УДК 81’225.2
Ірина Свідер
(Кам’янець-Подільський національний університет імені Івана Огієнка)
HANDLING ATTRIBUTIVE GROUPS (CLUSTERS)
Attribute cluster is a group of words with a key noun and a number of attributive components modifying it. An attribute group is a chain of definitions made up of several elements, for example, from general nouns and adjectives, sometimes from a whole phraseological unity or even a sentence, formed with the help of juxtaposition [1, p. 21].
In English the attributive phrase based on subordinate relations between the key word and the attributes consists of components belonging to different semantic groups. Semantic relations between the components of the attributive phrase can vary. The attribute can denote the following: place (a beach house), time (evening newspaper), characteristics (overtime ban), reason (sickness pay), object (fish export), source (membership fees), purpose (face cream), subject (UNESCO call) and others.
The peculiarity of the modern English language to use a number of attributive words before a key noun is of a great interest both for theoretical and practical points of view. The practical aspect of the study is, first of all, connected with the translation of such attributive clusters in languages, typologically different from English.
English and Ukrainian attributive groups differ in their vectors. The English phrase is regressive, that is, it develops to the left, with the headword being the final element on the right. The Ukrainian attributive phrase is progressive, it develops mostly to the right, with the attributes used in postposition. For example: US car safety expert – американський фахівець з безпеки автомобілів. This is also true of clusters with restrictive apposition. For example: газета “Київ” – the Kyiv newspaper; готель “‘Версаль” – the Versailles hotel [2, p. 141].
- Shimanovskaya pointed out the translation algorithm which undoubtedly leads to the successful translation of lexical units with attributive groups. In this case, it is necessary to set the boundaries of the attribute group (it starts with an article, demonstrative or possessive pronoun, numeral, and ends with a noun); to translate the noun itself; to analyze semantic connections between members of an attributive structure; to highlight semantic groups and to translate them in a “mirror” order (from right to left) [4]. Sometimes to choose translation decisions, you have to refer to a wide context or even extralinguistic factors [3, p. 113].
Thus, to translate a multi-structured attributive group, it is necessary to analyze the meaning of its immediate constituents and then to adapt them to a proper Ukrainian structure. But there may be phrases in which the semantic relations could be interpreted in different ways. For example, Hong Kong proposals can be understood as a) proposals made in Hong Kong (place), b) proposals concerning Hong Kong (characteristics), c) proposals made when Hong Kong did not belong to China, before it got a new name of Xiang gang (time). In this case only the context gives a clue to the correct understanding of the meaning.
As it has been pointed out the attribute may refer not only to some property of the object but also to its location, purpose, cause, etc. As a result, the translator has to make a thorough analysis of the context to find out what the meaning of the group is in each particular case. He must be also aware of the relative freedom of bringing together such semantic elements within the attributive group in English that are distanced from each other by a number of intermediate ideas. Besides, many attributive groups are polysemantic and are translated in a different way in different contexts. The semantic relationships within a multi-member group need not be linear.
We may also observe some more difficulties in handling multi-member attributive structures. Native speakers of English often use “multi-storied” structures with complicated internal semantic relationships. E.g.: “the poll tax” – “податок на душу населення”, “the poll tax states” – “штати, де введений податок на душу населення”, “the poll tax states governor” – “губернатор штату з питань оподаткування” and so on.
The same goes for attributive groups with latent predication where the whole sentence is used to qualify a noun as its attribute. Here correspondences can also be described in an indirect way only by stating that the attribute is usually translated into Ukrainian as a separate sentence and that this sentence should be joined to the noun by a short introductory element: The Judge’s face wore his own I–knew–they–were–guilty–all–along expression. – На обличчі судді з’явився його звичний вираз, який промовляв: «Я завжди знав, що вони були винуваті».
Thus, summarizing the process of translating attributive word combinations from English into Ukrainian, we should emphasize that English grammar has a structural type as opposed to Ukrainian, where such attributive relationships are usually expressed by a relative adjective that has affix exponent. In English, when the first word has no adjective affix (suffix or prefix), it is often difficult to unambiguously determine which part of speech the wordage belongs to in such combinations. This fact causes the greatest difficulties in translation of attributive groups.
LITERATURE
- Бархударов Л. С., Штелинг Д. А. Грамматика английского языка. М.: Либроком, 2013. 42 с.
- Прошина З. Г. Теория перевода. Москва: Издательство Юрайт, 2019. 320 с.
- Соколова Г. В. Грамматические трудности перевода с английского языка на русский. М.: Высш. шк., 2008. 204 с.
- Шимановская Л. А. Лексические единицы с атрибутивными группами: специфика выявления и сложности перевода на русский язык. Вестн. ПНИПУ. Проблемы языкознания и педагогики. 2017. № 4. С. 72–78.