusses the concept of words and their meanings across different languages, emphasizing that there is no one-to-one correspondence between words and meanings. It introduces morphemes as the smallest units of meaning and explores various types of lexical meanings, including propositional and expressive meanings. The chapter also addresses the challenges of non-equivalence in translation and presents strategies for translators to handle these issues effectively.

Uploaded by

Fhatur Ananda Sidiq
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 11

CHAPTER 2

Equivalence at
word level
RISKI INDRIANA (A1B019050)
FAHIRA WINA ASTUTI (A1B019056)
FHATUR ANANDA SIDIQ (A1B019092)
THE WORD IN DIFFERENT
LANGUAGES
What is a word?
The smallest unit we would expect to possess individual meaning is the
word.

Is there a one-to-one relationship between word


and meaning?
there is no one-to-one correspondence between orthographic words and
elements of meaning within or across languages.
Introducing Morphemes

In order to isolate elements of meaning in words and deal with


them more effectively, 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.
To take an example from English, inconceivable is written as one
word but consists of three morphemes: in, meaning ‘not’,
conceive meaning ‘think of or imagine’, and able meaning ‘able
to be, fit to be’. A suitable paraphrase for inconceivable would
then be ‘cannot be conceived/imagined’.
LEXICAL MEANING
According to Cruse, we can distinguish four main types of meaning in
words and utterances (utterances being stretches of written or spoken
text): propositional meaning, expressive meaning, presupposed
meaning and evoked meaning.

Propositional versus expressive meaning


Propositional meaning provides the basis on which we can judge an
utterance as true or false.
Example : the propositional meaning of shirt is ‘a piece of clothing worn
on the upper part of the body’.

Expressive meaning cannot be judged as true or false. This is because


expressive meaning relates 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 propositional meanings but in the expressiveness of
whinge, which suggests that the speaker finds the action annoying.
Presupposed meaning
● Selectional restrictions: these are a
function of the propositional meaning of
a word.
● Collocational restrictions: these are
semantically arbitrary restrictions which
do not follow logically from the
propositional meaning of a word.
THE PROBLEM OF NON-EQUIVALENCE

The choice of a suitable equivalent will always depend


not only on the linguistic system or systems being handled by
the translator but also on the way both the writer of the source
text and the producer of the target text, that is, the translator,
choose to manipulate the linguistic systems in question; on the
expectations, background knowledge and prejudices of readers
within a specific temporal and spatial location; on the
translator’s own understanding of his or her task, including his
or her assessment of what is appropriate in a given situation;
and on a range of restrictions that may operate in a given
environment at a given point in time, including censorship 4
and various types of intervention by parties other than the
translator, author and reader.
Semantic fields and lexical sets – the
segmentation of experience
Fields are abstract concepts. Examples of a semantic field would be the
field of SPEECH, PLANTS, VEHICLES, DISTANCE, SIZE, SHAPE, TIME, EMOTION,
BELIEFS, ACADEMIC SUBJECTS and NATURAL PHENOMENA.
The actual words and expressions under each field are sometimes called
lexical sets.
Examples : the field of SPEECH in English has a sub-division of VERBS OF
SPEECH which includes general verbs, such as speak and say, and more
specific ones, such as mumble, murmur, mutter and whisper

Two main areas in which an understanding of semantic fields and lexical


sets can be useful to a translator:
● Understanding the difference in the structure of semantic fields in
the source and target languages allows a translator to assess the
value of a given item in a lexical set.
● Semantic fields are arranged hierarchically, going from the more
general to the more specific
Non-equivalence at word level and some common
strategies for dealing with it
Non-equivalence at word level means that the target language
has no direct equivalent for a word which occurs in the source
text.

Common problems of non-equivalence


● Culture-specific concepts
● The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target
language
● The source-language word is semantically complex
● The source and target languages make different distinctions
in meaning
● The target language lacks a superordinate
● The target language lacks a specific term (hyponym)
● Differences in physical or interpersonal perspective
● Differences in expressive meaning
Strategies used by professional
translators:

a. Translation by a more general word


(superordinate)
This is one of the commonest strategies for dealing with many
types of nonequivalence, particularly in the area of
propositional meaning. It works equally well in most, if not all,
languages, since the hierarchical structure of semantic fields is
not language-specific.

b. Translation by a more neutral/less expressive word

c. Translation by cultural substitution


This strategy involves replacing a culture-specific 15 item or
expression with a target-language item which does not have
d. Translation using a loan word or loan
word plus explanation

e. Translation by paraphrase using a


related word

f. Translation by paraphrase using


unrelated words

g. Translation by omission

h. Translation by illustration
THANK YOU !

You might also like