Mismatching of Lexical Systems between Languages

Throughout the previous chapters, the mismatching between the lexical items of two languages has been mentioned repeatedly. The purpose of this chapter is to emphasize this mismatch with more examples and discussion. It is this very mismatch which is the challenge for the translator who must find the best way to communicate the meaning of the source language in a receptor language which is often very different in its lexical inventory and different in how that inventory is grouped and divided.

Mismatching of reference One important aspect of the meaning of a word is its reference—the THING, EVENT, or ATTRIBUTE the word refers to. Speakers of the language "know the meaning" of a word because of their interaction with the THING, EVENT, or ATTRIBUTE being referred to. Contrast between members of a semantic set cannot be studied without some means of discovering the contrast that exists in the referential world (the world which the members of the speech community are experiencing, doing things in, etc., and about which they are talking). We have already noted that componential analysis depends on nonlinguistic reference, knowing what is being referred to. Even though the same THINGS, EVENTS, and ATTRIBUTES may exist in the referential world, the systems of reference do not match one-to-one across languages. Languages arbitrarily divide the meaning differently. Notice in display 9.1 the contrast between English and Mbembe of Nigeria (Barnwell 1980:24). English uses three words to refer to the same area of color which Mbembe refers to with one word. The following example shows that for the one English word carry the Tzeltal language of has many specific terms. However, there is no general word for carry.

jelup'in to carry across the shoulders nol to carry in the palm of the hand chup to carry in a pocket or pouch

100 chuy to carry in a bag lats' to carry under the arm pach to carry on the head toy to carry aloft yom to carry different items together lut' to carry with tongs pet to carry in the arms cats' to carry between one's teeth lup to carry on a spoon lat to carry in a container cuch to carry on the back

English Mbembe

Notice the additional examples (Barnwell 1980:25):

English cloth Hausa

Greek English wife/woman

Greek English love

Display 9.1

In translating from English into Tzeltal, the translator will have to choose from all the words for carry each time he is translating the one English word. The text will need to be studied carefully in order to

101 the correct word. However, when translating from Tzeltal into English there is only one word to choose from, the word carry. This will be used unless the manner in which the object is being carried is crucial to the or theme of the context. Then a descriptive phrase will need to be added in English to make clear the contrastive meaning components found in the Tzeltal words. For example, if pach occurs in the Tzeltal text, but how the object is carried is not focal, then carry would be sufficient in the English translation. However, if the manner in which the object is carried is important to the passage, the translator would add the contrastive meaning component, on the head. The Tlingit of Alaska have no general word for swim, but instead they have many specific words, depending on the kind of swimming involved, the participants involved, and their singularity or plurality. Note the following (data from Constance Naish):

di-taach (sing.) (of human being) ka-doo-ya-taach (plu.)

ya-x'aak (sing) ka-doo-ya-x'aak (plu.) (of large fish or sea mammal swimming under water)

ya-heen (of shoal of fish swimming under water)

ya-hoo (sing.) (of animal or human swimming ya-kwaan (plu.) on the surface)

ji-di-hoo (sing.) ji-du-k (of animal or human swimming waan (plu.) on the surface aimlessly, in circles)

si-hoo (sing.) (of bird on the surface) si-kwaan (plu.)

ya-dzi-aa (sing.) (of bird or fish swimming under ya-si-xoon (plu.) water with head emerging)

(of something swimming fast dli-tsees (sing.) and powerfully, especially sea ka-doo-ya-tsees (plu.) mammal)

ya-ya-goo (sing.) (of porpoises swimming as a ya-si-goo (plu.) school)

102 In translating from English into Tlingit, the translator would need to be very careful to choose the lexical items which have the meaning components which match the information in the text being translated. A person translating into his own language would know instinctively which would be correct, but he would need to study the source language English text and situation to find the correct word to use in the translation. He cannot ignore these distinctions even though English has only one word for swim.

Mismatching of semantic sets The lexical items of a language represent a great network of interrelated meanings often called a cognitive network. Different approaches to the analysis of this network will highlight different aspects of the semantic structure of the language. We have already looked at some of the ways in which one can look at part of the lexicon. Basic to all study of the lexicon is the principle that meaning can be discovered only in terms of semantic contrast. As translators study the meaning of words in either the source language or the receptor language, they are dealing with a system. Lexical items may be related to one another in various ways. They may have no meaning components in common, being related to one another simply in that they occur together when people are talking about a certain topic. The words are grouped together in the kinds of the members of the community using them, because the THINGS and EVENTS referred to are often associated with one another. For example, each language has a vocabulary which will be used when talking about the topic agriculture. The English words plow, plant, harvest, wheat, corn, hoe, binder, thrashing machine, etc., all belong to this topic. There will be subgroups when talking about specific kinds of agriculture. No two languages will have completely matching vocabularies which are used to talk about agriculture. There will be many more lexical items in one language than in another. The relationship between lexical items which are related in this way is rather loose. Nevertheless, this loose relationship is one of the elements of cohesion within a text.

In addition to this rather loose relationship, there will be subgroups of vocabulary which are very closely related to one another and tied together by some overlap of meaning components. For example, a set of words which would occur when talking about machinery used in agriculture would include plow, harrow, tractor, combine, etc., in English. These words make up a subset under the broad topic, agriculture. When discussing agriculture, another subset would be words such as branch, trunk, , seed, and fruit which all have a very close relationship to one another in that they are all part of a tree. There is a

103 part-whole relationship (see page 79 above) between each of these words and the word tree. But even a simple set of words referring to parts of a tree will not match exactly from one language to another. In Isnag (Philippines, data from Rudy Barlaan), the trunk of a tree is thought of as two parts, rather than only one as in English. The lower part is called pungut and the upper part arutang. In the Pangasinan language (Philippines), a bamboo plant is divided into three main parts—lamut 'roots', sigig 'trunk', and bwik 'hair'. The "hair" consists of bulawit 'branches' and bolurj 'leaves'. Some languages do not have as many specific words for ways of speaking others have. Often direct quotations are used and the form of the quotation carries the meaning rather than a more specific "speaking" word. In some Amerindian languages, there are no words for command, beg, beseech, ask, tell, proclaim, publish, question, discuss, marvel, deny, permit, desire, etc. Rather these are expressed by direct quotations. For example, in Waiwai (Guiana), as noted in chapter 2, "You promised to come," would need to be translated “I will certainly come,” you said. "He praised the canoe," would be translated '"It's a wonderful canoe, he said" (Hawkins 1962:164). The translator needs to match the system of one language against the system of the second language. Even when there seems to be a word which is equivalent, there may be some components of the word which are different from the components of equivalent words in the source language. For example, Nida (1975a:58-60) uses as an illustration the set whisper, babble, murmur, sing, and hum. He says that for whisper "there may be very low, scarcely audible whispers, in contrast with very loud whispers, but all the various degrees of loudness are subsumed under the designation of whisper." Hwang (1979:1) says:

...the most closely corresponding Korean term for whisper, soksakita, has as its most important component "minus loudness," in addition to other components given by Nida, "verbal," "nonmusical pitch," and "voiceless." Thus, soksakita implies that the speaker says something very softly, close to the hearer's ear, so that a third person would not hear what is being said. Likewise, the semantic components of babble and murmur in English are not equivalent to those of the Korean terms. Ongalkdlita 'babble' and jungФlkФlita 'murmur' may both be verbal and pseudo-verbal, combinations of and , but without meaning, while in English the former is pseudo-verbal and the latter verbal.

In Bora (Peru, data from Wesley Thiesen), there are a number of roots which are all used to talk about coming and going; that is, "movement from one place to another." However, these words do not

104 match the English usage of come and go. They must be understood in relationship to one another in order to discover the meaning.

pee go -te- go to uujete going arrive at tsaa- come -ua- come to wajtsi coming arrive at -je- come back to

In Bora, and verb of direction must be used in relation to the speaker's location. Come is used only to refer to the place from where you are speaking. Go is used in every other situation. So you can only say come to my house if you are speaking from your house. If you are somewhere else you must say go to my house. When you say that someone came to a given place, it implies that you were there. This means that in many places where come is used in English, it must be translated go in order to make sense in Bora. However, when the speaker (or writer) is reporting what happened, it depends on the location of the reporter as to which form is used. The translator will not translate come from English with tsaa- each time, but will study the context to be sure which of the words in the set should be used. The word which a Bora speaker finds most accurate and natural is the correct one. Munduruku (Brazil, data from Marjorie Crofts) has two verbs for come. Xe is used when the speaker is at home and ajem is used when the speaker is not at home. Maxacali (also Brazil) has three spatial settings which determine the use of motion verbs. These settings are home area, place-in-passing, and the area of travel between these (see Popovich 1967 for details). Almost any semantic set which we might compare between two languages will have some mismatch. Kinship terms will not only mismatch, as seen in the previous chapter, but kinship terms also often have extended meanings which cause additional problems in translation. In some languages, kinship terms refer only to blood relatives and are never used in extended ways. However, in English it is not uncommon for someone to call a boy son if he does not know his name. But the Piro of Peru do not speak in this manner to those not specifically their own children and to do so would imply a blood relationship. In a similar circumstance, where one wants to address a younger person in a loving manner, the Piro would use their word for young man. Some languages would use the word cousin and others would simply use the word friend. One needs to know how kinship terms are used as vocatives; that is, in what extended ways they may be used to address people.

105 Hwang (1979:2) notes the following for Korean:

Kinship terms in Korean often have an extended usage outside the kinship system. Thus a male friend of the family (or the parent) may be called an uncle, ajdssi, and a female friend an aunt, ajumФni. Koreans do not normally distinguish sex for younger siblings, tongsang, but sex distinction for older siblings is obligatory since there is no cover term for them. In fact, there are four terms for older siblings depending on the sex of the ego: oppa 'older brother (when the ego is female),' Фnni 'older sister (female ego),' nuna 'older sister (male ego),' and hyФng 'older brother (male ego).'

Cultural mismatch of lexical items We have already stressed the fact that different languages have different concentrations of vocabulary depending on the culture, geographical location, and the worldview of the people. Because of the different geographical situation, in one language there may be a great concentration of vocabulary that has to do with agriculture, in another a great concentration of vocabulary that has to do with fishing. How these sets of vocabulary relate to one another and can be analyzed has already been discussed. There is however, an additional aspect to this which is very important to the translator. At first glance words in one language may look like they correspond to words in another and may even have the same central and contrastive components of meaning and yet not be equivalent. Notice, for example, the three words which are roughly equivalent in meaning pictured in display 9.2 (Strange and Deibler 1974:11).

house oikos numuno

Display 9.2

106 The three words house, oikos, and numuno all refer to more or less the same THING. In all three cases, the generic meaning would be BUILDING and the contrastive component would be THAT WHICH PEOPLE LIVE IN. However, these words conjure up completely different pictures in the mind of the speakers of the language because of the difference in the cultural objects being referred to. A word often does not mean exactly the same tiling as its equivalent in another language. The central component may be the same and even the contrastive components which distinguish it from other words in the language may be the same. However, there may be some other components which were not contrastive when comparing words in a single language which will be very important when comparing words between two languages. For example, the Greek word oikos is used in the sentence Peter went up on the housetop to pray. A translation into languages of Papua New Guinea may result in a very distorted understanding if simply translated with the word numuno. The round thatched roof would be an inappropriate place to climb up on in order to pray. The component of the meaning of oikos which has to do with the fact that the building has a flat roof is not contrastive in Greek culture but is contrastive when comparing buildings in Greece with buildings in Papua New Guinea. What may be considered only incidental components in the analysis of lexical items in a single language may be contrastive components when comparing lexical items across languages. A translator is not simply dealing with concepts in a system in one language, but rather concepts in systems in two languages. Each language will fence off and label a particular area of reality or experience differently. The translator wants to be as accurate as possible and so must consider each word carefully in the system until he finds the word or phrase which most accurately equates with the lexical item used in the source language text. For example, a translator who is wanting to translate the concept which is represented by the Russian word gidroplan may find that the English dictionary has many words such as water plane, sea plane, flying boat, hydro plane, speed boat, and so forth. He will need to use his knowledge about boats and airplanes, as well as his knowledge of how to compare words in order to discover the components of meaning which are relevant. Such comparison will be very helpful in identifying the word which is wanted. However, it is important to remember that the equivalence desired between the two languages is to be found, not in the language itself, "but in identifying the item in the real world and in finding the proper word or words to use to refer to it. Further difficulties for the translator arise from the fact that concepts in a system frequently occur in clusters and sometimes also combine or co-occur with other groups of semantically related words. A car owner's manual will inevitably refer to all the interrelated parts of a car which

107 concern the owner, and a study of weaponry will inevitably refer to many kinds of missiles and guns. No special analysis is needed to distinguish between sticks and stones in any one language since the differences are clear enough. But differentiating words of closely associated meanings is another matter. Translating words which belong to a set representing a certain area of meaning in the source language may be very difficult when the receptor language system does not match. For example, in certain Slavic languages, lieutenant general is the second lowest of the generals. This would be equivalent to a major general in the . In these same languages, a major general is the lowest ranking of the generals or equal to a brigadier general in the United States. No matter how these are translated into English, with the use of either the literal equivalence or the U.S. equivalent, the translation will suggest parallel systems of military rank when, as a matter of fact, the systems are not parallel. It is important, however, that the translator be aware of the mismatch between systems. Differentiating words of closely associated meanings is possible only by contrast. Meanings exist only in terms of a systematic contrast with other words which share certain features in common with them and contrast in what they refer to or in what situation they are used.

EXERCISES—Mismatching of Lexical Systems between Languages

A. List all the color words you know in a language other than English. Compare them with English colors.

B. List all the words for the set ways to carry in a language other than English. What components of meaning distinguish them from one another?

C. List all the words for the set manner in which liquids move in a language other than English. After you have your list complete, compare the words one with another to identify the meaning differences. Then compare them with the English set drip, leak, spray, splash, pour, flow, gush, and squirt. How do the meanings differ between the two languages?

D. In the following, the Hindi data is given first, then a translation into English using a literal translation of "come" and "go" in English is given, and finally a freer English equivalent is given. What components of meaning other than movement are carried in the morphemic representation "come" and "go" in Hindi? (Data on Hindi taken from "On the Deictic Use of 'Coming' and 'Going' in

108 Hindi" by Anjani Kumar Sinha, University of Chicago in Papers From the Eighth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, April 14-16, 1972.)

1. Uska 1 arka widwan nikal ay a. His son a scholar came out. (His son turned out to be a scholar.)

2. Uska 1 arka nidar nikal ay a. His son fearless came out. (His son turned out to be fearless.)

3. Uska larkS bewkuf nikal gay a. His son a fool went out. (His son turned out to be a fool.)

4. Uska larka badma nikal gay a. His son a rascal went out. (His son turned out to be a rascal.)

5. Musibat me uskf buddhi nikal ay. In crisis, his wisdom came out. (In the crisis he was very wise.)

6. MusTbat me ujski buddhi nikal gayi. In crisis, his wisdom went out. (In the crisis he was very unwise.)

7. Cyo ke dam upar carh gaye. The price of things went up. (The price of things went up.}

8. Cljo ke dam nice utar aye. The price of things came down. (The price of things went down.}

9. Bahut dino ke bad mandi ke ant me clio ke dam upar carh aye. At the end of the depression, after a long time, the prices came up. (At the end of the depression, after a long time, the prices went up.)

10. Bahut dino ke bad mahagl ke ant me cljo ke dam nice utar aye. At the end of the inflation, after a long time, the prices came down. (At the end of the inflation, after a long time, the prices went down.)

11. Uska buxar carh gay a. His temperature went up. (His temperature went up.)

12. Uska baxar utar aya. His temperature came down. (His temperature went down.)

13. Wo brahman nikal aya. A Brahmin he came out. (He turned out to be a Brahmin.)

109 14. Wo harijan nikal gay a. An untouchable he went out. (He turned out to be an untouchable.)

E. List the key words for persons of political authority in your country. Compare these with the following used during the Roman empire for the semantic set ruler.

emperor - over several countries king - over one country governor - over a region of a country tetrarch - over a fourth part of a region of a country

110