Gilgamesh Word Translation Essay

Contents

2.2 Word in different Languages 5

2.2.1 One-to-one relationship between a word and its meaning 5

2.2.2 Lexical meaning: 6-7

3.Conclusion 8

References 9

“Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.”

The Ancient Greek term is 'metaphrasis' ("to speak across") and this gives us the term 'metaphrase' (a "literal or word-for-word translation") - as contrasted with 'paraphrase' ("a saying in other words"). This distinction has laid at the heart of the theory of translation throughout its history: Cicero and Horace employed it in Rome, Dryden continued to use it in the seventeenth century and it still exists today in the debates around "fidelity versus transparency" or "formal equivalence versus dynamic equivalence". The first known translations are those of the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh into Asian languages from the second millennium BC. Later Buddhist monks translated Indian sutras into Chinese and Roman poets adapted Greek

2.2.1 One-to-one relationship between a word and its meaning

"If we looked at the word rebuild, we will notice that there are two distinct elements of meaning in it: re and build the same with the word dis believe which can be paraphrased as "not to believe". We also see that the word tennis player is written as one word in Turkish and as three in Spanish. This suggests that there is no one to one correspondence between words and elements of meaning within or across languages."

2.2.2 Lexical meaning:

"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, 1971:67)

"Baker considers a number of linguistic features in the way we create and communicate meaning. Cultural –specific concepts, connotations, non-lexical concepts, semantic complexity, differences in form, loan words and