FALSE FRIENDS OF A
TRANSLATOR
The actuality of our
research consists in the
fact that both
interpreters and students
make a number of mistakes
while doing translations.
An interpreter should possess
the knowledge of stylistic,
emotionally-expressive,
grammatical characteristics and
the peculiarities of lexical
combinatory of words, as
grammatical and phonetic
similarity of languages doesn’t
guarantee the quality of
translation.
The aim of the work is to define
the problems of the phenomenon
“false friends of an interpreter”.
To reach the aim it’s necessary to
fulfill the following points:
 To define the categories of language
vocabulary;
 To define the essence and the sources of
the origin of the phenomenon “false
friends of a translator”;
 To carry out the comparative analysis of
lexical units in the process of translation
The words which are alike phonetically
and have the same place of stress
Russian
Бизнес
Файл
Док
Элеватор
English
Business
File
Dock
Elevator
But most English words with Russian equivalents differ in
the place of stress
English
Russian
Interval
интервал
Period
период
Problem
проблема
Secret
секрет
In some cases English words are similar to Russian ones
only in spelling. But are different in reading
Russian
English
Климат
Climate
Пилот
Pilot
Радио
Radio
According to the meaning of
borrowed international words which
they got in communication, they can
be divided into three categories:
• Words with socially-political and
scientific meaning;
• Words meaning general and
specific notions;
• “False friends of a translator”
The words with socially-political
and scientific meaning
Russian
Революция
Республика
Конституция
Культура
Территория
Центр
English
Revolution
Republic
Constitution
Culture
Territory
Centre
As a result of science and
technology progress such words
appeared:
Russian
Спутник
Компьютер
Интернет
English
Sputnik
Computer
The Internet
Words meaning general and specific
notions
“industria” as “индустрия”
“промышленность” and “industrial”
“индустриальный” in stead of
“промышленный”
“comfortable” “удобный” instead of
“комфортабельный”
“person” as “лицо, человек” but not
“персона”
There are four types of “false friends
of a translator”:
• Words and expressions meaning different things in both
languages (application-анкета кандидата на должность;
аппликация- in Russian; anecdote-случай из жизни;
анекдот- in Russian)
• Words and expressions which are partially similar in
meaning (apartment- квартира; апартаменты- in Russian;
auditorium- зрительный зал; аудитория- Russian)
• Words and expressions similar in meaning but different
in style and in sphere of using (cable- канат, трос;
кабель)
• Words and expressions similar in meaning in both
languages but in some expressions their meanings become
completely different (experience- ощущение; опыт. Но:
проводить опыты; mystery- тайна, загадка. Но: загадать
загадку).
The main reasons for the
mistakes are:
• The relation of similarity in
sounding or functioning (“ammunition”заряды, боеприпасы; can be translated
as “амуниция, снаряжение
военнослужащего”)
• Interlanguage homonyms or paronyms
(“mark”-“марка” and “family”-“фамилия”)
For an adequate translation
a specialist should take
into consideration the
general idea of a sentence,
the specifics of lexical
combinatory of words, the
style and the general
contents of a text.