Stephen Hawking in slovak translation
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................... 4
1 Stephen Hawking
1.1 The Man.................................................................................................................... 6
1.2 The Scientist............................................................................................................. 8
1.3 The Writer................................................................................................................ 9
2 Translation, Translator, Process of translation
2.1 Translation, Translator, Process of translation....................................................... 13
2.2 Expressional Shifts and Changes in Translation.................................................... 17
3 Characteristics of Scientific Prose Style and Style of Literary Works
3.1 General Classification of Styles............................................................................. 21
3.2 Scientific Prose Style in the Slovak Language...................................................... 22
3.3 Style of Literary Works in the Slovak Language................................................... 26
3.4 Scientific Prose Style in the English Language...................................................... 28
3.5 Style of Literary Works in the English Language.................................................. 29
3.6 Characteristics of Non-Literary Texts and Their Translation................................ 30
4 Stephen Hawking in Slovak Translation
4.1 Author`s Personal Style.......................................................................................... 37
4.2 A Brief History of Time......................................................................................... 38
4.2.1 About the Book................................................................................................... 38
4.2.2 The Analysis....................................................................................................... 39
4.3 The Universe in a Nutshell................................................................................. 54
4.3.1 About the Book................................................................................................... 54
4.3.2 The Analysis....................................................................................................... 56
Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 71
Resume .........................................................................................................................74
References ...................................................................................................................76
Bibliography, Web ......................................................................................................77
Introduction
After November 1989, the political change influenced society and all fields of life. Since then, also the field of translation, where people communicate every day using foreign languages, went through a lot of changes. The English language has replaced the Russian language, that used to be the biggest source of translation. In the new era, information and knowledge have begun to be distributed to the wide public. Today, our lingvistic enviroment is dealing with new types of texts, which couldn`t be positively classified to any of the functional lingvistic style. These types of texts offer presentation of the scientific information on the one side, but they also emphasize the personality of the author and often use methods of the style of literary works. Their genre, lexical and stylistic diversity is very wide and translator has to deal with its complexity. This new condition puts higher standards on translator`s work and his professional preparation.
As a student of translating studies, I have been strongly attracted to this new difficulty. I have decided to look into complexity of contemporary translating work and discuss it in my thesis.
The objects of this work are the books of Stephen Hawking, the most famous and charismatic theoretical physician since Einstein, and their Slovak translations. The objective is to compare the English originals and Slovak translations of Hawking`s books, with regards to all fields of philological research. Moreover, my purpose is to discover the basic characteristics of non-literary texts with literary elements in the source texts and in the translated texts and to define who should translate these types of texts according to evaluation of the level of chosen individual translating methods.
In the first chapter I introduced the personality of Stephen Hawking. This chapter shows all fields of the life, scientific and literary work of this exceptional man.
The second chapter explains some theoretical tasks, mainly in the field of translation, equivalency and translating shifts. In this chapter I followed work and views of the prominent linguists and theoretics of the Slovak theory of translation. I paid a specific attention to the state of searched problematic in Slovak theory of translation.
The linguistic and stylistic fundaments, analytic part will rely on content of the third chapter. Its core forms characteristics of the scientific prose style and the style of literary works in Slovak and English language, as well as theoretical description of the basic types and features of the non-literary texts with literary elements and their translation. This theoretical part is the framework for my following analysis.
The fourth chapter of this work contains the characteristic of the Hawking`s own style of writing, introduces the analyzed books and includes their analysis. Here, the analysis of the source texts and translations proceeds from lexical level through morphological and syntactical to the stylistic level.
The task of these analysis is to find out how the translators managed to transform the characteristic features from the source text to the translated text. Also, I tried in this chapter to identify some types of translating shifts in translations. An objective of this part of thesis is not to criticize the individual translating methods, but to present translator`s different approach to the translation of non-literary texts with literary elements (hereby the Hawking`s books) and to evaluate assets for a translating practice.
1 Stephen Hawking
1.1 The Man
Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England, in 1942 ( 8th of January, exactly 300 years after Galileo Galilei’s death, as he likes to mention) . After the London blitz of World War II, his family moved to the suburbs, where Stephen and his three younger siblings grew up. The Hawking's was a somber household in which the entire family often spent evenings quietly reading. “We were definitely regarded as eccentric,” Hawking recalled not long ago. “The perception was increased by the behavior of my father, who cared nothing for appearances if this allowed him to save money. He refused to put in central heating, even though he felt the cold badly. Instead, he would wear several sweaters and a dressing gown on top of his normal clothes.” His father, Frank, a physician, researched tropical diseases and took an active role in getting his gifted son admitted to England's best schools. “Stephen always had a strong sense of wonder,” recalled his mother, Isobel, a secretary and homemaker. “I could see that the stars would draw him.”
From the start, young Stephen was precocious. At a time when only a handful of computers existed in all of Britain, and most of those were in the military, Hawking and a group of high school friends built one from scratch using old phone switches and relays. It could solve logical problems and was written up in the local newspaper.
As had both his parents, Hawking attended Oxford University, where he studied for perhaps an hour a day. He spent the rest of his time drinking and socializing. Such behavior had less to do with a lack of diligence than with boredom. He found his homework so rudimentary that he never broke a sweat, even in advanced courses. While fellow students toiled for a week on one take-home test with 13 questions, solving perhaps a problem and a half, Hawking procrastinated. Then, on the day the test was due, he began to work. A few hours later, his classmates asked about his progress. “Well,” he replied to their amazement. “I've only had time to do the first ten.”
Then, early in his 20s, came the first signs of Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyo-trophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Hawking began spilling drinks. Falling down. Skating with his family, he collapsed and could not get up. Tests confirmed the worst. Apparently, he had contracted the disease at an earlier age, but the symptoms had not appeared until that point. Hawking knew the ailment might quickly prove fatal; half of all those diagnosed with ALS die within three years of its onset. "The doctors could offer no cure and gave me two-and-a-half years to live," he has recalled.
He is almost totally paralyzed, speechless and wheelchair-bound, able to move only his facial muscles and two fingers on his left hand. He cannot dress or feed himself, and he needs round-the clock nursing care. He can communicate only through a voice synthesizer, which he operates by laboriously tapping out words on the computer attached to his motorized char. Yet at age 50, despite these crushing adversities, Hawking has become, in the words of science writers Michael White and John Gribbin, “perhaps the greatest physicist of our time.”
Hawking's choice of career was most fortunate, for himself as well as for science. Rejecting the urging of his physician father to study medicine, Hawking chose instead to concentrate on math and theoretical physics, first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. Theoretical physics was “one of the very few jobs for which my mind was the only real tool I needed.”
He certainly does not dwell on his handicap. His succinct, synthesized-voice comments are often laced with humor; he enjoys socializing with his students and colleagues, attends rock concerts and sometimes takes to the dance floor at discos, wheeling his chair in circles. But he can be stubborn, abrasive and quick to anger, terminating a conversation by spinning around and rolling off, sometimes running one of his wheels over the toes of an offender.
Without his wife Jane, Hawking was always emphasized, his career might never have soared. She married him shortly after he was diagnosed with ALS, fully aware of the dreadful, progressive nature of the disease, giving him hope and the will to carry on with his studies. Despite increasing paralysis, Hawking became a Professor at Cambridge and soon fathered a son, Robert, and a daughter, Lucy. A second son, Timothy, was born 12 years later, after Hawking's illness had progressed. In fact, his youngest son has never heard Hawking's real voice-only the computer-generated voice he uses today.
After years of apparently harmonious marriage, however, rifts began appearing. As the accolades and awards poured in for Stephen, Jane competent and intelligent herself - began to resent living in his shadow. Deeply religious, she was also offended by his apparent atheism. Particularly galling to her was his concept, enunciated first before the Pope at a scientific meeting at the Vatican, that the universe might be completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, no beginning or end. If that were true, he asked provocatively, “What place, then, for a creator?” Still, friends were shocked in 1990 when Hawking abruptly ended their 25-year marriage, moving in with one of his nurses.
However, it is the man, with his triumph over a terrible affliction, his courage, his humor and his admirable lack of self-pity. (by the way, in september 2004, he overtook the second place, after Johnny Wilkinson, the Rugby Union player in the inquiry of English magazine Good Housekeeping for the idol of British boys. ) As Hawking's computer voice declared during the final scene in a BBC TV show, "I have a beautiful family, I am successful in my work, and I have written a best seller. One really can't ask for more."
“In 1989 he was honoured by the Queen of England into the knightage.”
1.2 The Scientist
Hawking studied mathematics and physics at University College, Oxford (B.A., 1962), and Trinity Hall, Cambridge (Ph.D., 1966). He was elected a research fellow at Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge. Hawking worked primarily in the field of general relativity and particularly on the physics of black holes. In 1971 he suggested the formation, following the big bang, of numerous objects containing as much as 1,000,000,000 tons of mass but occupying only the space of a proton. These objects, called mini black holes, are unique in that their immense mass and gravity require that they be ruled by the laws of relativity, while their minute size requires that the laws of quantum mechanics apply to them also. His most remarkable result, published in 1974, was that black holes could in fact emit particles in the form of thermal radiation - the so-called Hawking radiation.
Still, in contrast to the theories spawned by his idols, Einstein, Galileo, and Newton, Hawking's ideas about black holes have not been substantiated. So to consider Hawking, their historical equal is premature. He is not likely to win a Nobel Prize (those are reserved for verified discoveries) , and a collective scientific assessment of him will not emerge for decades, until colleagues have attempted to prove his theories. However, there is no question that Hawking has shaped the nature of scientific debate in the post-Einstein era.
Hawking can also be wrong. In 1985, for example, he brashly proclaimed that when and if the universe stopped expanding and began to contract, time would reverse and everything that had ever happened would be rerun in reverse. Eighteen months later, he sheepishly admitted his mistake. Earlier, after trashing another scientist's notion that the 19th century theory of thermodynamics could be applied to black-hole theory, he recanted and began applying it himself.
Hawking's work greatly spurred efforts to theoretically delineate the properties of black holes, objects about which it was previously thought that nothing could be known. His work was also important because it showed these propertie's relationship to the laws of classical thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.
Hawking's contributions to physics earned him many exceptional honours. In 1974 the Royal Society elected him one of its youngest fellows. He became professor of gravitational physics at Cambridge in 1977, and in 1979 he was appointed to Cambridge's Lucasian professorship of mathematics, a post once held by Isaac Newton.
There is one indisputable fact about Stephen Hawking. The British theoretical physicist is a wizard of applied mathematics and a titan of astronomy. Hawking peers light-years away into space without a telescope and conquers uncharted mathematical terrain without a computer. It is admirable-amazing, even-that Lou Gehrig's disease has not impeded Hawking's brilliant career. As a theoretician, he is not expected to spend decades hunched over a radio telescope gathering data. Instead, he ponders complex ideas and deciphers brain-numbing equations in his head, searching for new explanations, new connections. Hawking's mind has grown mighty with time, tirelessly producing equations and theories that inspire and challenge researchers all over the world. Hawking himself has said that lacking a functional body has forced him to use his brain more and made his thinking more original.
1.3 The Writer
He published frequent articles in scholarly journals, thought they offered more prestige than payment. Simon Mitton, Hawking's editor at Cambridge University Press, had long encouraged him to write a book to help ordinary folk “make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it, and where did it and we come from?” as Hawking would later explain in the introduction to his best-seller, A Brief History of Time (From the Big Bang to Black Holes).
Alas, Cambridge University Press could offer only pocket change for the book when Hawking finally consented to write it. Fortunately, however, there was soon a serious American offer on the table: $250,000. Both a book agent and an editor at Bantam had read of Hawking in a Sunday newspaper. Although they knew little about physics, the marketing types sensed that the indomitable scientist's struggle to overcome his disability would pique interest in the book. A Brief History of Time reached the best-seller list in 1988 and stayed there for a publishing eternity, more than two years. It has sold at least eight million copies and made its author a rich man, bringing him at least $6 million.
A Brief History of Time was one of the first celebrity blockbusters in which the author was more important than the text. It hardly mattered if anyone read a word of the book (which many didn't, as it consists mainly of complicated scientific theory); the public was captivated by Hawking himself. With charm and humor that shone through his frozen facial features, the once obscure professor became a media darling, and got to meet the queen of England, Steven Spielberg, and Shirley MacLaine. He made the covers of magazines, starred in documentaries about his books, and even appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (In a guest spot on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Hawking played poker with Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and series regular Data.)
Hawking became a star not only because of his book sales, but because the public responded to his wit (“Scientists and prostitutes get paid for doing what they enjoy.”) and felt compassion for his plight.
Even in rivalry-prone scientific circles, Hawking's colleagues were starstruck. “It was a little like being granted an audience with the Dalai Lama,” gushed astronomer Russ Sampson, who witnessed one visit Hawking made to a campus in the remote reaches of Alberta, Canada. “For two hours we were hanging on Hawking's every word, hoping to learn the secrets of the universe.”
However, the book that started all this-the one supposedly for “ordinary folk”-is hardly accessible to the average reader pondering his or her place in space and time. Consider one sentence: "However, in 1964 two more Americans, J.W. Cronin and Val Fitch, discovered that even the CP symmetry was not obeyed in the decay of certain particles called K-mesons." Hawking not only mixes and matches different scientific fields, but jumps back and forth between centuries. In one breath, he moves from 1800 to 1970; in the next, he leaps from Aristotle to Cal Tech. In fact, some critics have gone so far as to suggest that the book was more likely to confuse readers than to clarify scientific matters for them...
He later cowrote (with Roger Penrose) The Nature of Space and Time (1996), wrote Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993), published The Universe in a Nutshell in 2002 and The Illustrated Theory of Everything in 2004.
In 1992, the American filmmaker Errol Morris made A Brief History of Time into a film about Hawking’s life and work. (Benedict Cumberbatch was quite brilliant as Hawking, turning in a mime of his body failing under his flailing fringe that was profoundly lacking in self-pity. But he was helped by his fellow actors also not being required to go misty-eyed. Lisa Dillon as his fiancée, Jane, looked genuinely puzzled by her decision to marry him. It was a rather beautiful film, not just because it was shot in Cambridge sunshine, but because there was so much goodwill going around and so little false sentiment.)
2 Translation, Translator, Process of translation
2.1 Translation, Translator, Process of translation
Understanding and interpretation of the term translation singles out among number of theoretical and practical issues in the study of translation. More definition of the term translation is brought by the process of scientific research. Vilikovský´s definition of the translation runs in a spirit of communication model: “It is the reproduction of invariant contextual – germane information with preservation of functional equivalency between original and result text.”
According to Newmark, “it is, often, though not by any means always, rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text.”
Miko understands text as a complex of values of the meaningly stigmal character. According to it, he determines the value of expressional dimensions of the text in order to systematize them later to the model of meaning system, which helped to enforce communication conception on the level of text by means of a real communication between author and translator with a reader of the original and translated text.
Popovič defines translation as a “decoding of linguistics and stylistics form set” , while he emphasizes partial approach to the interpretation of the term translation. He uses philological definition, which comes out of opposition so-called adherence and latitude of linguistic translation. To him, a linguistic approach which defines translation as exclusively linguistic operation, a semantic conception, which comes out of linguistic-meaning opposition invariant-variant. Also as a semiotic, like semiotic stylistics-communicative approach that is based on semiotic and information theory, which brings term translation from the level of linguistic to the level of confrontation of the two literary and cultural systems. Popovič understands translation as a communication act.
Attempts to define translation meet in the process of translation, mainly at issue of equivalency, which is regarded as its principal conception. An equivalency represents heterogeniety of the elements of the language of the origin and the language of translation. According to linguistic level followed during translating, we distinguish these kinds of equivalency:
1 Linguistic equivalency – equivalency on the level of phoneme and grapheme, morpheme, word, syntagma and sentence.
2 Text or systematic equivalency – based on possibility of choice of the expressional means from expressional system and their arrangment in the text.
3 Stylistic equivalency – elements of the origin is substituted in translation the way that their meanings will lead to the invariant concord.
4 Pragmatical equivalency – equivalency of the elements on the level of style, it is related to the system of elements of expression.
The process of translation is understood mainly as a fact of linguistic communication, which deals with the action of reception of information encoded by transmitter (author) to the text and decoded by recipient, receiver of the text. In the process of translating it goes about transformation of the text of the reference language (original) to the text of the target language (translation) by processes, which run in our mind, in memory – from analysis of the original to universal semantic image to the form of translation.
Newmark`s description of translating process is operational. It begins with choosing a method of approach. There are two main approaches to translating:
1 Translator starts translating sentence by sentence, for the first paragraph or chapter, to get the feel and the feeling tone of the text, and then deliberately sits back, review the position, and read the rest of the SL (Start Language) text.
2 Translator reads the whole text two or three times and finds the intention, register, tone, marks the difficult words and passages and starts translating only when he has taken his bearings.
Then there is four levels translator uses more or less consciously in his mind:
1 The SL Text Level, the level of language where he begins and which he continually goes back to.
2 The Referential Level, the level of objects and events, real or imaginary, which he progressively has to visualise and build up, and which is an essential part, first of the comprehension, then of the reproduction process.
3 The Cohesive Level, which is more general and grammatical,which traces the train of though, the feeling tone and the various presuppositions of the SL text. This level encompasses both comprehension and reproduction: it presents an overall picture, to which he may has to adjust the language level.
4 The Level of Naturalness, of common language appropriate to the writer or the speaker in a certain situation. This level is concerned only with reproduction.
For recognizing the process of translation it is typical that it moves between analysis and synthesis. In dipole of both there are used three operations: (1) syntactic, (2) semantic and (3) pragmatic. In this order there are realized operations in analytical phase of the process of translation, when during reading the original text translator gets to understanding and comprehension of the text. After analytical part, translator`s decision for synthesis follows and the synthesis itself outline the results of the translating process, or to put it differently creation of the translated text. In this phase – in syntactical phase of the translating process – the order of translating operations is usually changed, while we continue from pragmatic through semantic to syntactic form.
Analysis and synthesis in translating process deals with working with text material of the original and consecutively translation. In the beginning there is reading of the text in the language of original, and reading is connected with analysis in following stages:
1st stage – Syntactic analysis - from the point of reader-translator here is shown his ability to destinguish lexical unit and syntax.
2nd stage – Semantic analysis – with help of syntax shows ability to identify meaning and logic relations in the sentence.
3rd stage – Pragmatic analysis – here is shown (a) translator`s ability to identify the information from the perspective core of utterance – if sentence is expressionally marked or unmarked, (b) translator`s ability to distinguish stylistic use of expressional means considering relation to the receiver of the information.
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Translator makes according to this three-level analysis semantic image about sentence – generally about text – original, which is base for three-level synthesis – thus forming the final form of the translation.
Up to the end of the third analytical stage (pragmatic synthesis) translator is in the position of the reader of the original text. When he starts to realize his semantic imagination about read and analyzed text and produce to the target language, he switches from the role of the reader to the other role – he takes position of the translator – analyser. And here the phase of synthesis in translating process has also three-level form:
1 Pragmatic synthesis – translator makes decisions, what will be saved or changed from original. He deals with these key tasks:
(a) how to solve purpose of the text,
(b) how not to interrupt (or interrupt) relation of the base and core of the utterance, while informative-notice relation in the text as a whole are taken in mind, and
(c) how to manage with the style of the original in style of the target text.
2 Semantic synthesis – according of the image of pragmatic synthesis translator works on creation of meaning character of the reproductive text.
3 Syntactic synthesis – translator comes out of pragmatic and semantic synthesis in order to use them during creation of the synthetic relations on the level of the text.
Translator performs the role of main factor in the progress of translating. His bilingual competition and translating experience takes the highest position in hierarchy of his competences.
2.2 Expressional Shifts and Changes in Translation
The term shift was first used by Catford to identify “changes that come up during the translating by structural no compatibleness between the source and target language”. Shifts described by Catford have mostly grammatical and linguistic character. Term shift is specified by Popovič who does not identify it only as “a result of linguistic differences, but also as the textual, literary and cultural differences.” Popovič understands shifts as changes that happened during translation of the source text and can be identified in the system of expressional means. Translator should save the core or invariant of the original. Formed losses must be replaced by functional way. The shift should always be intended change according to the original used by translator in his deciding process after his deep interpretation of the original. An absolute translation doesn`t exist, therefore are the ways to substitute “lost” elements of the original. In this condition we are talking about functional expressional shift, which puts for its aim to express elements in conditions of the difference of two systems. It is an optimal variant of the original.
Typology of the Expressional Shifts
Constitutive Shift – this shift is objective, unavoidable, caused by the differences between linguistic code of the source text and the translation. It is rationalized by different linguistic and stylistic norm of the source and target language.
Individual Shift – is a shift of subjective character, which documents certain expressions of the individual abilities of the translator. It is an expression of translator`s idiolect. It comes out of interpretation of the source text and it is an expression of translator`s poeticism. There are two kinds of individual shift:
(a) simplification of expressional characters (non-adequate choice of the lexis, stereotyped way of the translator`s solutions, preffering recipient and sociable requirements).
(b) amplification in translation (preferring of multi-word expression instead of one-word, substitute of participles by subordinate clauses and commentaries).
Retardation Shift – prefers of the older expression in the target language. It deals with excessively archaistic stylistic shift.
Thematic Shift – rises on the level of thematic composition of the text, when work is considered to be the unity of a language and the theme. It is an expression between thematic facts, life and institutions of the original and translation, which arises from using different denotes.
Generic Shift – it is a kind of thematic shift. It deals with shift in the form of the work, for example poetry expressed by prose, the shortening of the given artwork.
Rhythmical Shift – it is a different rhythmic arrangement of the original and translation, for example the change in rhythmical system of the poem.
Negative Shift – it is an approach by non-adequate solution of the peculiarities of the original in translation. It arises in the consequences:
(a) linguistic incomprehension,
(b) incomprehension of the author`s interpretation of the reality and its presentation,
(c) neglecting of the integrity of the communication translating process.
It is shown in macro-structure of the text and it causes non-communicativeness in the reader`s reception.
From what was said above, it is clear, that only the last type of shift can be positively classified as a false performance or informative interference. The truth is that rarely accredited translation is found, where occasional mistake is not found. The value of these false performances is at best pragmatic, because translation that has a great number of them is not suitable.
Typology of the Expressional Changes in Translation
Under expressional changes in translation we understand changes, which happen in the process of translation on macro-stylistic and micro-stylistic levels of the work. Under macro-stylistics of the translation we understand expressional arrangement of the higher levels in the text of the translation, from the sentence up to the text as a whole. These changes in translation are usually motivated by the communication interest of the receiver. Under micro-stylistic level we understand expressional arrangement of the lower linguistic levels in the text of the translation – from phoneme up to the sentence. At this level there are the most frequent translating operations and translator`s struggle to master expressional structure of the original happens here.
Expressional agreement – means adequate perceiving of the semantic invariant of the original, achievement of the stylistic equivalency in the translation.
Expressional substitution – it is a functional substitution of untranslatable expressive elements by the elements with approximately same expressional value. This method means decoding not on the level of language, but on the level of style (expression). Substitution can happen at for example translating of the phraseologies, where foreign phraseology is substituted by domestic phraseology with similar expressional value.
Expressional inversion – functional moving of the expressional elements of the original to another place in the text of translation. Inversion can happen in the sentence or in the wider part of the text.
Expressional intensifying – deflecting of the source text`s expressive features by means of subjectivity and expressiveness in translation caused by deliberate overemphasizing of the characteristic expressional features of the original.
Expressional standardization – translator`s transformations emphasizes characteristic expressional features of the source text, for example, keeping the speech peculiarities of the characters of the literary text.
Expressional individualization – translator`s transformation gradated unique expressional features of the original over its real state. Translator`s expressional idiolect moves to the front.
Expressional emasculation – de-emphasizing of the expressional features of the source text, for example, the reduction of the expressivities.
Expressional equalization – dismission of the unique, specific features of the expressional structure of the original in the translation.
Expressional loss – depriving of the important expressional elements of the original or their total extinction in translation, for example, loss of expressivities and images.
Given summary of the expressional shifts of the changes enables better orientation in individual kinds of shifts and changes in translation and their better identification in the concrete text at comparative analysis. The individual shifts on individual levels of the stylistic composition of the text are mutually dependent. For example, thematic shift influences also micro-stylistics and vice versa changes at macro-stylistic level influence the semantic of the theme.
3 Characteristics of Scientific Prose Style and Style of Literary Works
3.1 General Classification of Styles
The word style is derived from Greek word stýlos, where it means the way of writing, composition.
F. Miko understands style as “ a type of expression and communication act in some particulary fixed parts of social communication.”
Every text has some special characteristics, which make up that, what we call the style of text, functional style. Except functional styles we cannot forget the style of author. Singularity of the style of text, writing itself, is realized within the functional style, in a case of literary text within aesthetic style and in a case of non-literary text within scientific prose style. According to F.Miko, there is a relationship between functional style, the style of author and the style of writing:
Functional Style => Style of Author => Style of Writing
(characteristic signs (characteristic signs (characteristic signs
of the texts of some of the texts of some of some writing)
particular communication particular author)
area)
Traditional classification of styles is:
Objective styles: Objective-subjective styles: Subjective styles:
educational style publicistic style colloquial style
administrative style essayistic style aesthetic style
rhetorical style
When studying English stylistics, we find some differences between classification of styles in comparison with Slovak system. We recognize the belles -letters style [corresponds to aesthetic (umelecký) style in Mistrík`s classification], publicistic style, newspaper style [both correspond to publicistic (publicistický) style], scientific prose style [corresponds to educational (odborný) style] and the style of official documents [corresponds to administrative (administratívny) style]. Different terminology should be noticed when comparing English and Slovak. Sometimes it might be even more convenient to discuss the language of a particular text rather than trying to include the text under some of the umbrella terms. For example, the Slovak term publicistický štýl covers different areas than the English term publicistic style. The term essayistic style is also rare in English. Language of essays is discussed within publicistic style as one of its three varietes. Similarly, the notion of colloquial style is often referred to as language of conversation.
Borders of styles are not as clear and stable as the scheme shows. It is because the style is the manner of purposeful selection, regular arrangement and use of language means with regards to the situation, function, intention of the writer and contentual parts of the expression. The means of language are lexical, grammatical and phonological, but there have to be considered paralanguagic means as well. Comparing with systems as the phonological, grammatical or lexical one, the system of styles is changing faster, crossing its borders using characteristics of individual styles.
When comparing literary (aesthetic) and non-literary (scientific) texts, the basic differencial point is style. It is necessary to perceive the style on all its levels. Finally, according to the major characteristics of individual styles, texts differ to literary (aesthetic) and non-literary (scientific).
3.2 Scientific Prose Style in the Slovak Language
Scientific prose has risen and has developed altogether with development of science and scientific thinking. And even it has started to develop in the times of the forming of reputable Slovak; it started to form into today`s version only in 20th century, mainly after the World War II. In connection to intense development of scientific research and with development of the scientific institutions. In the hierarchy of the styles of the public intercourse the scientific prose style stands at the top and between the styles of the reputable language it is considered to be well marked. Utterance of this style is relatively uniformed. Their stylistic image is set mainly by lexical and syntactic means.
During the eightees, in scientific research about styles in the field of Slovak culture were alternating two different terms: educational and scientific style. J. Mistrík in his works prefers the term educational style because he considers administrative, publicistic and rhetorical styles as scientific styles. Under the term educational style it is understood that scientific style, where are explanatory and descriptive processes with intention to teach, explain or professionally inform, used in. The stylistics of Western-European culture field often recognize scientific style according to whether there are the humanities or exact sciences. According this, the style of the humanities is more or less closer to the publicistic, aesthetic or essayistic style. Style of exact sciences remains scientific. In accordance with traditional understanding it intermediates informations of scientific researches. Thus, there are produced texts in a base of indicated pre-preparation, the level of their spontaneity is substantively lower in comparison with aesthetic texts.
Utterance of scientific prose style is used where it is needed to communicate about scientific knowledge. Since main aim of the intercourse in this field is to give professional information, the special education and special qualification of the author of this utterance is needed. The basic characters of the scientific prose style are conditional by this too – literarity, monologicity, publicity, notionality, exactness, explicitness and expertness. Scientific utterance is held in the public, usually are written, that`s why contents of communication have to be express by linguistic means. It has to be formulated explicitly and clearly in the linguistic and stylistic point of view. With monologicity there is a connection with monotematicity. As for the content it is usually quite difficult, it enters into details and argumentates with illustrations.
The characteristic feature of lexes of the scientific prose style texts is using notional means, which serve to the real exactness and the sophisticated character of the utterance. For the sake of unicity and objectivity, the scientific prose style is resigning emotional and expressive means, what goes at the expense of variability and plasticity of an expression.
The stylistics of scientific text is mainly set by the lexical means. Professional terminology responds to the aim to express an idea the most precisely and the most clearly. Professional terminology – domestic and international – is in the lexical plan the most significant mark of the scientific prose style. Terminology is then a mean of notionality, exactness and professionality of an expression. To serve its aim well, it is free of emotional and evaluating colour.
The choice and exploitation of the syntactical means is also in the tight connection with characteristic attributes of the scientific prose style. They help mainly literality, monologocity, explicitness and precision of the text. The precisely constructed subject-verb sentence is the most suitable for the need of scientific prose style, while there is a statement the most frequent type. Presence of other modal sentence is rather odd. While a receiver is usually not present, an utterance as a whole has to be integrated in thoughts and formally completed. Expressing verbal element dominates, and that`s why individual sentences has to be logic and syntactically strict in order to signalise semantic relations more clearly and more obviously. This need is actual mainly when scientific prose style is used to express linguistically difficult thoughts. And just with an effort clearly and precisely express a logical relations joined on one sight, with preffering a complex sentences and on the other sight preferring of the hypo syntax. Scientific prose style does not use an expressive syntactic construction. There is only possibility of contextual ellipses or parenthesis.
Since scientific prose style is mainly written, sound means do not have any important function. The fact texts are written and monologicity reflect on thought organization and composition of the scientific text. These utterances deal with one topic; they are richly structured and hierarchically differentiated. But in spite of this fact, the individual content – topic elements are logically ordered. It is reflected on the composition of the paragraph: formally is segmentation shown by logical principles and methodological values of the particular science branch. Individual genres of the scientific prose style are usually divided into introduction, core and conclusion. The main genres are dissertation, scientific study and article. A paper and report are verbal, but usually are prepared (written) in advance. Special task in genres of scientific prose style has a title. It stands always apart from the text as an informative and orientation point. In scientific texts it is more abstract, shorter, it contains more terms and nouns. An explanation as a one of the macro-compositional means dominates, but scientific description is also present.
The great frequency of nouns is typical from the morphological means. The scientific text as a whole has nominative character. Presumptions for it are in lexis and sytax. Terms are usually nouns; if they are multiverbal they have a form of co-locative nomenclature. An occurance of the nouns is caused by tendency to use the means of the syntactic condenzation. This is the way to support exclusiveness, intelectualisation and conceptual richness of the utterance. Part of the speech structure of the scientific text is then fundamentally different from the spoken text. For example, interjection is almost not present at all. As for substantives and adjectives, the frequency is sharply higher and this occurs at he expense of the verbs. The frequency of the pronouns is internally rearranged higher frequency of the relative pronouns, while personal pronouns are not almost present at all and there is a less demonstrative pronoun. With an effort firmly join and syntactically unequivocally tight the text is related to quiet high number of conjunctions, annotations and prepositions. These means function for an expression of difficult thought relations and functionality. Specific is also using the grammatic categories. Singular at nouns has gnomic character. The present tense is preffered almost consistently from all verb tenses. Common is the first person singular (author`s plural), what has a general meaning also.
Modern scientific prose style is divided into higher and lower, or scientific-educational and scientific - popular. This segmentation is given by difference of the functions and difference of the used linguistic means. The border between the scientific-educational and scientific - popular is continuous. The scientific terms and stereotype constructions dominate in the scientific-educational style. Scientific-popular utterances has obvious didactical factor. Opposite to the scientific style the expressions here are descriptive, sentence is shorter, and structure of the text is richer. Instead of precise quotation, there are more paraphrasing, more graphs, illustrations and similes. There is lower index of repetition of the words than in scientific – educational texts.
3.3 Style of Literary Works in the Slovak Language
Style of literary texts is earmarked for compares with other functional linguistic styles with its specific function. Language as well as in non-literary utterance also in literary texts fulfils its basic communicative function. Together with this one linguistic means are carriers of specific, aesthetic function. That`s why the literary work is considered to be an aesthetic phenomenon, which carries aesthetic information too. As a linguistic utterance is literary work like information about reality, but it is an utterance formed according to the laws of the literary image of life reality.
Style of literary works, in comparison with scientific prose style puts attention to aesthetic measurement in a base of the variety of expressive means and originality. That`s why this style distinguishes variability and dynamics. Variability displays the selection of the words specific for particular theme, which are more or less limited and can be drained very soon.
The choice, using and arrangement of the linguistic and composition means are conditioned by structure of concrete work and also the subject of the author. The influence of the subjective style aspects in maximum. That`s why when talking about style of literary work, we can talk about marked differences between individual authors. The basic features of the style of literary works are connected with specific relation between communicative and aesthetic function as well as other non-linguistic factors (subjective style agents, structure of the work). It is mainly variability and semantic polysemy of the expression connected with emotivity, subjectivity, situation and dialogicity of the literary utterances.
Dynamic relation between word and context is typical for literary texts. It is connected with usage of polysemantic and homonymous nomenclature. The certain meaning of the polysemantic word is often specified at the background of the context, there is given a room for reader`s association. The sources of an action, but also polysemy are figures. Typical are mainly updated similes as a result of the author`s creative activity. Figurative system of the literary work can be built on the metaphorical or metonymical principle. The carrier of aesthetic qualities can be whichever lexical unit. The semantics of the word is subordinated to the semantics of the context. Variability of the text requires innovation of the expression, what influences using of the synonyms. Repetition of the expression is considered to be a stylistic defect, if it is not legitimated functionally. Synonyms are used not only as a mean of variability, but also like the mean of connection of the text.
For the lexical level of the style of literary work the option to use means of national language in all its range is typical. In effort to offer individual image of the reality writers use means of all layers of the vocabulary and lexical means of all style layers of the standard language. The basic linguistic material in utterances of the style of literary texts is standard lexis. The functional value of the stylistically colored emotionally expressive means is then even more exposed in the context of standard means. Expressive spoken words, slang, professionalisms, but also colloquial means are carrier of the aesthetic function. In this function are used also terms, which are frequent in the literary works.
Syntax of the style of literary works is not less variable than lexis. There can be used all kinds of sentences according to segmentation, structure and modality. Together with relatively unmarked sentences there are used also expressive syntactic constructions. Sentence has variable range also in lenght.
The important funcional mean is a section in the style of the literary works. Its basic function is to separate, but also it helps to build functionally different texts, where a section is used as an important stylistic mean. Gradation of the text is also variable and unrepeatable. Differentiated combination of this compositional means such as direct speech, improper direct speech, semi direct speech and author`s speech serve for creation the texts distinguished by the level of dynamic, subjectivity, expressivities and action.
Style of the literary works is variable also from the point of using of the morphological means. There is a certain tendency to use verbs instead of nouns, and this happens mainly of epics, where story dominates. There is a certain rise of the frequency of the pronouns, which are not used only as a mean of the connection of the text, but also as a mean of colloquialism and situation on a behalf of nouns. Using of the grammatical categories, mainly verb is also functional. For example historical present is a mean of the updatedness and action. Category of number builds synecdoche etc. Literary texts are multifarious in intonation. Even sentence can be dynamic, because it is syntactically variable. Intentional variability is supported by expressive syntactic construction.
Compositional part is equivalent with linguistic part in the style of literary works. Literary texts are deliberately created the way to strenghten their semantically polysemy. A meaning coded between the lines dominates over the primal meaning. They are carriers of the emotional-aesthetic values of the text.
The genres of literary style are divided in the framework of individual literary kinds. We distinguish lyrics, epics and drama. This is classic structure and nowadays there are buoyant boundaries between individual kinds.
3.4 Scientific Prose Style in the English Language
The language of science is governed by the aim of the functional style of the scientific prose, which is to prove a hypothesis, to create new concepts, to disclose the internal law of existence, development, relations between different phenomena, etc.
Scientific prose style`s means are objective, accurate and non-enthusiastic and they lack the individuality. Typical feature is that expressions should be universalised.
One of the branches of the scientific (technical ) style is popular-scientific style, the other levels can be academic and professional, all differentiated by the vocabulary, when the former uses transferred Latin and Greek words and the latter operates with formal terms used by experts. The third category is popular level.
The first characteristic is that the utterance is logically ordered. They suggest the relations and dependences. Scientific prose style has the most varied and developed system of connectives from all other styles.
Terms and special scientific names should be produced in exact and unambiguous way. They cannot cause any different associacions, in order not to break the unambiguousity of the scientific prose texts. Typical is also the usage of specific terms according to the field of study. The main thing, which motivates the creation of neologisms, is the necessity to penetrate into the basis of phenomena. When choosing a word from the vocabulary in the scientific prose style, the chief meaning of the word always tend to be used. The same words should not be used in more than one meaning. New terms are commonly followed or proceed by an explication.
The exchange of terms among several scientific branches was created by virtue of the scientific ideas interpretation. The exchange of terminology among the scientific branches demonstrates their cooperation. Sentence patterns are the next typical feature of this style. There are three types: postulator, argumentative and formulative.
A scientific hypothesis must be expressed on known, formulated facts. “The writer`s own ideas are shaped in formulae which represent a doctrine or theory of the principle, an argument, the result of an investigation, etc.”
Among other scientific style features belongs the use of quotations and allusions, diverged footnotes, impersonal composition which is usually represented by passive constructions. The impersonal passive constructions are frequently used with verbs suppose, assume, presume, conclude, emphasize, point out, etc.
3.5 Style of Literary Works in the English Language
Typical features of the style of literary works are variability and the individuality, which is reflected in chosen language means and is evident in poetic style. This feature is hardly distinct in prose style and is totally missing in newspaper and official style. This style is changeable and dynamic. It is reached through combinations of components, transferring the meaning denomination and alternations of the sequences. Among expressions of variability belongs also functional disrespect of the genre`s clearness, implementation of free verse.
Two opposite tendencies are used to reach the literary impression: words which have several meanings of words which asssociate images indirectly involved in the text, and are used for denominations. Images are set in motion.
The relation between the general and the particular supposes diverse forms in different styles. This is by virtue of the strong personality mark on any work of poetic style. There can appear more or less amount imagery, of number of words with contextual meaning, of colloquial elements.
The settings, colloquialism and everything relating to the expression`s subjectivity, like emotionality and expressiveness, are typical for the style of literary works.
3.6 Characteristics of Non-Literary Texts and Their Translation
A great shift arose in topic of the reference texts nowadays. There are no more translations of the ideological or ideologized text or information from the communist party assembly as used to be. The change of the political system and democratization made speeches and resolutions from the sessions of the communist parties and governments obsolete. But on the other hand, and this is a paradox, there is much less translations par excellence of the scientific and technical books.
The origin of the reference texts has changed too. Instead of Russian, Polish, Bulgarian or Hungarian, texts are translated from English, German and French. A siezeable amount of translations is not from the Slavic languages anymore, but from Anglo-Saxon or Roman languages.
Today, we observe a great rise of the translations from a field of economy (microeconomics, macroeconomics) and from the other social science literature, mainly philosophical, sociological and historical. Quite a lot religious texts represent a separate group. The number of magazine articles and materials popularising results of the scientific research are adopted and translated from the foreign magazines. We are overflown by a stream of promotion texts mainly translated from foreign languages. It can be noticed from a first sight.
Since many restrictions and authorisations have been cancelled, like status of the registered translator, many new people enter to the translating field. The change has brought some benefits, because it was an opportunity for those who didn`t have it before. But often it went at the expense of quality. Many publishing houses and editorial boards, even reputable, asked for cooperation people without relevant preparation, skill, and even without moral scruples. The reason was the willingness of these people to work for a significantly lower pay and excessive tension from the top-class translators or their unwillingness to agree on short time terms or low pay. It has to be mentioned that there are published translations without editing because of lack of funds to hire an editor.
Many theoretical problems have been brought by this situation. One of them is more frequent presence of the literary elements in non-literary texts. Since we have this fact as a problem, we need to keep in mind two points of view – objective and subjective. Under objective we understand change of the character of the original texts as we already mentioned, especially shift from the strictly scientific and technical texts to the popular science, and the newspaper reporting style. We take here into consideration all technical and popular magazine articles, excluding speeches or discussion contributions. The burst of English should be considered here also. It caused the use of quite new expressional means – lexical, syntactic and stylistic. Under subjective side we need to consider a reality in which many new translators haven`t been prepared to deal with, not to mention other things like genre and stylistic differences in translating non-literary texts. In addition, an increased presence of the literary elements in these texts is evident.
When talking about translation of non-literary texts, we do not think about inferior literary translation, but of any kind of translation, which is not connected with fiction, poetry or drama, that is genres, which are classified under the terms “aesthetic style“ or “style of literary works“ . It is natural that field of so-called non-literary translation is very vast and heterogenous; therefore choice of the concrete literary elements and the scale of their usability will be different in various types. These facts result in using non-literary elements in so-called strictly scientific style and therefore translator of technical or scientific work (article, study or monograph) has to deal with the literary elements. Here, his skill needed for translation of the scientific text will not be sufficient.
In addition, we will characterize these types of non-literary texts:
1. Newspaper Style
2. Publicistic Style – Language of Essay
3. Scientific Prose Style – Professional and Academic Level
4. Popular – Scientific Style
We do not speak about styles without the purpose. We do that because the concrete text better characterizes source of the exact material used by the translator. We have to keep in mind an important fact that there is no utility in detail classification of scientific prose style. At present, it is obvious that original classification taught by Professor Mistrík is insufficient. (Actually, that is what he announced too: “The boarders of styles are not as settled as the scheme shows. So is their form. Styles in language are forming and changing disproportionally faster than lexis, grammar or phonetics of language. A new style can arise and develope so to say in before the eyes of one generation and in proportion to that the other one can change its form as well.” ) Because of that, there has been detached style of scientific – technical (natural science, technique, medicine) and social literature. Also there have been more texts, which show proves of a need to detach the style of an economic literature.
1. Newspaper Style
In this type of texts appeared all the changes we mentioned in introduction including change of a topic and origin. Moreover, with spreading of the democracy there has been present a wider circle of the authors of these texts. The democracy has brought significant liberalization of the laws, which used to be not only for choice of the topic, structure and text composition, but also for the stylistic means. Utterance has the footprints of the author`s personality – his origin, education, psychological set-up and social integration. There is a significant amount of calques, professional expressions and slang. You can feel an influence of the time pressure and psychical stress authors have to deal with – written newspaper style is not as precise as it used to be. Not only unwritten rules are followed less, but also even written laws are not observed anymore. A considerable task is played by the spread of means of mass communication, a try to get closer to the recipient and the fact, that articles and books are written by people who are often seen on TV, people from writer-reader meetings, lecturers at schools and so on. It is typical for popular – scientific articles in top American magazines (Economist, Newsweek, Time), the ambition to offer not only information, but also to attract reader, even confound him. The authors of these texts are not only perfectly prepared scientifically; they bring something more, non-reccuring style as a display of their newspaper personality. An article has an intensity, a gradation, a movement and a little of the story too. A paise of the discovery or emphasis of the importance of a big idea is gradated in the end up to the final point. It is usually a taught of philosophical character. Linguistic means for the author of this kind of the text are very various. We have figurative comparisons, more or less used collocations, even phraseology, biblical analogy, then characters, events or places from the history symbolizes certain period, metaphor. They are stylistics means of the top author of a popular article in magazines mentioned above. All of this usually fit on a very little space with almost no connecting words or connections.
2. Publicistic Style – Language of Essay
Language is extremely sensitive to changes in natural and social science. Enormous accumulation and change of information brought by everyday changes is joined with translation of great amount of books and publications to the national languages. Presentation of the results of scientific research in the world is not a matter of the scientific prose style only, but the elements and methods of style of literary works are present there too. According to more circumstantial evidence we may suppose that translation itself influences and brakes stylistic norms and traditions of the national stylistics. This genre is starting to be used for presentation of the results of the scientific research not only in the liberal arts, but also mainly in natural-scientific fields. The language of an essay is rich in emotionally colored words, which evoke an aesthetic experience, terms, archaisms and neologisms. An essay is anthropocentric, it has strenght of an intuition, and it joints the originality of the knowledge with an aesthetic effect, what influences all our senses. It represents sort of uniting two at first sight contradictory worlds, scientific and everyday ones.
3. Scientific Style – Professional and Academic Level
The language of much specialists today, particularly perhaps in the Social sciences, is very far from being colloquial and informal. It is often difficult for the layman to read. It is not only that technical terms are used; a technical term is often a kind of shorthand for a concept that it would need a sentence to express in plain language. The reader who is prepared to explore a specialist subject will be ready to learn and accept a reasonable number of technical terms. But he is often faced with a ponderous abstract jargon that seems to obscure rather than clarify meaning. The specialist seems reluctant to write the language of ordinary men if he can possibly avoid it. It is reassuring to hear a scientist say that scientific writing need to be a specialist jargon. “Perhaps some specialists, who are only human beings, like to feel that there is an element of mystery and obscurity in their researches. To express their facts and findings too plainly in the language of common use might dissipate the special aura that surrounds them.” There is even a tendency to “artificial grandiloquence” , and the ponderous usage of “piling up before a noun of words that are not adjectives but are used adjectivally.” Thus scientific writers take too little trouble to be clear and simple: “Instead of writing ‘because the surface of the retina is spherical`, they substitute ‘because of the sphericity of the retinal surface`. Instead of saying that something is near the nucleus, they say that it ‘occupies a juxta-nuclear position`... In ordinary speech or writing it would never enter anyone`s head to say ‘a tea containing cup`; one would naturally say ‘a cup of tea`.”
Translator very rarely works on pure scientific article, because experts who wrote them read original articles in English. There is usually an expression of the approach or a method of solving the problem. These chapters often contain philosophical problematic, while authors are inspired by everything possible from oriental philosophy through alchemy and spiritual texts included. They are looking for contact points, a motivation, an analogy and arguments to support their opinion. That`s why images, similes or metaphor are used in the text. The same is at the end of the work, where author tries to present his results in order to get them closer to the reader. So, he uses again mentioned inventory of the linguistic means. As an example for the revival of the boring scientific text are expressions like “charm, colour, smell” used for certain qualities of the description of the elemental corpuscles. Similarly in astrophysics the use of the expression “black hole”. In the history of physics there is possible to follow the fact, that during the adaptation of new expressions are used with analogies to other fields, while there are analogies formal or often terminological. That`s why we have expressions like “electric flow” or “electromagnetic field”, but we do not sense them same way anymore. Scientific style has its own language peculiarity, which are reflected mainly in a field of terminology. “English terminology is borrowed mostly from Greek and Latin, and from the point of intelligibility it is a stumbling-block either for layman speaker or recipient.”
4. Popular – Scientific style
Mainly, this type of text is in scientific-popular book. It has very similar features we talk about in the case of popularising article. The choice of styles and subgroups of the styles is not so rich. Not many writers dare to write this type of book. Lately, appeared many books, which were written
a) by the excellent scientists themselves, under careful guidance of redactor or editor (such as Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time)
b) by an important scientist together with a publicist (such as H.Ledermann, The God Particle)
c) about scientists (such as Kitty Ferguson, Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything ).
These circumstances bring new moments. In the first casebook is strongly marked by the personality of a big scientist: the choice of topic, structure of the text, expressional means and so on. Since the showing of the scientific matter mixes with memories and philosophical thoughts it is obvious that means of style of literary texts are used here. The author is present, has an opinion, text is emotional and expressional, it has a form of a dialogue, used lexis, collocations and sometimes even syntax all are original. In two other kinds of books we deal with description of the scientist`s work. Interpretation of his work is connected with a description of his private life. There are used quotations from his personal correspondence, verses, faiths, which are expressed by the means of the style of the literary works.
Situation here is very similar to the one in essay, because it deals with a scientific content presented by the literary means. Though, there is a lack of action. The other literary elements are present there. They create a big task for translator, because he has to understood not only terminology, but he also has to understand original very well in order to truly translate the meaning of the text, make it comprehensible, and furthermore provide its aesthetic function.
It is faster to write a translated literature than to write original literature in many ways. It is true when it is a use of elements from the style of literary texts in non-literary texts. Unfortunately, our original scientific and specialist literature, with some exception, is often characterized in a spirit of older classifications of the linguistic styles. But in the real world of publishing all non-literary style texts move from a classical black and white strict distinction and restricted laws to more liberal criteria. The authors think more about recipient. They try to make a dialogue with a reader to get closer to him and persuade him about correctness of author`s opinion. This of course is possible in dialogue only, because truth is born in an argument. We may only think that under influence of the translation of non-literary texts authors of the original Slovak scientific and specialist publications will follow this route. We can help them to reach it by high quality attractive translations.
4 Stephen Hawking in Slovak Translation
4.1 Author`s Personal Style
The style of writing of Stephen Hawking slightly differs from book to book. His first book A Brief History of Time was also the first Hawking`s book for non-experts and it was benefical in all its bearings for wide public. That what was interesting, was its overview and the manner how the author enables the reader to see the work of his mind in pieces. The style, in which was the book written could be characterized as the scientific – popular style. It is written in the first person plural, but time to time the author enters the story and explains his ideas and experience in his own words, in the first person singular. The book is inwrought by scientific expressions but is written in a way that even “an ordinary folk” could understand the difficult theories and hypothesis about space and its history and future. There is also many schemes and black and white sketches showing, explaining and helping a reader.
His second book that was translated into Slovak language was The Universe in a Nutshell. In comparison with A Brief History of Time, this book is more graphically rich and the text is less difficult to understand even for less experienced reader. It is a complex of inwardly connected scientific essays. When we do not close the book after the first five pages, we have to contemplate with Hawking, which is not entirely unconfortable or forceable. Except really serious logic of the book, we get even the requital for it. For example, in the form of the peculiar author`s style, special dead pan, sarcastic humour that counterbalance the level Scientific and level Popular. In connection with the text, we cannot miss the substantial structure of pages or doublepages, with the interconnection of pictures and sidetexts. The book remains an encyclopedy sometimes.
Regarding the means of expression, Hawking uses less scientific expressions and prefers that, what we call literary elements in non-literary texts. As the mottos for some chapters there are the quotations of Shakespeare and we also can find the parallels with movies as Star Trek, E.T. and Independence Day.
Moreover, here the physics of Hawking´s gives liberty, freedom, and it has humour and poetry.
4.2 A Brief History of Time
4.2.1 About the Book
The book A Brief History of Time was published in 1988 by Bantam Press. It consist of eleven chapters, the updated and expanded edition published in 1996 by Bantam Press, twelve chapters. (“As many people have found parts of the first edition difficult to follow, the aim of the second edition is to make it easier by including large numbers of illustrations.” ) At the end of the book, there are the brief histories (profiles) of Hawking`s main influentals and ideals, Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. He discloses yet unsurveyed areas of physics, astronomy, cosmology and spirit.
It is also the book about God, rather about absence of God. The word God fulfills its pages. “Hawking tries to understand how God thinks. All the more astonishing are his conclusions, at least nowadays: space without borders, without the begginning and the end of time and without anymore work for The Creator.“ The traditions of European science have reached to the point, that God cannot be an object for a scientific research. Science gives place for God for the areas, where finishes its own availability. Hawking, constant to the racionalistic traditions of his ancestors, tries to replace God by natural laws.
The book does not explain and does not translate into the language of a layman only the results of his research, but illustrates also the way of Hawking`s thinking, which led him into them. There are, in abbreviations but very consicely, formulated the basic principles of classic mechanics. Half of the book is basically reserved for physics, not astrophysics. The author does not narrow himself by any taboo. He doesn`t avoid even the most unconfortable questions and only a reader can judge, how suasive his answers are. “At the end of the book it is not sufficiently emphasized, that the vision of space as those models shows, is far from reality yet.“
The book was in the London Sunday Times best seller list for 237 weeks, longer than any other book. It has been translated into something like forty languages (in 1996) and has sold about one copy for every 750men, women and children in the world. ”It entered The Guinness Book of Records as the best selled book of scientific-popular literature ever.”
Slovak translation was published in 1991 by publishing house ALFA and was translated by Anton Šurda. He is a physician.
“The success of A Brief History of Time indicates that there is widespread interest in the big questions like: where did we come from? And why is the universe the way it is?”
4.2.2 The Analysis
We could divide the results of our research into three main groups:
(a) Observations of stylistic and structural character
(b) Observations of universal translatological character
(c) Observations of lingvistic character
AD (a)
From the written above it is clear that there will be an occurrence of the literary elements together with elements of the scientific prose style. According to the structural analysis we can identify elements typical for both styles according to each linguistic levels. Following fragments of the texts contain basic characteristics of the scientific prose style and the style of literary works the way, they can be found in the source text and its translations.
1. Characteristics of the scientific prose style
Lexical inventory of the text represents a great amount of the notional words, which represents conceptuality of the scientific prose style:
eclipses – zatmenie, assumption – predpoklad, invention – objav, reflection – odraz, theory – teória, difficulty – problém, counterargument – protiargument, observation – pozorovanie, prediction – predpoveď, gravity – gravitácia, deduction – odvodenie, mechanics – mechanika, measurement – meranie
With conceptuality of the scientific prose style there is connected an effort for preciseness and technicality of the verbalization. Basic means, which insure these natures of the scientific prose style, are terms on the lexical level:
acceleration - urýchľovanie, gamma rays – lúče gama, diagram – schéma, dimension – dimenzia, space-time – časopriestor, circular orbits – obežné dráhy, spiral galaxy – špirálovitá galaxia, quantum hypothesis – kvantová hypotéza, big bang – veľký tresk, black hole – čierna diera, oxygen molecules – molekuly kyslíka
Scientific prose style works are often written in the first person plural, which has in these expressions general character:
“Nowadays we use this method to measure distances precisely, because we can measure time more accurately than lenght.” (original, page 33) or “Our modern picture of the universe dates back to only 1924, when Edwin Hubble demonstrated that ours was not the only galaxy.” (p.46)
„V súčasnosti používame práve túto metódu na presné určovanie vzdialeností, pretože čas môžeme merať presnejšie ako dĺžku.“ (translation, page 34) or „Náš moderný obraz vesmíru sa datuje len od roku 1924, keď Edwin Hubble presvedčivo ukázal, že naša Galaxia nie je jediná.“ (p. 48)
In the text of scientific prose style on the morphological level there are mainly substantives and adjectives at the expense of verbs, that´s why nominal expression is typical for these kinds of texts:
“The success of the unification of the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces led to a number of attempts to combine these two forces with the strong nuclear force into what is called a grand unified theory.” (p.96)
„Úspech zjednotenia elektromagnetických a slabých síl viedol k množstvu pokusov skombinovať tieto dve sily so silnou jadrovou silou do teórie, ktorá sa nazýva veľká zjedotená teória.“ (p. 81)
or
“The effect of the increasing gravitational field of a contracting star on the surrounding space can be visualized by imagining space to be sensitive elastic sheet.” (p. 114)
„Efekt narastajúceho gravitačného poľa zmršťujúcej sa hviezdy na okolitý priestor sa prejavuje ako tu zobrazený priestor v tvare senzitívnej pružnej plochy.“ (passage not included in Slovak translation)
In scientific prose style texts there is a great need to express difficult thoughts and logical relations precisely and clearly, that`s why there is a great occurance of the subordinate complex sentences:
“Sice we know that every chemical element absorbs a characteristic spectrum of colors, by matching these what are missing from a star`s spectrum, we can designate exactly which elements are present in its atmosphere.” (p. 49)
„Keďže vieme, že každý chemický prvok absorbuje charakteristický súbor špecifických farieb, ich porovnaním s tými, ktoré chýbajú v spektre hviezdy, môžeme presne určiť, ktoré prvky sú prítomné v atmosfére hviezdy.“ (p. 50)
Parenthesis are present here and they are one of the typical features of the scientific prose style:
“However, if it was expanding at more than a certain critical rate, gravity would never be strong enough to stop it, and the universe would continue to expand forever.” (p. 53)
„Ak by však rýchlosť rozpínania presiahla istú kritickú hranicu, gravitácia by nikdy nebola natoľko silná, aby ho zastavila a vesmír by sa rozpínal večne.“ (p. 51)
Techniques description and explanation dominates in the scientific prose style:
Description:
“On this assumption, a Cambridge don, John Michell, wrote a paper...in which he pointed out that a star that was sufficiently massive and compact would have such a strong gravitational field that light could not escape; any light emitted from the surface of the star would be dragged back by the star`s gravitational attraction before it could get very far... ... Such objects are what we now call black holes.” (p. 105)„Na základe tohto predpokladu cambridgeský rektor John Michell napísal článok...v ktorom poukázal na to, že dostatočne hmotná a kompaktná hviezda bude mať také silné gravitačné pole, že svetlo z nej nebude môcť uniknúť: akékoľvek svetlo vyžiarené z povrchu hviezdy sa príliš ďaleko nedostane, pretože silná príťažlivá sila hviezdy ho stiahne späť.” (p. 87)
Explanation:
“To understand how a black hole might be formed, we first need an understanding of the life cycle of a star. A star is formed when a large amount of gas starts to collapse in on itself due to its gravitational attraction. As it contracts the atoms of gas collide with each other and more frequently and at greater and greater speeds – the gas heats up. The heat is...what makes the star shine.” (p. 105)
„Aby sme mohli pochopiť ako vzniká čierna diera, musíme najprv porozumieť životnému cyklu hviezdy. Hviezda vzniká, keď veľké množstvo plynu začne vďaka gravitačným príťažlivým silám kolabovať. Ako sa zmršťuje, atómy plynu a zrážajú medzi sebou stále častejšie a so stále väčšími a väčšími rýchlosťami – plyn sa zohrieva. Teplo...je príčinou toho, že hviezda svieti.“ (p. 88)
2. Characteristics of the style of literary works
In the style of literary works the source of action, but also polysemy (reader`s association) are figures, which are results of the creative activity of the author subject.
Epithets:
absolute criteria – absolútne kritérium, irrational belief – iracionálna viera, charmed quark – šarmantný kvark
Simile:
each flavor comes in three “colors,” red, green and blue (p. 85)
každá vôňa môže mať ešte tri „farby“: červenú, zelenú a modrú (p. 73)
Metaphor:
Mercury feels the strongest gravitational effects – Merkúr pociťuje najsilnejšie gravitačné efekty, God abhors a naked singularity – Boh sa hrozí nahej singularity
The typical feature for the literary texts is presence of the author and his personal involvement at solving different tasks and situations. From morphological point of view there is the first person of the singular there:
“...I had a bet with Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology that in fact Cygnus X-1 does not contain a black hole. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would bring me four years of the magazine Private Eye.” (p. 124)
„...stavil som sa s Kipom Thornom z California Institute of Technology, že Cygnus X-1 neobsahuje čiernu dieru. Urobil som veľa práce v oblasti výskumu čiernych dier a všetka by bola nanič, keby sa ukázalo, že čierne diery neexistujú. Ale v tomto prípade mi bude útechou výhra v stávke, ktorá mi poskytne štyri ročníky časopisu Private Eye.“ (p. 101)
The interrogative sentences are the elements of subjectivity:
“Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and where is it doing? Did the universe have beginning, and if so, what happened before then?” (p. 2)
„Pre mnohých ľudí bude obraz nášho vesmíru ako nekonečnej veže korytnačiek trochu smiešny, ale prečo si myslíme, že my to vieme lepšie? Čo vieme o vesmíre a ako to vieme? Odkiaľ pochádza vesmír a kam smeruje? Má vesmír počiatok a ak je to tak, čo sa dialo predtým?“ (p. 15)
From the compositional methods the typical is narrative:
“For example, if you let go of a ball on a slope that drops by one meter for every ten meters you go along, the ball will be travelling down the slope at a speed of about one meter per second after one second, two meters per second after two seconds, and so on, however heavy the ball.” (p. 23)
„Napríklad, ak necháte loptu gúľať po šikmej ploche, ktorá klesá o jeden meter na vzdialenosti každých desiatich metrov, rýchlosť jej pohybu dolu svahom bude asi meter za sekundu po jednej sekunde, dva metre za sekundu po dvoch sekundách a tak ďalej, nech je lopta akokoľvek ťažká.“ (p. 27)
The author of the text is trying to offer the reader the certain level of action and the authenticity. This is reached mainly by adding experiences and stories from his real life. These autobiographical elements are typical signs of the literary literature:
“...at the time that Penrose produced his theorem, I was a research student desperately looking for a problem to complete my Ph.D. thesis. Two years before, I had been diagnosed as suffering from ALS and given only one or two years to live. In these circumstances there had not seemed much point in working on my Ph.D. Yet two years had gone by and I was not that much worse... ... In 1965 I read about Penrose`s theorem that anybody undergoing gravitational collapse must eventually form a singularity...” (p. 66)
„V čase, keď Penrose vypracoval svoju teorému, bol som ašpirantom zúfalo hľadajúcim problém, ktorým by som mohol zavŕšiť svoju dizertačnú prácu. Dva roky predtým stanovili diagnózu mojej choroby na ALS a vyrozumeli ma,že mám pred sebou najviac jeden alebo dva roky života. Za týchto okolností sa nezdalo príliš rozumné pracovať na dizertačnej práci. Dva roky však prešli a môj stav sa zas natoľko nezhoršil... ...V roku 1965 som čítal o penrosovej teoréme, že každé teleso, ktoré kolabuje pod vplyvom gravitačných síl, nakoniec musí vytvoriť singularitu.“ (p. 61)
The elements of sci-fi:
“There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don`t shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.” (p. 90) “...if one took all the heavy water in all the oceans of the world, one could build a hydrogen bomb that would compress matter at the center so much that a black hole would be created. Of course, there would be no one left to observe it!” (p. 127)
„Môžu existovať celé antisvety s antiľuďmi vytvorené z antičastíc. Ak však stretnete antiseba, nepodávajte si ruky! Obaja by ste zmizli vo veľkom svetelnom záblesku.“ (p. 76) „...keby sme vzali všetku vodu vyskytujúcu sa vo všetkých oceánoch sveta, mohli by sme vyrobiť takú vodíkovú bombu, ktorá by dokázala stlačiť hmotu v jej strede natoľko, aby tam vznikla čierna diera. Nikto by však samozrejme nezostal nažive, aby ju mohol pozorovať.“ (p. 102)
Originality of the author`s personality and his ideas at examined problems is considerably expressed by using reflection:
“That revolution was to be the starting point for my work in theoretical physics. Roger Penrose and I showed that Einstein`s general theory of relativity implied that the universe must have a beginning and, possibly, an end.” (p. 44)
„Táto revolúcia sa stala štartovacím bodom mojej práce v teoretickej fyzike. Roger Penrose a ja sme ukázali, že z Einsteinovej všeobecnej teórie relativity vyplýva, že vesmír musel mať počiatok a azda bude musieť mať aj svoj koniec.“ (p. 46)
Decoding an information to the different writing system is always connected with shifts, which do not have to mean informative interference or false output. Thanks to these deliberated changes translator is able to translate the original sufficiently. When analyzing them within the translation of the book A Brief History of Time, we use the classification given by A. Popovič. There can be found these expressional shifts and changes:
Expressional (Stylistic) Shifts
Constitutive Shift:
“The nearest star, called Proxima Centauri, is found to be about four light-years away.” (p. 46)
„Najbližšia hviezda, nazvaná Proxima Centauri je od nás vzdialená asi štyri svetelné roky.“ (p. 47)
or
“An explanation was provided only much later, in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton published his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica...” (p. 7)
„Vysvetlenie podal omnoho neskôr, až v roku 1687, Isaac Newton vo svojich Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica...“ (p. 18)
These constitutive shifts help the translator translating given text to sound naturally in the target language.
Individual Shift – Explification:
“Hubble`s observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense.” (p. 14)
„Hubblove pozorovania svedčia o tom, že existoval časový okamih, nazývaný veľký tresk, keď bol vesmír nekonečne malý a nekonečne hustý.“ (p. 22)
or
“The visible stars appear spread all over the night sky, but are particularly concentrated in one band, which we call the Milky Way.” (p. 46)
„Viditeľné hviezdy sa rozprestierajú po celej nočnej oblohe, ale hlavne sú koncentrované v jednom páse, ktorý nazývame Mliečnou cestou.“ (p. 47)
Using the individual shift, the explification, provide the well translation of the scientific expressions, existing in the target language under the specific shape.
Negative Shift:
“The story is almost certainly untrue, but Galileo did do something equivalent: he rolled balls of different weights down a smooth slope.” (p.22)
„Táto povesť je takmer isto nepravdivá, ale Galilei robil niečo veľmi podobné: gúľal loptičky rôznych váh po hladkej šikmej ploche.“
or
“...I was a research student desperately looking for a problem with which to complete my Ph.D. thesis...” (p. 65)
“...som bol ašpirantom zúfalo hľadajúcim problém, ktorým by som mohol zavŕšiť svoju dizertačnú prácu...” (p. 61)
These examples of negative shift shows us how was changed the primary meaning in negative or inaccurate way.
Expressional (Stylistic) Changes
Expressional Intensifying:
“This is certainly possible, but we do have some theoretical reasons for believing that we have, or are very near to, a knowledge of the ultimate building blocks of nature.” (p. 87)
„To je určite možné, ale máme niekoľko teoretických dôvodov veriť, že poznáme, alebo že sme veľmi blízko k poznaniu základných stavebných kameňov prírody.“ (p. 74)
Expressional Substitution:
“The general theory of relativity decribes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as million million million million miles, the size of the observable universe.” (p. 18)
„Všeobecná teória relativity opisuje gravitačnú silu a štruktúru vesmíru vo veľkých mierkach, to je v mierkach len od niekoľkých kilometrov až po milión milión milión miliónov kilometrov, čo je rozmer pozorovaného vesmíru.“ (p. 25)
Expressional Loss:
“And if, say, one of the bodies had twice the mass, and the other had three times the mass, then the force would be six times as strong.” (p. 25)
„A ak, povedzme, jedno z telies má dvojnásobnú hmotnosť a druhé trojnásobnú, potom sila bude šesťkrát taká veľká.“ (p. 28)
AD (b)
There is a controversy on how should be translated the text of scientific – popular nature. As well as anywhere else, there is not just one, universally valid resolution. There are at least two possibilities:
1 Translation is made by expert, more or less linguistically capable
2 Translation is made by philologian, more or less scientifically capable
In both cases, there should be so-called supplementary conditions executed. In first case, there is a growing value of linguistic revision of translation. On one hand, it should be solid, on the other hand knowledgeable and sensitive. The question of interaction between the translator and the editor raise above. In second case, there is a philologian facing a task to either manage given area contentually, terminologically and stylisically, or retain a reliable assistant.
Šurda is a physician, expert in a broad sense, but not an astrophysician, neither specialist in the universal theory of relativity nor cosmology. This resulted in the translation itself.
It obeys the original text, it aims to represent the characteristic lines of author`s own style. Althought, from the translatological point of view it has some weak parts. Here is a few reasons why. In brackets behind, there are the concrete demonstrations from the original and Slovak translation:
-It is often not possible to translate original text following the differences in enviroment, where the expressing language is the language of original text – distinction in culture, traditions, mentality, history etc. [For instance: “...I was a research student desperately looking for a problem with which to complete my Ph.D. thesis...” (p. 65)
“...som bol ašpirantom zúfalo hľadajúcim problém, ktorým by som mohol zavŕšiť svoju dizertačnú prácu...” (p. 61)]
This translation avoid of explaining the abbreviation Ph.D., which
could possibly confuse a Slovak reader. Ph.D.- Doctor of Philosophy –
is a title equivalent to Slovak CSc. – kandidát vied.
-Scientific-popular literature is usually assigned to the wide variety of readers, which means that their trim for theme differs:
[For example: “...These were called W+, W ˉ, and Z˚ and each had a mass of around 100 GeV...” (p. 93)
“...Nazývajú sa W+,W ˉ a Z˚, pričom každý z nich má hmotnosť okolo 100 GeV...” (p. 79]
In the physics of high energies is weight of particles indicated in electron-volts. For example, there in the Czech translation by Vladimír Karas, there is a footnote, explaining this to less experienced readers.
-The author`s way of expressing is sometimes pale, it is occasionally useful to explain or comment it:
[E.g.: “There are a number of different varietes of quarks: there are six “flavors,” which we call up, down, strange, charmed, bottom and top.” (p. 85)
“Existuje viacero odrôd kvarkov. Myslíme si, že ich je aspoň šesť a označujeme ich podľa „vône“ ako: horný, dolný, podivný, šarmantný, spodný a vrchný quark.” (p. 73)
“Markings of quarks comes out from the first letters of their English names: u from up, d from down, s from strange, c from charmed etc.”
It is wrong to translate their names, because then we lose their first
letters and the markings lose its sense. Also, flavors are not flavors in
its true sense, what is needed to explain for non-skilled reader.
-It sometimes happens, that between the publication of original and translation passes quite a long period of time. With regards to the fast development of science, there is a need to update some informations and knowledge included in original text:
For instance: “...na konci som spomenul Lindeho myšlienku o pomalom narúšaní symetrie a moje korekcie k nej. Medzi poslucháčmi bol mladý asistent Paul Steinhardt z Pennsylvánskej univerzity... ... Neskôr mi povedal, že si nepamätal na môj opis Lindeho myšlienok a Lindeho článok videl až vtedy, keď už dokončili svoj vlastný. Na Západe sa teraz jemu a Albrechtovi spolu s Lindem pripisuje spoločné autorstvo „nového inflačného modelu“...” (p. 132)
It is known, that right after the first publication of the book, Paul Steinhardt found the videotape of Hawking`s lecture and Hawking didn`t mention Linde`s work there. Afterwards, Hawking promised to withdraw this passage from all next publications of the book. This actually happened and the second, updated and expanded edition of the book doesn`t include it. Again, when comparing Slovak and Czech translations, the Czech one, published the same time, includes the note about it.
-In the country, what language is the original of, there could be in use different measures, abunits or signs or different literature about same theme or the language itself name the measures and explain their functions:
For example: “Elementary particles have a property called spin.” (p. 89)
“Elementárne častice majú vlastnosť, ktorá sa nazýva spin.” (p. 74)
The English verb “spin” means in Slovak “točiť sa, víriť, krúžiť”. This explains the function of spin.
Next example is: “...this force is carried by another spin-1 particle, called the gluon, which interacts only with itself and with the quarks...” (p. 95)
“táto sila je sprostredkovaná ďalšou časticou so spinom 1 nazývanom gluónom, ktorá interaguje len sama so sebou a s kvarkmi.” (p. 80)
The English word “glue” means in Slovak “lepidlo”. It explains that gluons stick quarks altogether.
AD (c)
The basic feature of Slovak translation of Hawking`s A Brief History of Time is
its formlessness. Alongside the passages where it is very hard to upbraid with something (pages 71-77), we can find the passages that would need more preciseness and adherence. Translator is often satisfied with verbal translation and basic meaning of a word. There are missing another levels of translation, like analysis of adequacy of translation or applicability of the concrete language situation at the level of sentence, paragraph, logical unit, chapter, relations among chapters or whole book as a unit.
The main argument for thus statement is the fact, that the translation miss the unity of terms and concepts. For example, we can find different solutions in the translation of the word “pulse” which is translated as “impulz” on page 33 of Slovak translation and right after on page 34 as “pulz”. Moreover, word “weight” is once translated as “váha” then as “tiaž” (p. 27, 28, 178), but according to the meaning, we can also use the term “tiažová sila” . The word “slope” is once translated as “šikmá plocha” then as “svah”, but in physics we can also talk about “naklonená rovina.” Instead of common word “časopriestor” he uses the term “priestoročas”, which is supposed be the translation of English “space-time.” Also, as an equivalent of English “elsewhere” (p. 36) used for naming the area of events around cone,
Šurda uses Slovak word “ostatné” (p. 39). With regards to the context, it would be better to use the term “zvyšok”, which, at least, we can decline.
Very frequent is the use of Slovak words “test” or “testovať” as the equivalence for English “test, to test.” We could substitute them into “pokus” or “overiť” or use them at least optionally. The same problem we can find when analysing the translations of English word “idea” which is almost always translated as “idea”, instead of its Slovak equivalent “myšlienka” or one of its synonyms. Also, the wrong interchange is common when translating English word “technology”, that has in Slovak two different meanings “technika” and “technológia”. Furthermore, English “telescope” used in connection with Galileo Galilei (p. 237), is here translated as “teleskop” (p. 172), which is in Slovak the word used for huge and technologically difficult equipment, made for astronomical observations. For such simple tools as Galileo Galilei “telescope” was, we use in Slovak language the word “ďalekohľad”.
The problems with terminology are not only formal. E.g., “Slovak physician literature distinguish the terms “elektromagnetická interakcia” and “elektromagnetická sila” , both used as the equivalents for English “electromagnetic force” (p. 71), depending on the contextual meaning of it.
Moreover, there are objective inaccuracies. For instance, on the page 46 of original text is used the term “twenty-three million million miles” which translator, probably only mistakenly, translated as “tridsaťsedem miliónov kilometrov” (p. 47) .
Another problematic points we can see in Slovak translation of Hawking`s A Brief History of Time are the wrong translations of the titles of scientific or literary works. We can find the reference to the Aristoteles` book On the Heavens (p.2) , that is known in Slovak as O nebi, but here translated as Na nebi (p. 15). The same case is the translation of the title of Galileo Galilei`s most famous work Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (p. 237), which was published in Slovak translation by Slovenská akadémia vied, Bratislava, in 1962, under the title Dialóg o dvoch systémoch sveta. Here is the title translated as Rozhovor o dvoch hlavných systémoch sveta (p. 172).
Translator was often influenced by English original text, and many times he preferred so-called English resolution. For example, he translated “Solar System” on page 61 of original into “slnečný systém” on page 58 of Slovak translation. The other examples are: “separate, well-defined positions and velocities” (p. 73) into “separované, dobre definované pozície a rýchlosti” (p. 65); “the crests coincide” (p. 77) into “vrstvičky koincidujú” (p. 66); “it agreed perfectly” (p. 73) into “perfektne súhlasila” (p. 66); “economic climate” (p. 98) to “ekonomická klíma” (p. 82) or “fixed energy” (p. 98) into “fixovaná energia” (p. 82).
If we mentioned the translator`s influence by original English text, we cannot miss the three most frequent mistakes happening when translating from English into Slovak language, observed in this translation too.
Those are:
(i) Adherence of English word order
(ii) Redundance of passive constructions at the expense of actives
(iii) Often repetition of subject in the sentences
As the examples to support our reproaches we will mention these:
AD (i)
The sentence “When most people believed in an essentially static and unchanging universe...” (p. 23) is in Slovak translated as “Keď väčšina ľudí verila na v podstate klasický a nemenný vesmír...” (p. 22) On behalf of the fluency of utterance we could use following construction “vesmír v podstate statický a nemenný.” Also, for the same reason, we could reconstruct the translation of “Newton was very worried by this lack of absolute position, or absolute space, as it was called, because it did not accord with his idea of an absolute God.” (p. 28). Šurda`s solution was: “Newton bol veľmi znepokojený touto neexistenciou absolútnej polohy alebo absolútneho priestoru, ako to nazýval, pretože sa nezhodovala s jeho predstavou absolútneho Boha.” (p. 30) Our solution could be: “Neexistencia absolútnej polohy alebo absolútneho priestoru, ako to nazýval, Newtona znepokojovala, pretože sa nezhodovala s jeho predstavou absolútneho Boha.” Thus translation has a few facilities comparing to the Šurda`s one: it uses the sentencial stress, supplies the sequence with previous paragraph and the reason of worrying is closer to the own verb too. The use of demonstrative pronoun “touto” is redundant as well, what could be considered as valid for whole book.
AD (ii)
As mentioned above, we can find here many passive constructions, that are common for English language, but they invoke the feeling of unnaturality in Slovak translation. There are passive construnctions in use in strictly scientific publications too, but they lose that feeling there.
For instance, the English phrase “a number of such experiments have been carried out” (p. 75) was translated as “už bolo urobených mnoho takých experimentov” (p. 82). Or “This idea was elaborated by Ptolemy.” (p. 2) is in Slovak translation: “Táto myšlienka bola rozpracovaná Ptolemaiom.” (p. 16) And last but not least, the phrase “It seems implausible” (p. 76) was interpreted as “Zdá sa byť nepredstaviteľné” (p. 83).
Those constructions not only effect as disturbing, but don`t support the readability and fluency of the text too.
AD (iii)
Althought the subject is often clear from the context, we observe the frequent repetition of it in some passages in the text. For example, these are the four sentences following each other in the original text and then in the Slovak translation:
“... the Russian physicist and mathematician Alexander Friedmann instead set about expalining it. Friedmann made two very simple assumptions about the universe: that the universe... ... From these two ideas alone, Friedmann showed that we should not expect the universe to be static. In fact, in 1922, several years before Edwin Hubble`s discovery, Friedmann predicted exactly what Hubble found!” (p. 54-55);
“...sovietsky fyzik a matematik Alexander Fridman sa namiesto toho rozhodol túto predpoveď objasniť. Fridman vyslovil o vesmíre dva jednoduché predpoklady: tvrdil, že vesmír... ...Len z týchto čírych dvoch predpokladov Fridman vyvodil, že by sme nemali očakávať existenciu statického vesmíru. V roku 1922, niekoľko rokov pred Hubblovým objavom, Fridman predpovedal presne to, čo Hubble neskôr zistil.” (p. 52)
From mentioned above it is clear, that because of redundancy and too frequent use of the scientist`s name, the translator could use either personal pronoun “he” or unsaid pronoun. This we could apply for the following as well, where three sentences in a row begin with the same proper name:
“Einstein objected to this very strongly, despite the important role he had played in the development of these ideas. Einstein was awarded the Nobel prize for his contribution to quantum theory. Nevertheless, Einstein never accepted that the universe was governed by chance...” (p. 73)
“Einstein mal proti novej teórii silné námietky, napriek významnej úlohe, ktorú zohral pri vývoji týchto myšlienok. Einsteinovi bola udelená Nobelova cena práve za jeho príspevky ku kvantovej teórii. Einstein však nikdy neprijal myšlienku, že by bol vesmír ovládaný náhodou...” (p. 65-66)
4.3 The Universe in a Nutshell
4.3.1 About the Book
The book The Universe in a Nutshell was published in 2001 by Bantam Book. This book is like a tree: Chapters 1 and 2 form a central trunk, you can pay attention to the individual chapters in any order, because the branches are fairly independent of each other. The illustrations and their annotation, boxes or sidebars provide an alternative route to the text. This structure provides the opportunity to delve into certain topics in more detail than is possible in the main text. In the foreword of the book the author says: “I want to share my excitement at the discoveries that are being made and the picture of reality that is emerging. I have concentrated on areas I have eorked on myself for a greater feeling of immediacy. The details of the work are very technical but I believe the broad ideas can be conveyed without a lot of mathematical baggage. I just hope I have succeeded”. Afterwards, he really succeeded. For the Universe in a Nutshell, he had been awarded by one of the most prestigious price for scientific-popular literature – The Aventis Award, in 2002.
What is the purpose of this success? As we go through the seven chapters, we are involved into the world of latest research in the fields of theoretical physics and astrophysics. There is mentioned the wide variety of Hawkin`s “colleagues”; like Einstein, Newton, Doppler, Maxwell, Planck etc. The results of their research are just like the framework for his own argumentation. This means that reading itself requires a reader at least a little capable in the fields of physics and astronomy. It is beacause Hawking does not burden with elementary pieces of knowledge. Him, with all above mentioned, open up the stream of literally shocking speculations. Sometimes it seems like a tale or sci-fi movie, but everything has a scientific base. We read about curved spacetime, eleven dimensions, world of p-branes, supersymmetric string theory and even theory of everything. Physics of Hawking gives freedom and latitude, it has humour, poetry.
Slovak translation was published in 2002 by publishing house Slovart. The author of the Slovak translation is RNDr. Igor Kapišinský.
4.3.2 The Analysis
As for the previous book, we could divide the results of our research into three main groups:
(a) Observations of stylistic and structural character
(b) Observations of universal translatological character
(c) Observations of lingvistic character
AD (a)
From the written above it is clear that there will be an occurrence of the literary elements together with elements of the scientific prose style. According to the structural analysis we can identify elements typical for both styles according to each linguistic levels. Following fragments of the texts contain basic characteristics of the scientific prose style and the style of literary works the way, they can be found in the source text and its translations.
1. Characteristics of the scientific prose style
Lexical inventory of the text represents a great amount of the notional words, which represents conceptuality of the scientific prose style:
question – otázka, conclusion – záver, state – stav, sight – pohľad, contradistion – rozpor, dimensions – rozmery, possibility – možnosť, event – udalosť, part – časť, point – bod, normal – obyčajný, laws – zákony, history – história, imaginary – imaginárny, normal – obyčajný
With conceptuality of the scientific prose style there is connected an effort for preciseness and technicality of the verbalization. Basic means, which insure these natures of the scientific prose style, are terms on the lexical level:
supersymmetry – supersymetria, annihilate – anihiluje, variables – premenné, real numbers – reálne čísla, nebulae – hmlovina, trajectories – trajektórie, quantum theory shapes time and space – kvantová teória času a priestoru, cosmological constant – kozmologická konštanta, commute – komutatívny, wavelenght – vlnová dĺžka, galaxy – galaxia
Scientific prose style works are often written in the first person plural, which has in these expressions general character:
“We are now working to combine Einstein’ s general theory of relativity and Feynman’s idea of multiple histories into a complete unified theory that will describe everything that happens in the universe. This unified theory will enable us to calculate how the universe will develop if we know how histories started. But the unified theory will not itself tell us how the universe began or what its initial state was. For that, we need what are called boundary conditions, rules that tell us what happens on the frontiers of the universe, the edges of space and time” (original, page 80)
„Teraz pracujeme na spojení Einsteinovej všeobecnej teórie relativity s Feynmanovou ideou rozličných histórií do úplne zjednotenej teórie, ktorá bude opisovať všetky deje vo vesmíre. Táto zjednotená teória nám umožní vypočítať, ako sa bude vesmír vyvíjať, ak vieme ako jednotlivé histórie začali. Samotná zjednotená teória nám ale nepovie, ako vesmír vznikol, alebo aký bol jeho počiatočný stav. Na to potrebujeme niečo, čomu sa hovorí okrajové podmienky, pravidlá, ktoré nám hovoria, čo sa deje na hraniciach vesmíru, na okrajoch priestoru a času.“ (translation, page 80)
In scientific prose style texts there is a great need to express difficult thoughts and logical relations precisely and clearly, that`s why there is a great occurance of the subordinate complex sentences:
They tried to avoid it, either by claiming, like the Russians, that the universe didn`t have a beginning or by maintaining that the origin of the universe did not lie within the realm of science but belonged to metaphysics or religion.” (p. 79)
„Pokúšali sa ju obísť buď tak, že tvrdili, ako ruskí vedci, že vesmír nemal počiatok, alebo tak, že prehlásili, že otázka pôvodu vesmíru neleží vo sfére vedy, ale patrí do ríše metafyziky a náboženstva.“ (p. 59)
In the text of scientific prose style on the morphological level there are mainly substantives and adjectives at the expense of verbs, that´s why nominal expression is typical for these kinds of texts:
“Fortunately, a totally new kind of symmetry was dicovered in the 1970`s that provides a natural physical mechanism to cancel the infinities arising from ground state fluctuations. Super symmetry s a feature of our modern mathematical models that can be described in various ways. One way is to say that space-time has extra dimensions besides the dimensions; because they are measured in numbers know as Grassmann variables rather than in ordinary real numbers. Ordinary numbers commute, that is, it does not matter in which order you multiply them: 6 times 4 is the same as 4 times 6. But Grassman variables anticommute: x times y is the same as –y times x.” (p. 49)
„Našťastie bol v 70. rokoch 20. storočia objavený úplne nový typ symetrie, ktorý ponúkal na odstránenie nekonečien, pochádzajúcich z fluktuácií základného stavu, celkom prirodzený fyzikálny mechanizmus. Supersymetria je charakteristická črta našich moderných matematických modelov, ktorú možno opísať rôznymi spôsobmi. Jedna možnosť je povedať, že priestoročas má ďalšie rozmery krem tých ktoré vnímame. Nazývajú sa Grassmannove dimenzie, pretože sa vyjadrujú číslami známymi ako Grassmannove premenné, a nie obyčajnými reálnymi číslami. Pre obyčajné čísla platí komutatívny zákon, teda nezáleží na poradí, v akom ich násobíte: 6 krát 4 je to isté ako 4 krát 6. Grassmannove premenné však antikomutujú: x krát y je to isté ako –y krát x.“ (p. 49)
Parenthesis are present here and they are one of the typical features of the scientific prose style:
“This would mean they would tend to be confined to a small neighbourhood of the brain – like gravitational force – and would not spread out much imto extra dimensions or carry away much energy from the brain.” (p. 192)
„Znamenalo by to, že by mali tendenciu obmedzovať sa na malé okolité brány – ako gravitačná sila – a nešírili by sa príliš po dodatočných rozmeroch, ani by neodnášali veľa energie z brány.“ (p. 192)
Techniques descriptions and explanations dominate in the scientific prose style:
Description:
“In an imaginary space-time that is a sphere, the imaginary time direction could represent the distance from the south Pole. As one moves north, the circles of latitude at constant distances from the South Pole become igger, corresponding to the universe expanding with imaginary time. The universe would reach maximum size at the equator and then contract again with increasing imaginary time to a single point at the North Pole. Even though the universe would have zero size at the poles, these points would not be singularities, just at the North and South Poles on the Earth`s surface are perfectly regular points. This suggest that the oeigin of the universe in imaginary time can be a regular point in space-time.” (p. 61)
„V imaginárnom priestoročase, ktorý má tvar povrchu gule, by vzdialenosť od južného pólu mohla predstavovať smerovanie imaginárneho času. Keď sa pohybujeme na sever, kružnice zemepisných šírok (rovnobežky) sa v konštantných odstupoch od južného pólu zväčšujú, čo zodpovedá vesmíru, ktorý sa rozpína v imaginárnom čase. Vesmír dosiahne maximálny rozmer na rovník a potom sa začne pri narastajúcom imaginárnom čase opäť zmršťovať až do jedného bodu na severnom póle. A hoci má vesmír na póloch nulový rozmer, nie sú tieto body singularitami, ale celkom obyčajnými bodmi priestoročasu, takými ako sú aj severný a južný pól na zemskom povrchu. To naznačuje, že okamih vzniku vesmíru v imaginárnom čase môže byť obyčajným bodom priestoročasu.“ (p. 61)
Explanation:
“To see some of the possibilities, consider an imaginary time spacetime that is a sphere, like the surface of the Earth. Suppose that the imaginary tie was digrees of latitude (Fig 2.20, see page 61). Then the history of the universe in imaginary time would begin at the South Pole. It would make no sense to ask, “What happened before the beginning?” Such times are simply not defined; any more than there are points south of the South Pole. The South Pole is a perfectly regular point on the Earth`s surface, and the same laws hold there as at other points. This suggests that the beginning of the universe in imaginary time can be a regular point spacetime, and that the same laws can hold at the beginning as in the rest of the universe.” (p. 63)
„Aby sme pochopili tieto možnosti, predstavme si priestoročas s imaginárym časom. Ktorý je sférou, podobne ako povrch Zeme. Predpokladajme, že imaginárny čas sú stupne zemepisnej šírky (obr. 2.20, pozri s. 61). História vesmíru v imaginárnom čase by potom začínala na južnom póle. Bolo by nezmyslom pýtať sa „Čo sa stalo pred počiatkom?“ Také časy jednoducho nie sú definované o nič viac, ako body južnejšie od južného pólu. Južný pól je celkom bežný bod zemského povrchu. To nasvedčuje, že počiatok vesmíru v imaginárnom čase môže byť obyčajným bodom priestoročasu a že na počiatku môžu platiť rovnaké zákony ako vo zvyšku vesmíru.“ (p. 63)
2. Characteristics of the style of literary works
In the style of literary works the source of action, but also polysemy (reader`s association) are figures, which are results of the creative activity of the author subject.
Epithets:
unfortunate astronaut – nešťastný astronaut, pacifistic scruples – pacifistické výhrady, totalitarian world order – totalitný poriadok, tiny fraction – nepatrný zlomok
Simile:
present computers are less complex than the brain of an earthworm (p. 103)
súčasné počítače sú jednoduchšie ako mozog dážďovky (p. 103)
Metaphor:
to stew in our own primitive juices – variť sa vo vlastnej primitívnej šťave, theory of Everything seemed to be just over horizon – teória všetkého sa vynára spoza obzoru, discover at least some of the dragons – objaviť aspoň nejakých drakov, body´s chemical messenger – chemickí posli v našom tele
There we can find many notional expressions and phrases:
Doppler effect, Maxwell field, Grassman numbers, Lorentz contraction, Moore`s law, Newton`s universal theory, Planck lenght, Boltzman`s constant, Hamilton`s operator, Gödel sentence...
The interrogative sentences are the element of subjectivity:
“WHAT IS TIME? IS IT AN EVER-ROLLING STREAM THAT BEARS all our dreams AWAY, as the old hymn says? Or is it a railroad track? Maybe it has loops and branches, so you can keep going forward and yet return to an earlier station on the line.” (p. 31)
„ČO JE ČAS? JE TO VEČNE SA VALIACI PRÚD, KTORÝ ODNÁŠA PREČ všetky naše sny, ako o tom hovorí starý hymnus? Alebo je ako železničná trať? Možno má slučky a odbočky, a preto môže pokračovať smerom dopredu, a napriek tomu sa aj vrátiť do predošlej stanice na hlavnej trati.” (p. 31)
The typical feature for the literary texts is presence of the author and his personal involvement at solving different tasks and situations. From morphological point of view there is the first person of the singular there:
“ The reason Star Trek is so popular is because it is a safe and comforting vision of the future. I`m a bit of a Star episode in which I played poker with Newton, Einstein, and Commander Data. I beat them all, but unfortunately there was a red alert, so I never collected my winnings.” (p. 157)
„Príčina, prečo je Star Trek taký populárny, spočíva v bezpečnej a utešujúcej predstave budúcnosti. Sám som tak trochu fanúšikom Star Treku, preto ma ľahko presvedčili, aby som sa zúčastnil na jednom z jeho pokračovaní, kde hrám poker s Newtonom, Einsteinom a veliteľom Datom. Porazil som všetkých troch, ale, bohužiaľ, bola vyhlásená bojová pohotovosť, a preto som svoju výhru nikdy nezinkasoval.“ (p. 157)
The author of the text is trying to offer the reader the certain level of action and the authenticity. This is reached mainly by adding experiences and stories from his real life. These autobiographical elements are typical signs of the literary literature:
“Will this increase of biological and electronic complexity go on forever, or is there a natural limit? On the biological side, the limit on human intelligence up to now has been set by the size of the brain what will pass through the birth canal. Having watched my three children being born, I know how difficult it is for the head to get out. But within the next hundred years, I expect we will be able to grow babies out side the human body, so this limitation will be removed.” (p. 167)
„Bude tento nárast biologickej a technologickej zložitosti pokračovať neobmedzene, alebo existuje nejaká prirodzená hranica? Na biologickej úrovni je dnes obmedzenie ľudskej inteligencie stanovené veľkosťou mozgu, ktorý sa musí dostať cez pôrodné cesty. Zo sledovania pôrodu mojich troch detí som poznal, aké je ťažké, aby sa hlavička novorodenca dostala von. Ale očakávam, že počas nasledujúcich dvesto rokov budeme schopní zabezpečiť vývoj dieťaťa aj mimo ľudského tela, takže toto obmedzenie bude odstránené.“ (p. 167)
Originality of the author´s personality and his ideas at examined problems is considerably expressed by using reflection:
“Is the universe actually infinite or just very large? And is it everlasting or just long-lived? How could our finite minds comprehend an infinite universe? Isn`t it presumptuous of us even to make the attempt? Do we risk the fate of Prometheus, who in classical mythology stole fire from Zeus from human beings to use, and was punished for this temerity by being chained to a rock where an eagle picked at his liver?
Despite this cautionary tale, I believe we can and should try to understand the universe. We have already made remarkable progress in understanding the cosmos, particularly in the last few years. We don`t yet have a complete picture, but this may not be far off.” (p. 69)
„Je vesmír skutočne nekonečný, alebo iba veľmi veľký? A je večný, alebo iba dlho existuje? Ako môže naša konečná myseľ pochopiť nekonečný vesmír? Nie je to od nás trochu opovážlivé čo i len pokúsiť sa o to: Nekoledujeme si tým o osud Prometea, ktorý podľa klasickej mytológie ukradol Diovi oheň, aby ho dal ľuďom, a za svoju odvahu bol potrestaný pripútaním ku skale, kde mu orol kľuval do pečene?
Aj napriek tejto varovnej legende verím, že sa môžeme a máme pokúšať o pochopenie vesmíru. V tomto sme už urobili pozoruhodný pokrok, zvlášť za posledných pár rokov. Nemáme ešte o ňom úplný obraz, ale už nám k tomu veľa nechýba.“ (p. 69)
The author also uses some poetic elements:
“The long cold whimper in which everything runs down and the last stars flicker out, having exhausted their fuel.” (p. 96)
„Dlhé chladné kňučanie, v ktorom sa všetko zastavuje a posledné hviezdy s vyčerpaným palivom pohasínajú.“ (p. 96)
From the compositional methods the typical is a narrative:
“Star Trek shows a society that is far in advance of ours in science, in technology, and in political organization. (The last might not be difficult.) There must have been great changes, with their accompanying tensions and upsets, in the time between now and then, but in the period we are shown, science, technology, and the organization of society are suppused to have achieved a level of near perfection.” (p. 157)
„Star Trek predstavuje spoločnosť, ktorá je ďaleko pred nami vo svojom vedeckom výskume, v technológiách a v politickom usporiadaní. (To posledné možno nie je také ťažké.) V čase medzi „teraz“ a „vtedy“ sa museli udiať veľké zmeny, sprevádzané napätými situáciami a zmätkami, ale v období, v ktorom sme zobrazení, veda, technika a spoločenský poriadok pravdepodobne dosiahli takmer úroveň dokonalosti.“ (p. 65)
The elements of sci-fi:
“So how does one acoount for our lack extraterrestrial visitors? It could be that there is an advanced race out there, which is aware of our existence but is leaving us to stew in our own primitive juices. However, it is doubtful it would be so considerate to a lower life form: do most of us worry how many insects and earthworms we squash underfoot? A more reasonable explanation is that there is a very low probability either of life developing on other planets or of that life developing intelligence. Because we claim to be intelligent, though perhaps without much ground, we tend to see intelligence as an inevitable consequence of evolution. However, one can question that. It is not clear that intelligence has much survival value. Bacteria do very well without intelligence and will survive us if our so-called intelligence causes us to wipe ourselves out in a nuclear war. So as we explore the galaxy we may find primitive life, but we are not likely to find beings like us.” (p. 171)
„Ako teda máme vysvetliť absenciu mimozemských návštevníkov? Možno niekde mimo nás existje civilizácia, ktorá vie o našej existencii, ale nechávajú nás variť sa vo vlastnej primitívnej šťave. Je však otázne, či by boli takí ohľaduplní k nižším formám života: trápi sa väčšina z nás tým, koľko hmyzu a červov rozmliaždime pod svojimi nohami? Rozumnejšie vysvetlenie je, že je veľmi málo pravdepodobné buď to, že sa na iných planétach vôbec vyvinie život, alebo to, že sa vôbec vyvinie až do inteligentnej podoby. Pretože tvrdíme o sebe, že sme inteligentní, hoci hádam aj bez vážneho dôvodu, máme sklon nazerať na inteligenciu ako na nevyhnutný dôsledok evolúcie. Dá sa však o tom pochybovať. Nie je napríklad jasné, či je inteligencia výhodou pre čo najdlhšie udržanie života. Baktérii bez inteligencie sa darí veľmi dobre a určite nás prežije, ak nás naša takzvaná inteligencia dovedie k záhube v nukleárnej katastrofe. Preto, keď pátrame po Galaxii, môžeme snáď naraziť na primitívny život, ale pravdepodobne nenájdeme bytosti podobné nám.“ (p. 171)
Decoding an information to the different writing system is always connected with shifts, which do not have to mean informative interference or false output. Thanks to these deliberated changes translator is able to translate the original sufficiently. In the translation of the book The Universe in a Nutshell can be found these expressional shifts and changes:
Expressional (Stylistic) Shifts
Constitutional Shift:
“It has been a success story of the work of a large number of people, and I`m proud to have made a small contribution.” (p. 34)
„Je to príbeh o úspešnej práci mnohých ľudí a som pyšný, že aj ja mám na tom malý podiel.“ (p. 34)
or
“After his groundbreaking papers in 1905, Einstein`s scientific reputation was established.” (p. 13)
„Svojimi priekopníckymi prácami si Einstein vybudoval povesť významného vedca.“ (p. 13)
and
“Nevertheless, we can hope to get some pointers from the Feynman sum over histories described in Chapter 3.” (p. 147)
„Pravda, môžeme dúfať, že určitou pomôckou nám bude Feynmanova teória súm cez históriu, ktorú sme opísali v 3. kapitole.“ (p. 147)
These constitutional shifts help the translator translating given text to sound naturally in the target language.
Negative Shift:
“Of course, by 2600 new artistic and scientific work will come in electronic forms, rather than as physical books and papers.” (p. 159)
„Samozrejme, že okolo roku 2600 budú umelecké a vedecké práce vychádzať skôr v elektronickej forme ako vo forme papierových kníh a časopisov.“ (p. 159)
or
“There must have been great changes, with their accompanying tensions and upsets, in the time between now and then, but in period we are shown science, technology, and the organization of society are suppused to have achieved a level of near perfection.” (p. 157)
V čase medzi „teraz“ a „vtedy“ sa museli udiať veľké zmeny, sprevádzané napätými situáciami a zmätkami, ale v období, v ktorom sme zobrazení, veda, technika a spoločenský poriadok pravdepodobne dosiahli takmer úroveň dokonalosti.“ (p. 65)
and
“On the biological side, the limit on human intelligence up to now has been set by the size of the brain what will pass through the birth canal.” (p. 167)
„Na biologickej úrovni je dnes obmedzenie ľudskej inteligencie stanovené veľkosťou mozgu, ktorý sa musí dostať cez pôrodné cesty.“ (p. 167)
These examples of negative shift shows us how was changed the primary meaning in negative or inaccurate way.
Individual Shifts – Explification:
“They are highly speculative but they offer new kinds of behavior that can be tested by observation.” (p. 99)
„Sú veľmi špekulatívne, ale ponúkajú nové druhy fyzikálneho správania sa, ktoré možno overiť pozorovaniami.“ (p. 99)
or
“This state was called the “prime atom” by the Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre, who was the first to investigate the origin of the universe that we now call the big bang.” (p. 22)
„Katolícky kňaz Georges Lemaitre nazval tento stav „prvotný atóm“. Lemaitre prvý skúmal vznik vesmíru, teda to, čo dnes nazývame veľký tresk (big bang).“ (p. 22)
and
“John Wheeler called this result ‘a black hole has no hair`.” (p. 118)
„Tento výsledok John Wheeler zhrnul do vety, že ‘čierna diera nemá vlasy (chlpy).`“ (p. 118)
Using the individual shift, the explification, provide the well translation of the scientific or other expressions, existing in the target language under the specific shape.
Expressional (Stylistic) Changes
Expressional Intensifying:
“...the American physicist who inspired much of the modern work in this field.” (p. 113)
„...americký fyzik, čo podnietil mnoho súčasných prác na tomto poli.“ (p. 113)
or
“Do we risk the fate of Prometheus, who in classical mythology stole fire from Zeus from human beings to use, and was punished for this temerity by being chained to a rock where an eagle picked at his liver?” (p. 69)
„Nekoledujeme si tým o osud Prometea, ktorý podľa klasickej mytológie ukradol Diovi oheň, aby ho dal ľuďom, a za svoju odvahu bol potrestaný pripútaním ku skale, kde mu orol kľuval do pečene?“ (p. 69)
Expressional Substitution:
“The smallest Russian doll wouldn`t be so tiny after all and might be within the reach of particle accelerators of the future.” (p. 199)
„Najmenšia matrioška by nakoniec nebola až taká drobnučká a mohla by byť v dosahu časticových urýchľovačov budúcnosti“ (p. 199)
or
“This is a scientifically testable hypothesis, or would be if astrologers stuck their necks out and made definite predictions that could be tested.” (p. 103)
„Toto je vedecky testovateľná hypotéza, alebo bola by, keby astrológovia išli s kožou na trh a vyslovovali konkrétne predpovede, ktoré by sa dali overiť.“ (p. 103)
Expressional Loss:
“But the world`s population, which is a measure of our technological ability to preserve life and feed ourselves...” (p. 157)
„Ale veľkosť svetovej populácie, ktorá odráža našu schopnosť uchrániť si vlastný život a zdroje obživy.“ (p. 157)
and
“On the other hand, I wouldn`t take a bet with anyone else.” (p. 153)
„A s niekým iným by som stávku neriskoval.“ (p. 153)
AD (b)
The author of the Slovak translation is the man of science, astrophysicist of Astronomical Institute, the Slovak Academy of Sciences, RNDr. Igor Kapišinský. Along with his scientific work he belongs to one of the most important Slovak propagator of the modern scientific theories in the field of astronomy and astrophysics. In his translational activity he engages in translation of the texts from astronomy (Stars and Planets, All about Science and Astronomy, Space). Typical feature of his translations is the perfect mastery of the translation of the English scientific terminology in the field of space research. This resulted in the translation itself.
It obeys the original text, it aims to represent the characteristic lines of author`s own style, the text supposed to invoke the feeling as being the primary text. The typical feature of this translation is the shift from the author`s style to the needs of the potential recipient, a Slovak reader. The less importance is kept for the adherence to the original text, but the idea is translated instead of words. Althought, from the translatological point of view it has a very few weak parts . Here are some reasons why. In brackets behind, there are the concrete demonstrations from the original and Slovak translation:
-Scientific-popular literature is usually assigned to the wide variety of readers, which means that their trim for theme differs:
[“past light cone” (p.36) is translated as “minulý svetelný kužel” (p. 36), which could invoke the feeling of a cone from past and confuse the less experienced reader]
-In the country, what language is the original of, there could be in use different measures, abunits, signs or different literature about same theme or the language itself name the measures and explain their functions or some words can be in use in the different combinations and phrases in target language than in original language:
[the word “uncertainity” (p.208) is translated as “neistota” (p.208). This word has many significances in English, each one is clear from the context, this time as “neistota v určení polohy” and “neistota v meraní hybnosti”. In physics, the Slovak language use in this context the word “neurčitosť”, so the correct versions should be “neurčitosť v určení polohy” and “neurčitosť v meraní hybnosti”.
or
the English word “lieutenant” used in connection with Star Trek`s regular Data is translated as “veliteľ”, but in the already broadcasted Slovak version of this TV serial, Data is “poručík”.]
AD (c)
Translator was often influenced by English original text, and many times he preferred so-called English resolution. For example, instead of common word “časopriestor” he uses the term “priestoročas”, which is supposed be the translation of English “space-time.” The word “information” which doesn`t have a plural form in English, is often translated into Slovak language as “informácia”, thought it was clear from the context, that there should be used the Slovak plural form “informácie”. The word “M-theory” is translated into Slovak as “M-teória”, but according to the structure of Slovak language, the form “teória M” is correct . The term “wormhole” we can find translated as “červia diera”, but according to the The Short Dictionary of Slovak Language it should be “červičia diera”.
The next thing which breaks the fluency of the translation is too frequent repetition of the relative pronoun “ktorý” or its variants:
“risk the fate of Prometheus, who in classical mythology stole fire” (p. 69)
„o osud Prometea, ktorý podľa klasickej mytológie ukradol oheň“ (p. 69)
or
“the size of the brain what will pass through the birth canal.” (p. 167)
„veľkosťou mozgu, ktorý sa musí dostať cez pôrodné cesty.“ (p. 167)
or
“Star Trek shows a society that is far in advance of ours” (p. 157)
„Star Trek predstavuje spoločnosť, ktorá je ďaleko pred nami“ (p. 157)
and
“histories described in Chapter 3.” (p. 147)
„históriu, ktorú sme opísali v 3. kapitole.“ (p. 147)
If we mentioned the translator`s influence by original English text, we cannot miss the often use of the word “perfektný” instead of better equivalent “dokonalý”, in the translation of the English “perfect”. The same case is the translation of the English word “moment”, which is translated as “moment” instead of “okamih”.
Furthermore, we can find here the too frequent connection with infinitive, at the expense of subordinate sentence beginning with the Slovak conjunction “aby”, which is also the influence of English:
“There seems no reason to favor the p=1 string case over other possible values of p.” (p. 54)
instead of
„Zdá sa, že neexistuje nijaký dôvod uprednostňovať prípad p=1-struny pred prípadmi s inými možnými hodnotami p.“ (p.54)
should be
„Zdá sa, že neexistuje nijaký dôvod, aby sme uprednostnili prípad p=1-struny pred prípadmi s inými možnými hodnotami p.“
or
“This unified theory enables us to calculate how the universe will develop if we know how the histories started.” (p. 80)
instead of
„Táto zjednotená teória nám umožní vypočítať, ako sa bude vesmír vyvíjať, ak vieme ako jednotlivé histórie začali.“ (p. 80)
should be
„Táto zjednotená teória nám umožní, aby sme vypočítali, ako sa bude vesmír vyvíjať, ak vieme ako jednotlivé histórie začali.“
Moreover, there is quite strong influence of the English world order in some passages of the Slovak translation:
“Einstein continued to work on the problem in berlin, indisturbed by domestic matters and largely unaffected by the war, until he finally found the right equations in November 1915.” (p.19)
„Einstein pokračoval v práci nad problémom v Berlíne, nerušený rodinnými záležitosťami a z veľkej miery ani neovplyvnený vojnou, až konečne v novembri 1915 našiel správne rovnice.“ (p.19)
or
“Despite the anti-Semitism that was common in much of Europe, even in the universities, he was now an academic hot property.” (p.13)
„Napriek antisemitizmu, ktorý bol veľmi rozšírený v Európe, dokonca aj na univerzitách, bol Einstein už vtedy vysokocenenou akademickou osobnosťou.“ (p. 13)
and
“In a way, the human race needs to improve its mental and physical qualities if it is to deal with the increasingly complex world around it and meet new challenges such as space travel.” (p. 165)
„V istom zmysle ľudstvo potrebuje vylepšiť svoje mentálne a fyzické kapacity, ak sa má vyrovnať so vzrastajúcou zložitosťou okolitého sveta a novými výzvami, akou je napríklad cestovanie vesmírom.“ (p.165)
Last but not least, when translating the quotation of Shakespeare`s Hamlet at the beginning of the third chapter, the translator chose to make his own translation, instead of using already existing Slovak translation by Kot:
“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space...” (p. 69)
„Ó, Bože! I keby ma zatvorili do orechovej škrupinky, bol by som schopný považovať sa za pána nekonečného priestoru...“ (p. 69)
„Bože môj! I keby ste ma zatvorili do orechovej škrupinky, bol by som schopný cítiť sa pánom vesmíru...“ (Kot)
To borrow the Kot`s translation would be more suitable, because it sounds more naturally and the English word “space” is translated as “vesmír” , which is the meaning as we find it within whole book.
Conclusion
The main objective of this work was to analyze, how the Slovak translations of the scientific-popular text, in this case the books of Stephen Hawking, deal with the original and how properly, with regards to the above written factors were they done. According to linguistic and stylistic analysis of the source text, we can observe that nowadays there is a field of presentation of the results of the scientific research the tendency to mediate attractive and interesting way. It means that there is strong presence of author`s personality, which brings more subjectivity and expresiveness. The author`s subjective sense of impressions and experiences are part of these texts. But they should be eliminated in maximum rate according to the used stylistic methods and rules. The latest scientific information is presented to the reader in the background of exciting stories. A receiver of this type of text is enriched by a number of scientific information and aesthetic experience.We can find quite a lot similarities typical for literary literature (e.g., epithets, simile, personification and metaphor). As for compositional stylistic methods, there are together with scientific description as a reflection of narrative.
The result of the translator`s work should be the translation comparable with the source text not only in the aspect of content, but also in the linguistic and stylistic aspect. To create this kind of translation, translator has to do deep analysis of the source text. He has to identify basic features of its textual structure and find adequate means for transmitting these elements into translation.
All these factors create very demanding situation for translator, who has to, besides scientific information, transmit also literary elements to his work. Translator of these texts is not qualified only to be a specialist in the given scientific field. He has to have a relevant linguistic background that will help him to translate also literary elements, which make these texts attractive for readers. Often, translating these elements has an impact on work performing the language of the target culture. It may have the same attraction as a source text.
The comparative interpretation of A Brief History of Time results in the translator`s effort to translate the professional side of the text, where he could use all his knowledge and experience in this field. The translation is shifted into more scientific level. Author wrote this book the way more understandable to the reader. This fact can be caused by the reality, that Slovak texts of the scientific prose style does not indicate the influence of the author like in the style of Anglophone countries. During translation by the specialist of the given scientific field (as we mentioned, Šurda is a physician), there is special attention given to scientific aspect of the translation instead of aesthetic aspect, what often complicates receiving of the text in the target language. The basic feature of Slovak translation of Hawking`s A Brief History of Time is its formlessness. Alongside the passages where it is very hard to upbraid with something, we can find the passages that would need more preciseness and adherence. Translator is often satisfied with verbal translation and basic meaning of a word. There are missing another levels of translation, like analysis of adequacy of translation or applicability of the concrete language situation at the level of sentence, paragraph, logical unit, chapter, relations among chapters or whole book as a unit. Translator did not use all the possibilities offered by linguistic means of the target language – Slovak and that`s why he deprived the reader of aesthetic experience from the reading of this book
In comparison, the translation of the second Hawking`s book The Universe in a Nutshell, is slightly different. So is the author`s own style. There is the visible ten-years gap between both books which resulted in the original text and the text of translation as well. In comparison with A Brief History of Time, this book is more graphically rich and the text is less difficult to understand even for less experienced reader. Regarding the means of expression, Hawking uses less scientific expressions and prefers that, what we call literary elements in non-literary texts. The Kapišinský`s translation obeys the original text, it aims to represent the characteristic lines of author`s own style, the text supposed to invoke the feeling as being the primary text. The typical feature of this translation is the shift from the author`s style to the needs of the potential recipient, a Slovak reader. The less importance is kept for the adherence to the original text, but the idea is translated instead of words. Althought Kapišinský is the man of science, astrophysicist, he cooperated with another specialist, lecturer Balek to ensure the perfect mastery of the scientific side of translation. The second Slovak translation of the Hawking`s book is incomparably better. Due to this, we should mention, that Kapišinský`s translation was awarded the prize in the Slovak translator`s competition Matej Bell Award in 2003.
From this point of view it is evident, that translations of these types of texts should be realized by professional, who has outstanding linguistic preparation or has some experience with translation from the style of literary works. It enables him to create adequate translation of the literary elements and also their functional integration into the complete structure of the text. Translator – specialist for the given scientific field is more concentrated onto the scientific side of the translation than to linguistic and aesthetic, what can cause worse communicativeness of the translation in the culture of the target language. As for a conclusion, we could claim, that the best combinations when translating scientific-popular literature, is translator-scientist with assistant-philologist or translator-philologist with assistant-scientist.
Resume
Táto práca spracúva aktuálnu problematiku prekladu neumeleckých textov s umeleckými prvkami. V súčasnosti je výskyt takýchto textov, najmä v oblasti propagácie a popularizácie výsledkov vedeckého skúmania veľmi častý. Jazykom, v ktorom sa dnes najčastejšie propagujú výsledky vedy, je angličtina. Práve z nej sa najčastejšie prekladajú texty, ktorých cieľom je čitateľsky príťažlivým a pútavým spôsobom priblížiť najnovšie výsledky vedeckého výskumu, či už v prírodných alebo spoločenských vedách.
Problematika prekladu takýchto textov je veľmi náročná. Prekladateľ musí zvládnuť nielen terminológiu daného vedného odboru, čo si mnohokrát vyžaduje konzultáciu s odborníkom, ale musí nájsť aj adekvátne jazykové a štylistické formy na vyjadrenie takých prvkov, ktoré pri preklade typických náučných textov nie sú bežné.
Takýmito sú predovšetkým prítomnosť osobnosti autora v texte, dôležitú úlohu tu hrajú autorove zážitky, pocity a skúsenosti. Toto so sebou prináša zvýšenú mieru expresívnosti jazykového výrazu. Čitateľovi sa často prezentujú niektoré závažné vedecké teórie na pozadí pútavých príbehov, čím popri množstve vedeckých poznatkov je tento obohacovaný aj o estetický zážitok. Epitetá, prirovnania, personifikácie ba aj metafory sú nástrojmi autora, prostredníctvom ktorých sa snaží oživiť striktný jazyk vedy tak, aby dokázal problematiku svojho vedeckého odboru urobiť zaujímavou aj pre širšie vrstvy verejnosti.
Opornou konštrukciou pri našej analýze nám budú knihy navýznamnejšieho teoretického fyzika od čias Einsteina, Stephena Hawkinga. Ten je aj napriek svojmu zdravotnému postihnutiu veľmi úspešným vedcom, spisovateľom, otcom troch detí a stal sa už počas svojho života legendou. Tento charizmatický muž je okrem iného autorom dvoch kníh, Stručné dejiny času a Vesmír v orechovej škrupinke, ktorých anglické originály a slovenské preklady budeme porovnávať a analyzovať.
V prvej kapitole si predstavíme Hawkingovu osobnosť, detstvo a dospievanie, súkromný život, vedecké bádanie a literárnu tvorbu.
V druhej kapitole sú definované základné pojmy z oblasti teórie prekladu, akými sú preklad, prekladateľ a proces prekladu. Pojmy preklad a prekladateľ sú tu chápané v duchu modernej komunikačnej teórie, ktorú do slovenskej teórie prekladu priniesol predovšetkým A. Popovič. Najviac pozornosti sa venuje predovšetkým analýze jednotlivých fáz prekladateľského procesu. Teoreticky sú rozpracované najmä analytické a syntetizujúce činnosti prekladateľa pri práci s textom originálu a prekladu. Na toto nadväzuje rozpracovanie jednej zo základných otázok teórie prekladu, ktorou je otázka ekvivalencie a posunu v preklade. Sú tu podrobne klasifikované jednotlivé typológie výrazových (štylistických) posunov a zmien v preklade.
Základnými charakteristikami náučného a umeleckého štýlu sa zaoberá tretia kapitola. Porovnáva chápanie spomínaných štýlov a angličtine a v slovenčine, pričom sa pozornosť sústreďuje predovšetkým na prenikanie umeleckých prvkov do náučných a odborných textov, čo pravdepodobne v budúcnosti spôsobí zmeny najmä v chápaní esejistického štýlu, ktorý okrem literatúry bude prenikať najmä do oblasti propagácie a popularizácie výsledkov vedeckých výskumov.
Náplňou štvrtej, praktickej časti práce je charakteristika Hawkingovho literárneho štýlu a samotné jazykové a štylistické analýzy originálov a prekladov Hawkingových kníh. V uvedených analýzach sa postupuje od lexikálnych cez morfologické, syntaktické roviny textov až k štylistickým. Pozornosť sa sústreďuje na prenikanie prvkov umeleckého štýlu do náučných, vedeckých textov, s cieľom odhaliť základné charakteristiky neumeleckých textov s umeleckými prvkami v textoch originálov. Osobitným problémom tejto časti práce sú otázky praktickej realizácie a adekvátneho prenosu umeleckých prvkov z textov originálov do prekladových textov. Sú tu uvedené aj príklady na niektoré typy posunov a zmien , ktoré nastali v prekladateľskom procese. Porovnávaním jednotlivých prekladov sa nesledovala ich kritika, ale predovšetkým analýza rôznych prekladateľských prístupov prekladateľov v procese prekladu takýchto typov textov.
Výsledkom tejto analýzy je skutočnosť, že odborné a náučné texty, ktoré v sebe obsahujú rôznu mieru umeleckých prvkov by mali prekladať prekladatelia, ktorí popri vynikajúcej znalosti východiskového (anglického) jazyka dokážu pracovať aj s celou škálou jazykových prostriedkov cieľového (slovenského) jazyka resp. majú aj istú prekladateľskú skúsenosť s prekladom textov umeleckej literatúry. Ideálna je spolupráca prekladateľ-odborník a asistent-filológ resp. prekladateľ-filológ a asistent-odborník. Do popredia vystupuje hlavne dôležitosť odbornej resp. jazykovej redakcie prekladu.
References
Hawking, Stephen: A Brief History of Time (The Updated and Expanded Edition). New York. Bantam Press, 1996
Hawking, Stephen: Universe in a Nutshell. New York. Bantam Books, 2001
Hawking, Stephen: Stručné dejiny času. Bratislava. ALFA, 1991. Translation by Anton Šurda
Hawking, Stephen: Vesmír v orechovej škrupinke. Bratislava. Slovart, 2002. Translation by Igor Kapišinský
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Web
http://www.hawking.org.uk/home/hindex.html
http://www.hawking.org.uk/about/aindex.html
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/lindex.html
http://www.fif.umb.sk/downloads/anglistika/vilikovsky/TP3Ekvi.doc
http://brloh.funny.sk/info.php?sid=77539&cid=53
http://www.dofo.sk/clanok.aspx?vId=76&cId=2152##
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