|
Orwellian compound speak
times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling
This Newspeak message, sent for re-editing to Winston Smith, in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four, is given the following Oldspeak (standard English) translation:
The reporting of Big Brother’s Order for the Day in The Times of December 3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to Non-existing persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher Authority before filing.
Newspeak uses three kinds of words: the A vocabulary consists of everyday items, B vocabulary is ideological; and the C vocabulary contains technical terms. The B vocabulary comprises only compound words. Orwell describes it as ‘a sort of verbal short-hand, often packing whole ranges of ideas into a few syllables’. Its aim is ‘to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them’. Examples include: doublethink, goodthink, oldthink, crimethink, oldspeak, speakwrite, thoughtcrime, sexcrime, prolefeed, dayorder, blackwhite, duckspeak.
These forms could be inflected in the usual way. For example, goodthink (‘orthodoxy’ on Oldspeak), could generate goodthinking, goodthinkful, goodthinkwise, goodthinker, and goodthinked. (There are no irregular forms in Newspeak). Other terms in Newspeak are not so much compounds as blends, involving fragments of either or both of the constituent lexemes: Pornsec (Pornography Section), Ficdep (Fiction Department), Recdep (Records department), and Thinkpol (Thought Police).
The novel gives the impression that there are hundreds of such forms. Indeed, one of the characters (Syme) is engaged in the enormous task of compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. In fact, there are only a few dozen Newspeak terms mentioned in the novel and its Appendix, though several of them are used repeatedly.
1.3 THE TYPES OF NEOLOGISMS
The old words with new senses
Firstly lets take the existing words with new senses. These do not normally refer to new objects or processes and therefore are rarely technological. However, creneau, which started as a metaphor as creneau de vente (therefore is a ‘pseudo-neologism’) can normally be translated technically as ‘market outlet’ or informally as ‘range of demand for a particular type of product’ depending on the three types: 1) expert, 2) educated generalist, who may require extra explanations of the topic of the SL culture, 3) the ignorant, who may need explanations at various levels. All these types belong to the type of readership.
The term ‘gay’ appears to have been deliberately used by homosexual to emphasise their normality. It is no longer slang-translations such as schwul or homo will not do. Possibly when homosexuality loses al its negative connotations, there will be no need for this sense of ‘gay’ but it is likely to stay – it has gone into French and German as gay. You cannot go back in language – a colloquial term is not usually replaced by a formal term. To sum up, old words with new senses tend to be non-cultural and non-technical. They are usually translated either by a word that already exist in the TL, or by brief functional or descriptive term.
Existing collocations with new senses are a translator’s trap: usually these are ‘normal’ descriptive terms which suddenly become technical terms; their meaning sometimes hides innocently behind a more general or figurative meaning.
Ex: in English in German
‘unsocial hours’ Studen auberhalb der
normalen Arbeitzeit
‘high-rise’ Hochhaus
‘real-time’ (computers) Echtzeit
Existing collocations with new senses may be cultural or non-cultural. If the referent (concept or object) exists in the TL, there is usually a recognised translation or trough-translation. If the concept does not exist or the TL speakers are not yet aware of it, an economical descriptive equivalent has to be given. There is also the possibility of devising a new collocation in inverted commas, which can later be slyly withdrawn.
Translators also have to be aware of the reverse tendency, which is to use ‘technical’ collocations such as ‘critical mass’ or ‘specific gravity’ an a generalized sense – this often leads to jargon which can be ‘corrected’ in the translation of informative texts.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
