…они отправились на авеню Фридланд к юрисконсульту посольства – к "солиситору", как его называют американцы. …Солиситор позвонил по телефону следователю… А затем они возвратились в "Мажестик", и там Кларк в компании с солиситором выпили в баре по две рюмки виски…
The word "solicitor" here is transcribed and its meaning is explained ("юрисконсульт"), after which the transcription is used without further explanation.
The same method is used when translating the names of companies or titles of periodicals. E.g. " 'Daily Express' reports…" should be translated as "Английская консервативная газета 'Дейли Экспресс' сообщает…" because the title "Daily Express" is well known in England and "Дейли Экспресс" is not so widely known (and not informative in itself) for the Russian readers.
It is necessary to remember that explanations and footnotes contain additional information which is not expressed directly in the original text and is introduced by the translator. So it demands great knowledge on the part of the translator.
In case of composite words loan-translations (кальки) can be coined in the TL, e.g. the English noun "moonquake" is quite adequately translated as "лунотрясение", "as well as the Russian "луноход" is rendered in English as "moon crawler".
The next method of translating words having no correspondence in TL is based on approximate rendering of the notion (приближенный перевод). It can be described as "translation on the analogy". If a word in SL expresses some notion that has no name in TL it is necessary to look for some analogous, similar (though not identical) notion in TL. E.g.: if we are not translating a cookery book but a story or a novel it is quite possible to translate the Russian "кисель" as "jelly", though actually they are different things (they use starch for "кисель" and gelatin for jelly). Another example – in Russia we do not use wardrobe trunks and it is next to impossible to find a Russian way of expressing this notion, but usually (unless it is very important for the context) it can be quite satisfactorily translated as чемодан (or, if necessary, большой чемодан).
The last way out of the difficulty caused by lack of correspondence between words of SL and TL is the so-called descriptive translation (описательный перевод). In this case the meaning of one word in SL is rendered by a group of words in TL ("spacewalk" – "выход в открытый космос", "spacesick" – "не переносящий условий космического полета"; "самодеятельность" – "amateur talent activities", "районирование" – "division into districts", etc.).
So there are five principal ways of translating words that have no direct lexical correspondences in TL. They are 1) transcription and transliteration, 2) footnotes and explanations, 3) loan translation, 4) analogical translation, and 5) descriptive translation. They all have certain drawbacks and their use is limited both by linguistic and extralinguistic factors (explanations make the text too long and sometimes clumsy, loan translation is applicable only to composite words, analogues are not always accurate enough, etc.). However, proper combination of these means makes it possible to translate any text rendering all the necessary information. When choosing means of translating it is also important to keep in view stylistic characteristics of the text itself and of different words in both the languages. Special attention should be paid to peculiarities of word combinability in TL, which may differ greatly from that of SL.
Translation of phrases
Usually translation of free phrases does not cause any specific difficulties. The main thing to be remembered here is the interplay of the meanings of components, because every component should be translated in such a way as to form the whole meaning of the phrase. In the English language, however, there are some types of phrases, which deserve special attention due to peculiarities of their semantic structure. Fist of all it refers to phrases with preposed attributes. All these phrases are built according to the pattern ATTRIBUTE + (ATTRIBUTE + …) + SUBSTANTIVE, but their semantic structure may vary considerably. Preposed attributes may denote properties and qualities of the substantive itself or of other attributes (cf. "south-coast convalescent camp" – where both "south-coast" and "convalescent" characterize "camp" – and "free educational institution" where "free" is not connected semantically with "institution"); besides properties and qualities, they may denote some notion with which the substantive is connected, they may express local, temporal and other characteristics. That is why it is often impossible or at least undesirable to translate such phrases using similar Russian constructions, since in Russian semantic relations between a preposed attribute and a substantive are rather uniform: if a "happy man" is certainly "счастливый человек", "a medical man" can hardly be translated as "медицинский человек". There may be several attributes in a phrase and they are not necessarily expressed by adjectives. Very often the function of a preposed attribute is fulfilled by a noun (the "stone wall" type of phrases) which, in its turn, may also have an attribute (e.g. "the front door key"). Sometimes it is not easy to see which of the nouns is characterized by a particular attribute (does "retail philanthropy business" mean "business of retail philanthropy" or "retail business of philanthropy"?). Such ambiguity is practically impossible in Russian attributive phrases.
Another peculiarity of English phrases with preposed attributes is that an attribute may modify a noun which is as it were omitted and only implied (e.g. "dry pruning" does not mean that the process of pruning is dry, the word "dry" denotes the state of branches that are being pruned).
These semantic and structural peculiarities should be taken into consideration when translating attributive phrases with preposed attributes. First of all it is necessary to translate the final noun, which is always the main word in such a phrase. Then one should single out sense groups within the phrase and analyze relations between them. If all these groups modify the final noun they may be translated in the same succession as they are in English, or in a different succession, according to the norms of the Russian language. If they modify each other consecutively the reverse way of translation is often recommended:
There are several ways of translating such attributive phrases.
1. A preposed attribute may be translated with the help of a corresponding Russian preposed attribute: "a fine day" – "чудесный день", "matrimonial ad" – "брачное объявление".
2. A postpositional attribute may be used in Russian: "always-at-ease-girls" – "девушки, всегда чувствующие себя непринужденно". Often these postpositional attributes are expressed by nouns in the genitive case: "opposition leader" – "лидер оппозиции".
3. A preposed attribute of an English phrase may be expressed in Russian by a postpositional attribute joined to the modified noun by a preposition (usually N + prep + N): "highway robbery" – "грабеж на большой дороге", "youth unemployment" – "безработица среди молодежи".
4. A preposed attribute may be rendered in translation by an apposition: "her millionaire friend" – "ее друг-миллионер".
5. Sometimes one of the components of an English phrase (usually the preposed attribute itself) is best translated descriptively, i.e. by