Meaning in Translation Field

Meeting ¾
12 - 13 March 2015
Translation process  getting the meaning:
- word (in isolation)
 there is no one-to-one correspondence between the items
of one language and those of another.
- Derivation meaning from the relationship of word to word
Translator  understand semantic sense and communicative
value.
Word is organized into sentences and utterances (spoken or
written) in communication act by participants in time and
space, in an absolute sense, unique and unrepeatable.
Word meaning:
a. Reference theory
b. Componential analysis
c. Meaning postulates
A. Reference theory
- the link between the word and the ‘objet’ to which it
refers
- the connection is an arbitrary one constrained by no
more than social convention
Explicit model by Saussure:
Concept encyclopedic entry
Linguistic sign = objet
Acoustic
image lexical information

Translator: find particularly annoying and frustrating word

 componential analysis
B. Componential Analysis (CA)
process of pattern recognition and the
segmentation of the data into discrete and
codable elements.
The meaning of word is the sum of a number of
elements of meaning which is possesses –
semantic distinctive features - and that these
elements are binary, marked as present or
absent ( + or - )
 man – woman – boy – girl
Fuller entry for the components:
1. Its pronunciation
2. Syntactic information
3. Any significant morphological information
4. Semantic sense
 man /mæn/
‘man’
noun
+ count
plural = /men/
+ human
+ adult
+ male
Translator’s point of view:
CA has considerable attractions as a practical technique
to solve the problem of lack of fit between the lexical
items of two languages.

Two problems in CA:

1. The features proposed for the analysis of any item are
arbitrary
2. The binary nature of the features (possession or non-
possession)
 multiple rather than binary (metal); hierarchical relationship
(measuring scale); overlap (house and home); assumed norm
(short and tall)
C. Meaning Postulates
 Problem : relationship of similarity and difference
between concepts and the words that express them.
 inclusion (what concepts have in common)
exclusion ( what distinguishes the concepts)
synonymy (overlap features)
1. Hyponymy
One concept (or the meaning of one word) is included
in another (total inclusion)
? Differ: oats (food for animals-food for men)
2. Synonymy
Involves overlap, assumes that either item may be
selected in any context.
Absolute synonymy is very rare and perhaps
impossible.
 context of use and co-text of usage
3. Antonymy
Concerns exclusion, involves a number of relationships
of contrast, opposition and gradeable opposites.
Dictionary
 lexical field
 denotation and connotation meaning
Thesaurus
storing groups of words (and phrases) in
a number of ways: synonymy, antonymy,
related in other ways.
• Sentence-meaning
Word and sentences
 utterance, sentence and proposition
 situation, context and universe of discourse
a. Word and sentence
 co-text: relating word-meaning to word-meaning
 context : explicit reference to the functional and
communicative usage.
1. Tigers are animals. Analytic sentence
2. Tigers are fierce. Synthetic sentence
Contradiction
3. Tigers are birds. Ambiguity
4. They found him a good friend. Anomaly/nonsense
Entailment
5. Semantics killed the students. Implicature
6. A. He wrote a book on linguistics. Presupposition
B. He wrote a book.
7. A. What it his book about ?
B. It’s not about athletics!
8. Can you lend me Leech’s Semantics ?
b. Utterance, sentence and proposition
utterance : being concrete and context-sensitive
sentence : abstract and context-free
proposition : unit of meaning which constitutes the subject-
matter of a sentence.
ex. A hit B with a hammer
c. Situation, context and universe of discourse
 situation: the totality of the circumstances in which the
utterance was issued.
 context : relationship between the situation and the
utterance
 universe of discourse : whatever can be said about a
particular subject and includes what the participants know and
what they don’t know and others do; all the propositions which
could be constructed in relation to the subject.