ISSN:
2181-3906
2024
International scientific journal
«MODERN SCIENCE АND RESEARCH»
VOLUME 3 / ISSUE 1 / UIF:8.2 / MODERNSCIENCE.UZ
1282
CULTURE-BOND AND EQUIVALENT-LACKING WORDS
Tillayeva Iroda To’lqin qizi
a student of UzSWLU
Muhammadjonova Gullola Elmurod qizi
a student of UzSWLU
Jo’rayeva Shaxzoda Otabek qizi
a student of UzSWLU
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10613225
Abstract.
This article deals about culture-bond words and non-equivalent words and the
ways of translate them, also, peculiarities that facing in translating. Approaches of teaching
culture-bond words different types of them are the essence of this article.
Key words:
culture-bond words, non-equivalent words, problems in translation process,
untranslatable expressions, appropriate equivalent terms.
КУЛЬТУРНАЯ СВЯЗЬ И ЭКВИВАЛЕНТНЫЕ СЛОВА, КОТОРЫМ НЕ
ХВАТАЕТ СЛОВ
Аннотация.
В данной статье речь идет о культурно-связывающих словах и
безэквивалентных словах и способах их перевода, а также об особенностях, с которыми
приходится сталкиваться при переводе. Подходы к обучению культурно-связывающим
словам различных их видов составляют суть данной статьи.
Ключевые слова:
слова, связанные с культурой, безэквивалентные слова, проблемы
в процессе перевода, непереводимые выражения, соответствующие эквивалентные
термины.
The untranslatable expression is one of the problems in translation process. Because of the
untranslatable expressions, the translator cannot find the appropriate equivalent terms. fully
transferred and target reader cannot accept it. As the consequence, the author’s message is not
completely. One of the untranslatable expressions is culturally bound-expression.
Newmark divides cultural language into two i.e. universal and personal languages. The
words die, live, star, swim, mirror and table are universal language. Meanwhile, the words
monsoon, steppe, dacha, and tagliatelle are cultural words. There will be a problem in translating
cultural words due to the cultural gap or distance between the source and target languages. Further,
Newmark (1998: 95) says that most cultural words are easy to detect, since they are associated
with a particular language and cannot be literally translated where literal translation would distort
the meaning. From Newmark’s explanation it is clear that cultural word is a word in particular
language that brings cultural value which does not exist or differ from other languages. When a
cultural word is translated, it is possible that the cultural value will change.
Culturally bound concepts are those words, concepts, or phrases that cannot be understood
by persons outside of a culture without the addition of contextual information. For example, non-
deaf people who are unfamiliar with Deaf people and their language use will not understand the
importance of a deaf identity, the role of ASL in the Deaf Community, the value for schools for
the deaf and other related concepts. Likewise, Deaf people may find it difficult to understand the
value of sound. Some examples are the radio, Top 40 Countdowns, the differences in Jazz, Rock
ISSN:
2181-3906
2024
International scientific journal
«MODERN SCIENCE АND RESEARCH»
VOLUME 3 / ISSUE 1 / UIF:8.2 / MODERNSCIENCE.UZ
1283
and Roll, the Blues, and other types of music, as well as other cultural identifiers such as Baby
Boomers, The Flower Children, The X Generation, and other cultural identifiers. These activities
are designed to increase your awareness of these concepts and to practice more effective ways of
interpreting them so they will be understood to “outsiders.”
Culture-bound words are generally rendered in the borrowing language through
transcription, transliteration and calque translation:
авеню, sputnik, Статуя Свободы.
As compared with transcription and transliteration, calques are more convenient. But at
the same time, calques can be misinterpreted by a receptor. For example an English calque from
the Chinese Red Guard, meaning ‘a member of an activist pro-Maoist youth movement in China,
is far more convenient than its transcription counterpart Hongwei Bing. However, a Russian
receptor can easily confuse this calque with another one, referring to the Russian revolution:
красногвардеец, whereas this word is known in Russian as a transcription borrowing: хунвэйбин.
There are cases when a translator resorts to calque translation without thinking thoroughly
of the meaning of a culture-bound word or, worse, without understanding it.
An explicatory translation reveals a culture-bound word meaning in full:
Bride price
— payment made by a man to the family from whom he takes a daughter in
marriage
, Expatriate
— someone who has left his home country to live and work in another
country,
xenophobia
— belief that people and things from other countries are dangerous.
зарплата
= annual bonus payment;
breadline
= очередь безработных за бесплатным
питанием. Explication of culture-bound words can be made in commentaries (both in-text and
after-text), and in footnotes. The disadvantage of in-text notes is that they distract a receptor’s
attention from the main text. However, after-text commentaries are not for a “lazy” reader. So the
most convenient, probably, are footnotes which save a reader’s time and effort.
Culturally-bound expressions are difficult to be translated. It occurs because the cultural
ideology between one region and another is different. The author of a novel is shaped by a
particular ideology in his/her environment. This ideology is reflected on the story of the novel.\
Another problem is translating the culturally-bound expressions by ignoring their cultural
value. In translation process, sometimes, the cultural ideology of the author and the translator are
different because they live in different social culture settings. The effect of this difference is that
the result of the translator’s interpretation potentially becomes different from author’s intention.
A translator interprets the source text by using his/her ideology that is different from
author’s ideology. Social culture variation is the key of this different interpretation. The author
includes his/her social culture belief and the translator interprets the text based on his/her social
culture belief. Because of this case, it is difficult to interpret a culturally-bound expression.
Culture-bound words are culturally loaded words borrowed from another language due to
language contacts.Comparison of languages and cultures reveals the following types of culture-
bound words:
unique culture-bound words: вытрезвитель,
analogues: drug-store – аптека, дедовщина – hazing;
ISSN:
2181-3906
2024
International scientific journal
«MODERN SCIENCE АND RESEARCH»
VOLUME 3 / ISSUE 1 / UIF:8.2 / MODERNSCIENCE.UZ
1284
similar words with different functions: cuckoo’s call (asked for by an American girl to find
out how soon she will get married149) – крик кукушки (counted by a Russian to find out how
long s/he will live)
language lacunae of similar notions: clover-leaf = автодорожная развязка в виде
клеверного листа.
According to the semantic fields, culture-bound words are classified into:
toponyms, or geographical terms (Beijing, Awaza, Akdaşaýak, Garadaşaýak, Akdepe);
anthroponyms, or people’s names (Alexander Hamilton, Bezirgen, Baýly, Çary);
zoonyms, or animal names (kangaroo, dingo, emu);
social terms (Государственная Дума, House of Commons, Halk Maslahaty, Mejlis);
military terms (есаул, подполковник, lance corporal);
education terms (junior high school, eleven-plus, child/day care; пионерский лагерь);
tradition and customs terms (Halloween, масленица, nowruz, gurbanlyk, küştdepdi);
ergonyms, or names of institutions and organizations (Heinemann, крайисполком,
санэпидстанция)
history terms (civil war, War of Independence, Великая Отечественная война)
words for everyday life (cuisine, clothing, housing, etc.) (sushi, kilt, trailer, валенки,
лапти)
titles and headlines (Война и мир, Vanity Fair).
Culture-bound words are characterized by a location and time. Based on the local coloring,
their classification includes:
exoticisms: chinook, bonsai, kabuki
barbarisms, i.e. words partially incorporated into a borrowing language: авеню, миссис,
хобби.
Based on the time coloring, culture-bound words classification falls into the following
groups:
neologisms: junk food, internet
historisms, or outdated words denoting realia that no longer exist: Beat Generation, WASP;
уезд, бурлак. Historisms have no synonyms in a modern language.
archaisms, or out-of-use words having synonyms in the modern language: Sire = father,
clime = climate and country; злато = золото, град = город.
In translating culture-bound terms, it is worth-discussing the strategies proposed by
Venutti: domestication and foreignization.
Domestication
involves making the TT read as fluently as possible, and this involves
careful text selection.
Foreignization
involves choosing a text that is obviously not of the target culture and
rendering the linguistic and cultural differences in the translation. It highlights the foreign culture
and prevents it from being absorbed by the target culture.
In the examples given to illustrate the method of domestication, it can be easily seen that
the text uses a neutral, typical term for Albanian. Whereas in the second method of foreignization,
the explanation for “tatami mat” is given by translating the word “mat” and preserving tatami, but
ISSN:
2181-3906
2024
International scientific journal
«MODERN SCIENCE АND RESEARCH»
VOLUME 3 / ISSUE 1 / UIF:8.2 / MODERNSCIENCE.UZ
1285
no explanation is given about this term. (tatami - a type of mat used as a flooring material in
traditional Japanese-style rooms)
In the second example from “Romeo and Juliet”, the word “law” is translated as “kanun”
that is kind of oral law that existed in Albanian since the XV-th century, and “Romeo and Juliet”
was written by Shakespeare in the XVI-the century. The translation wanted to place the reader
back in time, when there was no written law and “kanun” was the only form of law used.
A considerable number of SL units have no regular equivalents in TL. Equivalent-lacking
words are often found among SL names of specific national phenomena, such as the English words
“beefeater”, “touch-down”, “qualifier”. Some of such words are rendered with the help of
descriptive translation; the other cause the appearance in Ukrainian the new words which express
the idea (impeachment, exit-poll, baby-sitter). The absence of regular equivalents does not imply
that the meaning of an equivalent-lacking SL unit cannot be rendered in translation or that its
translation must be less accurate. We have seen that the words which have regular equivalents are
sometimes translated with the help of contextual substitutes. When the translator comes across an
equivalent-lacking word, he can use an occasional equivalent which can be created in one of the
following ways:
1. Using loan-words imitating in TL the form of the SL word or word combination, e.g.
impeachment, brain-drain. Such occasional formations are often adopted by the members of the
TL community and get the status of the regular equivalents.
2. Using approximate equivalents that are TL words with similar meaning which is
extended to convey additional information, e.g. “drugstore”, “afternoon”, “tree-hugger’.
3. Using all kinds of lexical transformations modifying their meaning of the SL word, e.g.
“He died of exposure” may be rendered into Ukrainian as……
4. Using an explanation to convey the meaning of the SL unit, e.g. land-slide,
brinkmanship.
Equivalent-lacking grammatical forms give less trouble to the translator. Here occasional
substitutes can be classified under three main groups:
1. Zero translations when the meaning of the grammatical unit is not rendered in the
translation since it is practically identical to the meaning of some other unit and can be safely left
out.
In the sentence “By that time he had already left Britain” the idea of priority expressed by
the Past Perfect does not need to be separately reproduced in TT as it is already made by using “by
that time” and “already”.
2. Approximate translation when the translator makes use of a TL form partially equivalent
to the equivalent-lacking SL unit, e.g. “I saw him enter the room”. The Ukrainian language does
not have complex objects but the meaning of the object clause is a sufficient approximation.
3. Transformational translation when the translator uses one of the grammatical
transformations. “Your presence at the meeting is not obligatory. Nor it is desirable.” It is better
to use the syntactical transformation in the translation of this sentence.
Equivalent-lacking words signify notions lacking in the target language and culture. They
are sometimes called untranslatable words or ‘unfindable’ words.
ISSN:
2181-3906
2024
International scientific journal
«MODERN SCIENCE АND RESEARCH»
VOLUME 3 / ISSUE 1 / UIF:8.2 / MODERNSCIENCE.UZ
1286
Sometimes equivalent-lacking words are associated with culture-bound words, the Russian
equivalent being реалии (derived from Latin realis, pl. realia), or culturally loaded words.
However, the term of culture-bound word is of narrower meaning than the term of
equivalent-lacking word. A culture-bound word names an object peculiar to this or that ethnic
culture (хохлома, гжель, матрешка; babyshower, Christmas yule log; kimono).
Equivalent-lacking words include, along with culture-bound words, neologisms, i.e. newly
coined forms, dialect words, slang, taboo-words, foreign (third language) terms, proper names,
misspellings, archaisms, etc.
Reasons for using equivalent-lacking words can be various:
extralinguistic: lack of a similar thing in the target culture;
lexical: lack of a corresponding one-word name for a thing in the target language: exposure
– оказание внешнего физического воздействия.
stylistic: difference in connotations, like in buck – доллар (colloquial vs. neutral), beauty
sleep – ранний сон до полуночи; бабушка, бабулечка, бабулька – Granny, old woman.
In conclusion, let us recall that any word may become equivalent-lacking if the particular
context makes it impossible to use its regular equivalent and forces the translator to resort to some
semantic transformation.
Translating equivalent-lacking words calls for a good deal of ingenuity and imagination on
the part of the translator who should be well trained to use the appropriate semantic
transformations, whenever necessary. At the same time he must be prepared to look for new ways
of solving his problems whenever the standard methods cannot be applied to the particular context.
REFERENCES
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https://studfile.net/preview/8399223/page:3/
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ТЕОРИЯ ПЕРЕВОДА (с английского языка на русский и с русского языка на
английский)/Theory of translation (from English into Russian and from Russian into
English): Уч. на англ. яз. – Владивосток: Изд-во Дальневост. ун-та, 2008 (3-е изд.,
перераб.), 2002 (2-е изд., испр. и перераб.), 1999 (1-е изд.)/ In English. Vladivostok:
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Lefevre, Andre (ed.) (1992). Translation/History/Culture. A Sourcebook. London and New
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Newmark, Peter (1988). A Text Book of Translation. New York and London: Prentice
Hall.
5.
Nida, Eugene A. (1964). Towards a science of translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill, p. 988.
