This Manual Is Designed to Be Used by Students of Foreign Language and Philology Departments at Higher Schools

Preface

This manual is designed to be used by students of foreign language and philology departments at higher schools who are interested in acquiring both a theoretical and practical knowledge of the translation field. The purpose of the book is to offer the reader some basic ideas and concepts of modern translation studies which provide the necessary preparation and background for career translation work. The range of translation topics raised in the book is intended to cover the most vital areas of translatology included in the university curriculum.

The manual consists of three parts, references, lexicographic sources used, as well as a list of fiction translated from English into Russian and from Russian into English and an appendix.

Part I includes 14 chapters which deal with four main areas of translation studies: (a) key notions and categories of translation studies, (b) translation studies and lexis, (c) translation studies and grammar and (d) translation studies and style.

Chapters 1-6 deal with a set of key issues in the field of translation including a brief overview of the history of translation and an introduction to the subject matter of linguistic translation theory, the problem of interrelation of contrastive linguistics and translation studies, the most well-known models of translation elaborated in this country and abroad, equivalence and adequacy of translation and other central translation notions, translation operations, techniques and transformations. Chapters 7-10 focus on lexical problems of translation on the level of a word and a word-group. Chapters 11-13 reveal grammatical problems of translation at pre-textual and textual levels. Chapter 14 considers problems of retaining in translation of stylistic peculiarities of a newspaper text.

Part II represents workshop materials which centre round the main areas of translation. The assignments in this section are intended to assist students to develop their own language and writing skills in the translation field. Extracts for translation have been selected from authentic sources and refer to various types of discourse (belles lettres, technical and business texts, political discourse).

Part III offers sample tests which students are requested to do in order to check their translation skills in practice. These tests include assignments that refer to translating specific language phenomena on lexical and gramatical levels and revision tests.

Appendix I contains a scheme of translation analysis of a text which the student may find helpful to apply after translating several texts of different types and genres. The analysis involves discussion of various translation problems at pretextual and textual levels and reasons for making particular translation solutions. Appendix II is a collection of different definitions of the notion of translation advanced at various times both by Russian and foreign scholars. Appendix III gives extracts from two authentic English sources that discuss the problem of translation competence.

The special feature of this manual is that it deals with translation