Введение в теорию и практику перевода (на материале английского языка). Ольга Петрова

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      3. Since the phraseological stock of every language reflects the history and culture of the people speaking the language, many ideas which are common to all peoples are expressed differently in different languages: in Russian we say "когда рак на горе свистнет", while in English they say "when pigs fly", in Russian – "рыбак рыбака видит издалека", and in English – "birds of a feather flock together". Since the meaning of the first phraseological unit is in no way connected with either crayfish or pigs the lexical way of wording the idea ("something never going to happen") is of secondary importance. The main task here is to find a phraseological unit of TL expressing the same idea and belonging to the same stylistic register (стилистический регистр) as the original phraseological unit. The same is true about the second example. The complete substitution of the image does not in any way change the general meaning of the proverb. "У семи нянек дитя без глазу" is an adequate translation of the English "Too many cooks spoil the broth" because of complete coincidence of sense and stylistic reference.

      So in all the cases when phraseological units of SL have no equivalents in TL, and in TL there are no expressions based on the same image, complete substitution of image (i.e. use of phraseological analogues) is recommended.

      4. In SL there may exist phraseological units that have neither equivalents nor analogues in TL. The idea expressed in these units has no fixed expression in TL. If the image underlying them is not transparent and loan translation is impossible, such phraseological units are translated descriptively, i.e. by free phases which are neither phraseological nor figurative: "get the right (wrong) end of the stick" – "оказаться в выгодном (невыгодном) положении", "in a whole skin" – "благополучно, без повреждений", etc.

      These are the main ways of translating figurative phraseological units.

      When translating phraseological units it is necessary to remember that some of them have a definite national character, which makes their translation rather difficult. On the one hand, it is not always easy to preserve the national "flavour" in translation, on the other – there is always a danger of introducing national elements of TL. Semantically "to carry coals to Newcastle" and "ездить в Тулу со своим самоваром" are analogues, nevertheless one can hardly insert Тула in a text translated from English. In such cases it is advisable to find (or coin, if necessary) a neutral expression with the same figurative meaning: "носить уголь в шахту (воду в реку, дрова в лес и т.д.)". There should be no "коломенская верста" or "Тришкин кафтан" or "щи лаптем хлебать" in a Russian translation of any foreign text.

      Lexical transformations

      They say that translation starts where dictionaries end. Though somewhat exaggerated, this saying truly reflects the nature of translation. Dictionaries list all regular correspondences between elements of lexical systems of languages. Translation deals not so much with the system of language but with speech (or to be more exact – with a text, which is a product of speech). So in the process of translating one has to find it by himself which of the meanings of a polysemantic word is realized in a particular context, to see if under the influence of this context the word has acquired a slightly new shade of meaning and to decide how this new shade of meaning (not listed in any dictionary) can be rendered in TL. E.g. no dictionary ever translates the verb "to be" as "лежать"; nevertheless it is the best way to translate it in the sentence "She was in hospital" – "Она лежала в больнице". Moreover, it has already been said that every language has its specific way of expressing things, a way that may be quite alien to other languages. That is why a literal (word-for-word) translation of a foreign text may turn out clumsy (if not ridiculous) in TL. To avoid it one has to resort to some special devices worked out by the theory of translation and known as lexical transformations (or contextual substitutions) (лексические трансформации, или контекстуальные замены). There are several types of such transformations.