Translation Toolkit

5. Synonymy

Textual Filters; Issues of Synonymy
Literal Meaning & Synonymy

There is very rarely full synonymy in literal meaning (usually the 'head' or first meaning given in a dictionary).

This is an example of intralingual synonymy at the literal level only. Even here, however, there is some loss in the differing forms of expression, such as the use of the possessive form, -'s.

As the reader works from the outer circle of the set of several embedded circles above to the centre the scope of reference becomes more narrowly defined or particularized from the very vague 'something', then a general term for hand-held tools, 'implement', to the three inner circles, which specify the precise semantic field of the object. The wider term bears a relationship of hypernymy or generalizing (also sometimes called superordination) to the narrower term, which in turn bears a relationship of hyponymy or particularizing to the wider one. This relationship is also displayed in the Venn diagram, which represents the relationship of hypernymy of 'boat' to its hyponyms, 'dingy', 'yacht', and 'punt'. Clearly when the translator chooses to use 'boat' as a hypernym of TL nouns for 'yacht' or 'dingy' the specificity of the ST information is lost. The ST author may well have chosen the hyponym to convey information which is significant to the thematic concerns of the narrative or to characterization. For example, a dingy is an insignificant purchase compared to a yacht; a dingy may be intended only for children's use; ownership of a yacht may signify wealth, and conspicuous consumption.

Comment on the differences in each set: Car, auto, automobile, motor, limousine, limo, banger, jalopy Comfortable, comfy, homely, cosy, snug (of a place) Dad, daddy, pa, papa, pop, father, pater, sire, old man (An exercise from Baker 1992: 43)

Loss brought about by generalizing or particularizing needs to be carefully considered, and - if necessary - compensated for. Students can build up their knowledge of semantic fields by using SL and TL thesauri, and - where available - the relevant CUP volume on using TL synonyms or vocabulary. There are also useful exercises in Baker 1992.

Special attention should also be paid to the difference between languages which have grammatical gender, and those which do not, such as English. For example, languages with grammatical gender tend to personify objects according to the gender of the noun, and not because of any assumptions about the objects in question having masculine or feminine characteristics. The figure of Death is a good example of this; it is often personified as feminine in French or Spanish, and masculine in German, but the characteristics it possesses remain constant, and include being seductive and being a hunter, traditionally feminine and masculine characteristics, respectively. Similar considerations may hold true for the grammatical gender of other categories of things, such as objects, animals, and relatives.

Collocation and Collocative Clashes:

Collocation was mentioned in Section 3. It is the frequent occurrence of one word with another so that, to a native speaker, the combination sounds right. Linguistic corpora (such as the British National Corpus) can be used to explore regularly occurring collocations. Compare the standard collocation 'a juicy red apple' with the more unusual 'blue loving apple'. In the second example, the adjectives applied are not qualities which are usually associated with fruit, and so they sound odd in most contexts; surrealist writing might be an exception. Sometimes writers manipulate the readers' expectations concerning collocation:

Herman J. Mankiewica had been a fine screenwriter..., a compulsive gambler, a famous drinker, a slashing wit, and a man who was almost ferociously accident prone. I first met Hugh Fraser in 1977. Charming, rather hesitant, a heavy smoker and a heavy gambler, he had made such headway into his fortune that he had decided to sell his last major asset... (Baker 1992: 51)

Here the first writer has used the standard collocation, 'compulsive gambler'. In the second example, the writer extends the usual range of 'heavy' which collocates with drinker or smoker to gambling by analogy. This creates a marked collocation, which emphasizes the effect of gambling on Fraser as a deleterious vice.

As with relationships of hyponymy to hypernymy, cultural differences do exist. A good example is 'black and x', where x is a noun referring to a colour: black and white, black and tan, black and red. If a writer or translator chooses to reverse the collocation, the formulation will jar or clash, and readers will probably only view the reversal positively if it serves some particular function. In quite a number of other languages, however, the usual word order is to put the noun denoting black second; such as in the French collocation, 'rouge et noir', or the Spanish, 'blanco y negro'. As with issues of synonymy, the manipulation of collocation may give rise to the need to palliate the effects of translation loss; and if this loss is inevitable, it may give rise to the need to compensate (See Section 3 Compromise & Compensation).

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