Lecture 15. Peculiarities of translation of phraseological units in Business English

2.1 Translation of phraseological units in English
2.2 The peculiarities of translation of phraseological units in the business in the business world

Objectives: to show peculiarities of rendering phraseologisms in Business English

Speaking about set phrases it is first of all necessary to differentiate between figurative and non-figurative set phrases. Non-figurative set phrases are translated according to the prin​ciples that have already been discussed in connection with words and free phrases. The main guiding principle here is to remember the norms of TL.
Figurative set phrases deserve special discussion. The main peculiarity of these phraseological units is their specific meaning that often cannot be deduced from the meanings of their com​ponents. It is the meaning of the whole, not of separate words, that should be rendered in translation. Based on imagery, phra​seological units serve to make the text more expressive; they are also often responsible for stylistic coloring of the text. Since the text in TL must be as expressive as it is in SL and characterized by the same stylistic coloring, it becomes very important to find an adequate variant of translating every phraseological unit.
Despite differences of opinion, most authors agree upon some points concerning the distinctive features of phraseological units, such as:
1.​ Integrity (or transference) of meaning means that none of the idiom components is separately associated with any referents of objective reality, and the meaning of the whole unit cannot be deduced from the meanings of its components;
2.​ Stability (lexical and grammatical) means that no lexical substitution is possible in an idiom in comparison with free or variable word-combinations (with an exception of some cases when such substitutions are made by the author intentionally). The experiments conducted in the 1990s showed that the meaning of an idiom is not exactly identical to its literal paraphrase given in the dictionary entry. That is why we may speak about lexical flexibility of many units if they are used in a creative manner. Lexical stability is usually accompanied by grammatical stability which prohibits any grammatical changes;
3.​ Separability means that the structure of an idiom is not something indivisible; certain modifications are possible within certain boundaries. Here we meet with the so-called lexical and grammatical variants. To illustrate this point I shall give some examples: "as hungry as a wolf (as a hunter)", "as safe as a house (houses)" in English, "как (будто, словно, точно) в воду опущенный, «оседлать своего «любимого конька»», «раскидывать умом мозгами», «раскинуть (пораскинуть) умом мозгами» in Russian.
4.​ Expressivity and emotiveness means that idioms are also characterized by stylistic colouring. In other words, they evoke emotions or add expressiveness.
On the whole phraseological units, even if they present a certain pattern, do not generate new phrases. They are unique.
Interlanguage comparison, the aim of which is the exposure of phraseological conformities, forms the basis of a number of theoretical and applied trends of modern linguistic research, including the theory and practice of phraseography. But the question of determining the factors of interlanguage phraseological conformities as the main concept and the criterion of choosing phraseological equivalents and analogues as the aspect concepts is still at issue.
The analysis of special literature during the last decades shows that the majority of linguists consider the coincidence of semantic structure, grammatical (or syntactical) organization and componential (lexeme) structure the main criteria in defining the types of interlanguage phraseological conformities/disparities with the undoubted primacy of semantic structure.
The primacy of semantic conformity/disparity is determined by the nature of human logical thinking as well as by the nature of real objects and the use of it may be substantiated by such realities as the well-known common character of human experience in the process of cognition.
The process of defining semantic conformity/disparity of English and Russian phraseological units can be shown in the following way:
1.​ presentation of phraseological meaning of the given English unit (or its phrase-semantic variant) as a set of minimum semantic components;
2.​ search for a corresponding semantic unit in the Russian language;
3. ​ presentation of phraseological meaning of the Russian unit found (or its phraseo-semantic variant) as a set of minimal semantic components;
4. ​ measurement of the componential (seme) structure of the English and the Russian phraseological unit (phraseo-semantic variant or variants) for the purpose of determining their identity or revealing their difference.

The seme organization identity of Russian and English idiom meanings or semantic equivalence means full seme organization coincidence of significational-denotational microcomponents and connotational components. After studying idioms in terms of groups, classes and categories, we must mention the fact that they
"...serve chiefly for the connotational (subjective, evaluative, emotive and expressive) designation of objects and notions and that their prevalence and role are especially high in those fields where either connotational meanings (for example, feelings, affects) are expressed spontaneously, or where the question is about things and phenomena causing maximum inner interest and emotional experience of a person." (Reichstein, 1980).
The adherents of the so-called "traditional" conception of connotation include emotive, evaluative, expressive and functional-stylistic components into it. So we may also speak of four types of connotational semes: evaluative, emotive, expressive and functional-stylistic.The seme organization coincidence of significational-denotational microcomponent means the coincidence of integral and differential semes in the structure of phraseological meaning of Russian and English idioms.
Here is an example of phraseological semantic equivalence:
The Russian unit «бросать (кидать, швырять, пускать) камнем (грязью) в кого-либо» and the English phraseological unit "cast (throw) a stone (stones) at smb (somebody)" are characterized by common semes "a person", "a person's action","human relations", semes, depicting such actions as "to accuse smb", "to slander smb", negative evaluative seme and the emotive seme of disapproval. Both idioms belong to interstyle units and are deprived of expressive seme. So we can consider them full semantic equivalents. At the same time some differences may be typical of the componential structure of Russian and English unit phraseological meaning. In the first place such differences may be observed in their connotations, first of all, in their functional stylistic and emotive components. We can also observe some minor partial differences in the seme structure of their significational-denotational microcomponents (according to Reichstein in this case we meet with ideographic synonyms and hyperhyponymy), i.e. we observe the presence of one or several additional differential semes both in the Russian and the English phraseological units. In this case three connotational components - emotive, expressive and functional-stylistic - may differ or coincide. Such partial divergence with close resemblance is typical of semantic analogues.