Collocations are of two types - free and set. Free collocations are those where a component of the collocation can be replaced such as red cap, red shirt, red saree, red skirt, red ribbon etc., referring to different things that are red coloured. Set collocations are the combination of two or more words that acquires a meaning that may not be the basic of any one or all of the components. A replacement of either of the components is not possible. In English the greeting "good morning" cannot be replaced by other related adjectives like bad, excellent, fair, in place of good, because this is a set collocation. The collocation "red tape" in English does not retrain the basic meaning of the either red colour or tape but denotes something entirely different. Neither of the two words can be replaced. Same is the case with the term "white paper", "white elephant" etc. These collocations are difficult to translate at the lexical at the lexical level because of the fact that each language has its peculiar rules of collocations and it requires considerable command of a language to distinguish between the free and the set collocations. A collocation in one language may be a compound in the other, or just a single word. English "black board" can best be translated just a single word. English "black board" can best be translated in Hindi as "board". Pairs of words with an irresistible attraction or relation in one language may not be compatible in the other language. In English words 'warm' and 'welcome' join together to accord a warm welcome. In Hindi however, these two words and their equivalents are not compatible. Phrases and idioms are most difficult to translate as rarely do we find their equivalent unit in target language. A source language phrase can be expressed by the word or a sentence in target language. Similarly it may not be possible to find an equivalent unit for a source language idiom in target language.
An idiom is a unit, an expression peculiar to language having a meaning other than the logical one. The meaning of an idiom cannot be derived from the meaning(s) of its individual words. In translation, the corresponding units for idioms across languages may be idiom, or idiom-to-idiom, or non idiom-to-idiom, or non idiom-to-idiom. It may not always be possible to find an appropriate correspondence in TL. |
At the grammatical level, a translator is expected to have a thorough knowledge of the grammatical rules of the TL. In fact, a translator does not have to know the grammar of the language for just the sake of it, he should be well versed in comparative grammar of the two languages involved in translation and the similarities and dissimilarities in them. The translator should be able to distinguish between the obligatory and the optional forms in TL.
Grammatical differences between two languages can be of various types, depending on the languages, their relationship and the distance - both physical as well as cognitive. Cognate languages may not differ much grammatically although it also depends on the physical distance between the linguistic regions. Languages belonging to different language families but sharing geographical regions may share some features due to the process of convergence.
The major differences between two languages are related to different gender, number, derivational systems, honorifics, tenses etc. One of the major grammatical differences between languages is their gender systems. Languages have different gender systems - grammatical and natural, etc. Some languages have two-way gender system - masculine and feminine, and others have three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter. Hindi and some other Indo-Aryan languages have to two-way pattern with a grammatical gender and so has German. A number of in Hindi have natural sex distinctions but for others it is arbitrary, and therefore, quite confusing, for a non-Hindi speaker and a translator. Dravidian languages have different gender systems, compared with Hindi and its sister languages. These differences across languages need not necessarily be because they belong to different families, although this is a determining factor. This is possible in cognate languages as well, because each language group has its peculiar ways of perceiving and classifying the same notional reality. German and English although related languages, also have their own differences. The seasons in English are neuter, but in German they are perceived as masculine. In Hindi, however, they are both feminine and masculine depending on the vocabulary, register and the style. In Hindi 'ritu' is feminine, but 'mausam' meaning both season and weather is masculine. This is due to the fact that these two words have come to Hindi from different sources. Hindi adjective is inflected to denote gender, number and case. The English adjective is invariable whatever its function in the sentence. Hindi and some other Indian languages have number gender concordance. It is absent in English. |
