Translation Studies
15. Lexical TOs: narrowing
and broadening of
meaning
Krisztina Károly, Spring, 2006
Sources: Klaudy, 2003; Klaudy & Károly, 2005
1. Narrowing of meaning
(differentiation and
specifiation)
Lexical narrowing
i.e., particularisation (Vinay and Darbelnet
1995), concretisation (Klaudy 1996b)
= the SL unit of a more general meaning is
replaced by a TL unit of a more specific
meaning
specification (or concretisation) is generally
discussed together with differentiation since
the narrowing of SL meaning is achieved by
distinguishing the various meanings of the SL
word (differentiation) and then by selecting
one of them (specification or concretisation).
can be explained partly by the differences in
the mental mapping of the world and by the
linguistic consequences of this phenomenon
Lexical narrowing cont.
language communities segment times of the
day, various parts of the body, colours, kinship
relations and spatial structures differently 
“interlingual asymmetry” (Gak in Zlateva 1993,
Russo 1997)
if there is a higher number of words in these
semantic fields in the TL than in the SL, the
translator must first identify the meanings of the
TL words and than select one, which will than be
narrower than the meaning of the SL word 
more specific
is generally an optional transfer operation 
presupposes some kind of decision-making on
the part of translators  can be regarded as a
manifestation of the translator’s creativity.
Subtypes:
1.1. Specification of parts of the body
1.2. Specification of reporting verbs
1.3. Specification of inchoative verbs
1.4. Specification of semantically
depleted verbs
(1) Specification of parts of the body
Predominant direction: from Hungarian  into IE
reason: the different segmentation of the human
body by different language communities
specification takes place when there is a more
detailed lexical representation of the face,
mouth, hand and leg in the TL than in the SL
English makes a distinction between face and
cheek, hand and arm, foot and leg, mouth and
lips
Hungarian does make similar distinctions  in
translating Hungarian arc into IE languages,
translators often have to decide whether they
are dealing with the whole or with a part (face or
cheek)
Hungarian  English:
arc (generic term in H)  face/cheeks
(specific terms in E)
Hungarian ST: Megvizezte és
megdörzsölte piros, tizenötéves leány
arcát ... (Csáth 5)
English TT: She wet her ruddy,
fifteen-year-old's face, rubbed it, ...
(Kessler 115)
Commentary: Hungarian arc 
English face
Hungarian ST: A hentes volt. Ragyás
arcú, szép bajuszú, izmos
parasztember. (Csáth 6)
English TT: The butcher. A brawny
peasant: grand mustaches
pockmarked cheeks. (Kessler 116)
Commentary: Hungarian arc 
English cheeks
Hungarian  English:
száj (generic term in H)  mouth/lips
(specific terms in E)
Hungarian ST: A lány most már tele
szájjal kacagott, mintha csiklandozták
volna. (Csáth 85)
English TT: Now she laughed with her
mouth wide open as though she were
being tickled. (Kessler 169)
Commentary: Hungarian száj 
English mouth
Hungarian ST: De mégis ellágyult, és
megcsókolta a lányt a száján. (Csáth
3)
English TT: Still, he was touched, and
kissed her lips. (Kessler 203)
Commentary: Hungarian száj 
English lips
Hungarian  English:
láb (generic term in H)  foot/leg (specific
terms in E)
Hungarian ST: Julcsa pedig
összeszappanozza a lábunkat.
(Csáth 88)
English TT: Juli soaps our feet.
(Kessler 60)
Commentary: Hungarian láb 
English foot
Hungarian ST: ... viszi a csontvázat,
melynek kezei, lábai valami különös
táncot járnak ... (Csáth 14)
English TT: ... lugging the skeleton 
whose arms and legs danced
grotesquely ... (Kessler 186)
Commentary: Hungarian láb 
English legs
(2) Specification of reporting verbs
Predominant direction: from IE  Hungarian
Verbs accompanying reported speech in
literary works are generally semantically
depleted verbs in the four Indo-European
languages (to say), while in Hungarian
they tend to be semantically rich.
The authors of literary works written in IE
languages generally use the central verb of
the semantic field of saying, while
Hungarian translators rather tend to
choose more peripherial verbs from the
same semantic field.
English: to say  Hungarian:
hálálkodik (‘to express one's gratitude’)
Hungarian ST: Oh, thank you,
madam,' said Edna. (Christie 10)
English TT: – Jaj, köszönöm,
nagysága! – hálálkodott Edna.
(Borbás 11)
English: to say  Hungarian:
tiltakozik (‘to protest’)
Hungarian ST: 'Well, you mustn't
abuse my legs' said the old man
(James 9)
English TT: –Te csak ne csepüld az
én lábamat – tiltakozott az
öregember (Balabán 31)
The specification of reporting
verbs may take several forms
in IEHungarian translation.
2.1. Use reporting verbs, but more
specific and less frequent ones,
using a variety of Hungarian verbs of
saying instead of the correspondents
of central verb say.
Use of more specific verbs, cont.
English  Hungarian:
English ST: Armstrong said, 'Four of us and we
don't know which.'
Blore said, 'I know.'
Vera said, 'I haven't the least doubt.'
Philip Lombard said, 'I think I've got a pretty good
idea now.' (Christie 144)
Hungarian TT: – Négyen vagyunk, és nem tudjuk
ki a... – kezdte Armstrong.
Blore közbeszólt – Én tudom.
Vera is megszólalt – Én is tökéletesen biztos
vagyok benne.
Philip Lombard is megnyilatkozott – Úgy érzem,
én is biztos vagyok benne. (Szíjgyártó 145)
2.2. Referring to the permanent/occasional
characteristics of the speech of speakers
E.g., tone, rate, emphasis: hebeg (‘to
stammer’), dadog (‘to stutter’), hadar
(‘to gabble’), makog (‘to falter’),
suttog (‘to whisper’)
 translators are guided by the whole
communicative situation
Ref. to the characteristics of the speaker’s
speech, cont.
English  Hungarian:
English ST: 'Tiburon', the waiter said.
(Hemingway 72)
Hungarian TT: –Tiburon – hadarta a
pincér. (Ottlik 83)
2.3. Reflecting the speaker's state of
mind and emotions:
E.g., hüledezik (‘to be dumbfounded’),
csodálkozik (‘to be astonished’),
meglepődik (‘to be surprised’)
 translators are guided by the whole
communicative situation
Reflecting the speaker's state of mind and
emotions cont.
English ST: ‘Well, I'll be damned, was I really
going ninety?’, said Eddie. ‘I didn't realise
it on this smooth road.’ (Kerouac 22)
Hungarian TT: – Igazán kilencvennel
mentem? – hüledezett Eddie, – észre sem
vettem ezen a síma úton. (Bartos 24)
Commentary: English to say  Hungarian
hüledezik (‘to be dumbfounded’)
2.4. Indicating bodily movements that
commonly accompany the act of
speaking:
E.g., bólint (‘to nod’), legyint (‘to wave
a hand to signal indifference’),
felkapja a fejét (‘to toss up one’s
head’)
Bodily movements cont.
English ST: 'Them Indians', said Mrs
Gardner. (Hemingway 32)
Hungarian TT: – Indiánok – legyintett
Mrs Gardner. (Lengyel 31)
English ST: 'Well, really', said Miss
Marple. (Christie 20)
Hungarian TT: – Valóban! – bólintott
Miss Marple. (Borbás 21)
2.5. Reflecting the act of speaking only
by virtue of the situation:
Such verbs express a change in place
or bodily position: leül (‘to sit down’),
feláll (‘to stand up’), belép a szobába
(‘to enter the room’).
Ref. to situation cont.
English  Hungarian:
English ST: 'No!', she said, still holding
out her beautiful slim arms from her
dropping breasts. (Lawrence 247)
Hungarian TT: – Ne így! – tárta szét szép,
karcsú karját keble előtt az asszony.
(Falvay 306)
English ST: 'Ay!', said the man, stretching
his body almost painfully. (Lawrence 249)
Hungarian TT: – Ajahaj – nyújtózott szinte
fájdalmasan a férfi. (Falvay 308)
(3) Specification of inchoative
verbs
Predominant direction: IE  Hungarian
inchoative verbs = verbs expressing the
beginning of an action (begin/start)
repeating the central verb of the semantic
field of verbs of beginning (kezd) would
seem monotonous for a Hungarian
readership, therefore professional
translators use more specific verbs, which
are on the periphery of the semantic field of
verbs of beginning: nekilát, belefog,
hozzálát (‘set/fall/turn to’, ‘get/settle down
to’), fakadt (‘burst out’, ‘broke out’).
Spec. of inchoactive verbs cont.
English  Hungarian:
English ST: He began immediately to
close his cafe. (Greene 510)
Hungarian TT: Habozás nélkül
záráshoz látott. (Sükösd 26)
English ST: He began to tremble
violently. (Greene 518)
Hungarian ST: Szörnyű reszketés fogta
el. (Sükösd 33)
(4) Specification of semantically
depleted verbs
Predominant direction: IE  Hungarian
The most characteristic feature of the
Hungarian verb is its complexity (not
only morphologically)
lexical richness: due to the rich variety
of verbal prefixes and suffixes 
prefixes and suffixes (frequentative,
reflexive, factitive or causative, etc.)
can be added to verbs  new words
and new meanings can be created
Specification of semantically depleted verbs
cont.
English: to be  Hungarian: lapul, fortyog
English ST: Inside was a letter from Eliot.
(Vonnegut 13)
Hungarian TT: Belsejében Eliot levele lapult.
(Szilágyi 14)
English ST: The kettle was on a spirit ring
close to a big brown teapot. (Greene 39)
Hungarian TT: A főző spirituszállványon
fortyogott, mellette nagy barna teáskanna.
(Ungvári 51)
Summary comments on lexical
specification
nouns: differentiation and specification of meaning
can be accounted for by the different segmentation
of reality by the different Ls (parts of the body,
kinship terms, times of the day, etc.)  more
detailed vocabulary in one L than in another
verbs: the rich morphological potential offered by
the Hungarian L provide ample opportunity for
specification, but this is only an option: IE verbs
of general meaning always have, or may have, a
corresponding Hungarian verb with a similarly
general meaning
original Hungarian texts include verbs
incorporating a great number of grammatical and
lexical information  using more specific
Hungarian verbs in translation is a way to avoid
translationese (i.e. keep the colourfulness of
Hungarian).
2. Broadening of meaning
(generalisation)
Lexical broadening
= generalisation (Vinay and Darbelnet 1995, Klaudy
1996b) of meaning
= the SL unit of a more specific meaning is replaced by a
TL unit of a more general meaning
generalisation of meaning in translation can be
accounted for differences in the conceptual mapping of
the world (body parts, colours, kinship terms) reflected
by the different lexical systems of Ls
in the case of generalisation, the form of the
interlingual asymmetry is manifested as “many to one”
relationship: two or more SL words have one dictionary
equivalent in the TL.
generalisation may be needed also because of
differences in the word-formation systems of Ls. The
rich inventory of verbal prefixes and suffixes in
Hungarian makes it possible to form verbs with a high
degree of a semantic compression  are translated by
several words
Subtypes:
2.1. Generalisation of parts of the
body
2.2. Generalisation of times of the day
2.3. Generalisation of realia
2.4. Generalisation of reporting verbs
2.5. Generalisation of semantically
rich verbs
2.1. Generalisation of parts of the body
Predominant direction: IE  Hungarian
English  Hungarian:
cheek/face (specific terms in E)  arc (generic
term in H)
English ST: She gently embraced her husband,
who kissed her on the cheek. (Doctorow 18)
Hungarian TT: Gyöngéden megölelte férjét, az
pedig arcon csókolta. (Göncz 17)
English ST: He kissed her face and tasted the salt
of her tears. (Doctorow 21)
Hungarian TT: Az megcsókolta őt, s a könnye sós
izét ott érezte arcán. (Göncz 20)
2.2. Generalisation of times of the day
Predominant direction: Hungarian  IE
Hungarian ST: Valamelyik téli
délelőttön az anatómiai intézet
igazgatójának első asszisztense egy
embert jelentett be ... (Csáth 10)
English TT: One winter morning the
head assistant of the Institute of
Anatomy announced someone ...
(Kessler 183)
2.3. Generalisation of realia
Predominant direction: in the case of culture
specific transfer operations there is no
predominant direction
the term is used in two meanings: thing or
the name that we assign to that particular
thing
e.g., a gondola = “realia” light flatbottomed boat with cabin amidships and
high point at each end, worked by one oar
at stern, used on Venetian canals) + the
Italian word, gondola which stands for the
boat
I. Geographic realia
1. Geographical formations (e.g.,
savannah=wide treeless plain, great tract
of meadowlike land esp. in tropical
America)
2. Man-made geographical entities (e.g.,
polder=piece of low-lying land reclaimed
from see in Netherlands)
3. Indigenous animals and plants (e.g.,
eucalyptus=Australian and Indonesian
evergreen tree, coyote=North American
prairie wolf
II. Ethnographical realia
1. Realia from everyday life
a) Dishes, beverages (e.g., tortilla )
b) Dressing (e.g., dolman)
c) Habitat, furniture, houseware (e.g.,
wigwam=tent or cabin of North American
Indian tribes of region of Great Lakes and
eastward, formed of bark, matting or hides
streched over frame of converging poles)
d) Means of transport (e.g.,
rickshaw=light, two-wheeled, rental
carriage, pulled by one or two men),
Ethnographical realia cont.
2. Realia of work
a) Occupations (e.g., gaucho
'mounted herdsman of S. Amer.
pampas'),
b) Tools (e.g., lasso),
c) Work place (e.g., ranch)
Ethnographical realia cont.
3. Art and culture
a) Music and dance (e.g., tarantella
'Rapid, whirling dance of S. Italian
peasants'),
b) Musical instruments (e.g., banjo),
c) Theatre (e.g., columbine 'loud-mouthed,
vivacious and tricky servant girl. One of the
characters in the Commedia dell' Arte')
d) Holidays and games (e.g., Chanukah
'Jewish religious feast in memory of the
victory of the Maccabees and of the
liberation of Jerusalem'),
e) Customs, rituals and their participants
(e.g., tamada 'Master of ceremonies at a
friendly gathering in Georgia').
Ethnographical realia cont.
4. Ethnic realia
a) Ethnonyms (e.g., Basques'),
b) Nicknames (e.g., Yankee, Gringo
'among Spanish-Americans a
foreigner, esp. an Englishman or an
American of US),
c) Name related to residence (e.g.,
nutmegger 'resident of Connecticut';
down Easter 'resident of Maine').
Ethnographical realia cont.
5. Measurement units and coinage
a) Measurement units (e.g., pud
'Russian unit of weight = 16.38
grams')
b) Coinage (e.g., dime 'ten cent coin
in the United States'),
c) Popular nicknames (e.g., buck
'dollar in US slang').
III. Social and political realia
1. Administration and organisation
a) Administrative units (e.g., canton
'Independent unit forming a part of the
Swiss Federation"),
b) Settlements (e.g., pueblo 'Spanish
American town or village esp. communal
village or settlement of Indians in Arizona,
New Mexico and adjacent parts of Mexico
and Texas' OID 682),
c) Part of a city (e.g., kremlin 'fortified
enclosure or citadel within Russian town or
city' OID 467).
Social and political realia cont.
2. Political bodies
a) Governing bodies (e.g., Reichstag
'supreme legislature of the former
German Empire and of the Republic'),
b) Rulers (e.g., Shah 'title of the
sovereign ruler of Iran').
Social and political realia cont.
3. Political life
a) Political activity and its participants (e.g., tory 'member
or supporter of the English Conservative Party'),
b) Social organisations and their participants (e.g.,
carbonari (pl) 'members of the secret Italian organisation,
fighting for the unification of Italy at the beginning of the
19th century'),
c) Social movements and their participants (e.g., hippy
'person rejecting conventional standards and organised
society in favour of unconstrained living'),
d) Rank, titles and addresses (e.g., earl 'nobleman
ranking in British peerage between marquis and
viscount'),
e) Institutions of learning (e.g., college 'various
educational institutions from high-school to the university
in England and the United States'),
f) Classes, social strata, castes (e.g., pariah 'member of
the lowest and most oppressed caste in India'),
g) Political symbols (e.g., Union Jack 'popular name of
the British imperial flag').
Social and political realia cont.
4. Military realia
a) Military units (e.g., cohort 'a small unit
of the Roman army, one tenth of a legion'),
b) Arms (e.g. yataghan 'short sword of
Muslim countries with slight reverse
curve'),
c) Uniform (e.g., dolman 'hussar's uniform
jacket worn like cape with sleeves hanging
loose'),
d) Military ranks and assignments (e.g.,
cuirassier 'armed horse soldier').
Generalisation of realia
in certain cases a detailed description or
precise definition of realia may be
incomprehensible for the TL audience
or would convey information that is
irrelevant in the given communicative
situation
if the particular realia has no function in the
text  translators tend to replace specific
terms by generic ones (e.g., the ordinary
Hungarian table wine szemelt rizling
(‘riesling of selected grapes’) becomes
wine or white wine in English)
Generalisation of realia cont.
HungarianEnglish:
English ST: Frank watched her shred cabbage
on the meat slicer for coleslaw. (Malamud 55)
Hungarian TT: Frank figyelte, hogy metéli a
salátának való káposztát a felvágottmetélőn.
(Balassa 62)
Commentary: coleslaw is a typical American
cabbage salad, consisting of cabbage, onions,
celery, carrots, radish and other vegetables
mixed with mayonnaise. As coleslaw is
unknown for Hungarian people, and in this
case the exact type of salad is not important
from the point of view of the plot, it was
translated into Hungarian by the generic term
saláta (‘salad’).
English Hungarian:
English ST: ... he had preferred himself a
glass of stout and some oysters ...
(Greene 472)
Hungarian TT: ... jómaga szívesebben
fogyasztott volna egy pohár sört és
néhány osztrigát ... Szobotka 293)
Commentary: stout, a 'heavy dark type of
beer prepared with well roasted barley or
malt and sometimes caramelised sugar’
(OID 836), unknown in Hungary, became
sör (‘beer’) in the Hungarian translation.
2.4. Generalisation of reporting
verbs
translations into Hungarian are generally
characterised by the specification of IE
verbs with general meanings
the opposite can be observed in the H-IE
direction: Hungarian verbs become more
abstract and more general when translated
into IE languages. The rich inventory of
reporting verbs in Hungarian, for instance,
is not reflected at all in H-IE translations.
Instead of the wide variety of Hungarian
reporting verbs translators use the same
semantically depleted reporting verbs (to
say) in IE translations.
2.5. Generalisation of
semantically rich verbs
Predominant direction: Hungarian  IE
The generalisation of semantically rich
Hungarian verbs is one of the most typical
transfer operations in H-IE translation.
Reason: the rich variety of Hungarian prefixes
and suffixes, which makes possible to condense
many different shades and nuances of meaning
into the same single Hungarian verb (iterative,
durative, causative, frequentative etc.).
Translators either use analytic solutions, that is,
they use more words in the TL (this operation
will be discussed later), or they decide to choose
IE verbs with general meanings:
HungarianEnglish:
Hungarian ST:... végigsiklottak ujjai
a bordáin. (Csáth 185)
English TT: ... his fingers run over its
ribs. (Kessler 185)
Commentary: végigsiklottak (‘slide
along to the very end’) becomes run
over in English translation.
Summary comments on lexical
generalisation
nouns: generalisation of meanings
(broadening of meanings or
generalising translation) can be
accounted for by the differences in
the lexical systems
verbs: a relative lack of
morphological and word-formation
options in IE languages makes
generalising translation a must.
***