Equivalence at word level

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL

This chapter discusses translation problems arising from lack of equivalence at word level; what does a translation do when there is no word in the target language which expresses the same meaning as to he source language word? But before we look at specific types of non-equivalence and the various strategies which can be used for dealing with them, It is important to establish what a word is, whether or not it is the main unit of meaning in language, what kinds of meaning it can convey, and how languages differ in the way they choose to express certain meaning but not others.

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

2.1 THE WORD IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

2.1.1 What is a word?

              The word is the smallest unit of language that can be used by itself (bolinger  and sears,1968:43).

2.1.2 Is There  A One–To-One Relationship Between Word And Meaning?

Elements of meaning which are represented by several orthographic words in one language, say English, may be represented by one orthographic word in another, and vice versa. For instance,

Ø  “tennis player” I written as one word in Turkish “tenisci”

Ø  “Cheap” as one word in Japanese “yasukattara” but in Spanish rendered by three words: “ pasar a maquina.

2.1.3 Introducing Morphemes

       Morpheme To describe the minimal formal element of meaning in language, as distinct from word, which may or may not contain several elements of meaning. thus, an important difference between morpheme and words is that a morpheme cannot contain more than one element of meaning and cannot be further analyzed.

To take an example from English,

v  Unbelievable

v  Unforgettable

Kind of morpheme

·         Free morpheme : (can stand alone as word):function and content  word

·         Bound morpheme: like “un” appear only together with other morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes.

·         Derivational morpheme: can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: from the addition of “ness “to “happy”, for example, we get “happiness.

·         Inflectional morpheme: is affixes that not change class of roots if it attach to the root or modify a word’s tense, number, aspect, and so on.

Grammatical functions of morpheme:

1.      plurality, ex : books

                                                                Bags

2.   Gender, ex:   stewardess

                                                               Manageress

3.  Tenses, ex:   considered

4.  Change the class of word,

    Ex: happiness = Happy (adj) + ness (bound morpheme) = noun

2.2   Lexical Meaning

Lexical meaning is the basic meaning of word based on dictionary and not yet added from other words. Example: book = booking

2.2.1 Propositional Vs Expressive Meaning

The propositional meaning is this type of meaning which provides the basic on which we can judge an utterance as true or false. For instance, the propositional meaning of shirt is a piece of clothing worn on the upper part of the body.

Expressive meaning cannot be judged as true or false. This is because expressive meaning release to the speaker’s feelings or attitude rather than to what words and utterances refer to.

Two or more words or utterances can therefore have the same propositional meaning but differ in their expressive meanings. This is true not only of words and utterances within the same language, where such words are often referred to as synonyms or near-synonyms, but also for words and utterances from different languages.

2.2.2 Presupposed Meaning

Presupposed meaning arises from co-occurrence restrictions, that is to say, it depends on what other words we expect to see before or after a certain lexical unit.

Restrictions can be: 

v  Selection restrictions: these are a function of the propositional meaning of word. For example: next to the adjective “furious “we expect a human subject, expect in the case of figurative language.

v  Collocation restrictions: these are semantically arbitrary restrictions which do not follow logically from the propositional meaning of a word.

2.2.3 Evoked Meaning

Evoked meaning arises from dialect and register variation. A dialect is a variety of language which has currency within a specific community or group of speakers and can be :

      Geographical ( restricted to a certain area )

      Temporal ( restricted to a certain period of time )

      Social ( used by different social classes. Ex : scent/perfume )

Register is a variety of language that a language user considers appropriate to a specific situation. Register variation arises from variations in the following:

a)      Field of discourse: this is an abstract term for ‘what is going on’ that is relevant to the speaker’s choice of linguistic items.

b)      Tenor of discourse: an abstract term for the relationships between the people taking part in the discourse.

c)      Mode of discourse: an abstract term for the role that the language is playing (speech, essay, lecture, instructions) and for its medium of transmission (spoken, written).

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

    

1.      Conclusion

This chapter discusses about equivalence at word level, where the material is about the problems of translation on the equivalence at word level.   and equivalence at word level it self is a matter of how to equalize the inside word on his level. And clarified that this matter has some parts that about a word, about the morpheme, lexical meaning lexical meaning.dan is also divided into several parts: the first of propositional vs. expressive meaning, both on presupposed meaning and final evoked meaning.

And expected from the subject matter, we can figure out what it is equivalence at word level as well as its parts so that it facilitates us to know what to do as a good translator.