Word

Translation is concerned with communicating the overall meaning of a stretch of language. To achieve this, we need to start by decoding the units and structures which carry that meaning. The smallest unit which we would expect to possess meaning is the word. Defined loosely, "the word is the smallest unit of language that can be used by itself" (Bolinger and Sears, 1968: 243). We can define word with more precision as any sequence of letters with an orthographic space on either side.

In order to isolate elements of meaning in words and deal with them more effectively, some linguists have suggested the term morpheme to describe the minimal formal element of meaning in language, as distinct from word, which may or may not contain several elements of meaning. Thus, an important difference between morphemes and words is that a morpheme cannot contain more one element of meaning and cannot be further analyzed.

Every word (lexical unit) has ... something that is individual, that makes it different from any other word. And it is just the lexical meaning which is the most outstanding individual property of the word (Zgusta, 1871:67)

The lexical meaning of a word or lexical unit may be thought of as the specific value it has in a particular system and the "personality" it acquires through usage within that system.

According to Cruse, we can distinguish four main types of meaning in words and utterance (utterances being stretches of written or spoken text): propositional meaning, expressive meaning, presupposed meaning, and evoked meaning.

The  propositional meaning of a word or an utterance arises from the relation between it and what it refers to or describes in a real or imaginary world, as conceived by the speakers of the particular language to which the word or utterance belongs. It is this type of meaning which provides the basis on which we can judge an utterance as true or false. For instance, the propositional meaning of shirt is "a piece of clothing worn on the party upper part of the body". When a translation is described as "incorrect", it is often the propositional meaning that is being called into question.

Expressive meaning cannot be judged as true or false. This is because expressive meaning relates to the speaker's feelings or attitude rather than to what words and utterances refer to. The difference between Don't complain and Don't whinge does not lie in their propositional meanings in the expressiveness of whinge, which suggests that the speaker finds the action annoying. Two or more words or utterances can therefore have the same propositional meaning but differ in their expressive meanings.

Some words have inherent evaluative meaning or connotation. It is worth noting that differences between words in the area of expressive meaning are not simply a matter of whether an expression of a certain attitude or evaluation is inherently present or absent in the words in question. The same attitude or evaluation may be expressed in two words or utterances in widely differing degrees of forcefulness. Both unkind and cruel, for instance, are inherently expressive, showing the speaker's disapproval of someone's attitude. However, the element of disapproval in cruel is stronger that it is in unkind.

The meaning of a word or lexical unit can be both propositional and expressive.

Presupposed meaning arises from co-occurrence restriction, i.e. restriction on what other words or expressions to expect to see before or after a particular lexical unit. these restriction are of two types:

1. Selectional restrictions: these are a function of the propositional meaning of a word. We expect a human subject of the adjective studious and an inanimate one or  geometrical. Selectional restrictions are deliberately violated in the case of figurative language but are otherwise strictly observed.

2 Collocational restrictions: these are semantically arbitrary restrictions which do not follow logically from the propositional meaning of a word. For instance, laws are broken in English, but in Arabic they are "contradicted". In English, teeth are brushed, but in German and Italian they are "polished", in Polish they are "washed"

Evoked meaning arises from dialect and register variation. A dialect is a variety of language which has currency within a specific community or group of speakers. It may of bases; geographical, temporal, social.

Register is a variety of language that a language user considers appropriate to a specific situation. Register variation arises from variations in the following:

1 Field of discourse

2 Tenor of discourse: An abstract terms for the relationships between the people taking part in the discourse.

3 Mode of discourse: An abstract terms for the role that the language is playing (essay, lecture, instructions) and for its medium of transmission (spoken, written). Linguistic choices are influenced by these dimensions.

Different groups within each culture have different expectations about what kind of language is appropriate to particular situations. The amusement and embarrassment often engendered by children's remarks to perfect strangers testifies to this.

Of all the types of lexical meaning explained above, the only one which relates to the truth or falsehood of an utterance and which can consequently be challenged by a reader or hearer is propositional meaning. All other types of lexical meaning contribute to the overall meaning of an utterance or a text in subtle and complex ways and are often much more difficult to analyze.

Semantic fields

It is sometimes useful to view the vocabulary of a language as a set of words referring to a series of conceptual fields. These fields reflect the divisions and sub-division "imposed" by a given linguistic community on the continuum of experience. In linguistics, the divisions are called semantic fields. Fields are abstract concepts. An example of a semantic field would be the field of speech, or plants, or vehicles. A large number of semantic fields are common to all or most languages. Most, if not all, languages will have fields of DISTANCE, SIZE, SHAPE, TIME, EMOTION, BELIEFS, ACADEMIC SUBJECTS, AND NATURAL PHENOMENA. The actual words and expressions under each field are sometimes called lexical sets. Each semantic field will normally have several sub-divisions or lexical sets under it, and each sub-division will have further sub-divisions or lexical sets under it. So the field of SPEECH in English has a sub-division of VERBS OF SPEECH which includes general verbs such as speak and say and more specific ones such as mumble, murmur, mutter, and whisper. It seems reasonable to suggest that the more detailed a semantic field is in a given language, the more different it is likely to be from related semantic fields in other languages. There generally tends to be more agreement among languages on the larger headings of semantic fields and less agreement as the sub-fields become more finely differentiated. Most languages are like to have equivalents for the more general verbs of speech such as say and speak, but many may not have equivalents for the specific ones.

Limitations aside, there are two main areas in which an understanding of semantic fields and lexical sets can be useful to a translator:

(a) appreciating the "value" that a word has in a given system; and

(b) developing strategies for dealing with non-equivalence.

(a) Understanding the difference in the structure of semantic fields in the source and target languages allows a translator to assess the value of a given item in a lexical set. If you know what other items are available in a lexical set and how they contrast with the item chosen by a writer or speaker, you can appreciate the significance of the writer's or speaker's choice. You can understand not only what something is, but also what is is not. This is best illustrated by an example.

In the field of TEMPERATURE, English has four main division: cold, cool, hot and warm. This contrasts with modern Arabic, which has four different divisions: baarid ('cold/cool'), haar ('hot: of the weather'), saakhin {'hot: of objects'), and daafi' ('warm'). Note that, in contrast with English, Arabic (a) does not distinguish between cold and cool, and (b) distinguishes between the hotness of the weather and the hotness of other things. The fact that English does not make the latter distinction does not mean that you can always use hot to describe the temperature of something, even metaphorically (hot temper, but not 'hot feelings'). There are restrictions on the co-occurrence of words in any language (discussion of collocation)

(b) Semantic fields are arranged hierarchically, going from the the more general to the more specific. The general word is usually referred to superordinate and and the specific word as hyponym. In the field of VEHICLE, vehicle is a superordinate and bus, car, truck, coach, etc. are all hyponyms of vehicle. It stands to reason that any propositional meaning carried by a superordinate or general words is, by necessity, part of the meaning of each of its hyponyms, but not vice versa. [like the root meanings in Arabic] If something is bus, then it must be a vehicle, but not the other way round. We can sometimes manipulate this feature of semantic fields when we are faced with semantic gaps in the target language.