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The number of borrowings on Old English was meager. In the Middle English period there was an influx of loans. It is often contended, that since the Norman conquest borrowing has been the chief factor in the enrichment of the English vocabulary and as a result there was a sharp decline in the productivity and role of word-formation. Historical evidence, however, testifies to the fact that throughout its entire history, even in the periods of the mightiest influxes of borrowings, other processes no less intense, were in operation – word – formation and semantic development, which involved both native and borrowed elements. If the estimation of the role of borrowings is based on the study of words recorded in the dictionary, it is easy to overestimate the effect of the foreign words, as the number of native words is extremely small compared with the number of borrowings recorded. The only true way to estimate the relation of the native to the borrowed element is to consider the two as actually used in speech. If one counts every word used, including repetitions, in some reading matter, the proportion of native to borrowed words will be quite different. On such a count, every writer uses considerable more native words than borrowings. Shakespeare, for example has 90%, Milton 81%, Tennyson 88%. This shows how important is the comparatively small nucleus of native words. Different borrowing are marked by different frequency value. Those well established in the vocabulary may be as frequent in speech as native words, whereas other occur very rarely. The great number of borrowings in English left some imprint upon the language. The first effect of foreign influence is observed in the volume of its vocabulary. Due to its history the English language, more than any other modern language, has absorbed foreign elements in its vocabulary. But the adoption of foreign words must not be understood as were quantities change. Any importation into the lexical system brings about semantic and stylistic changes in the words of this language and changes in its synonymic groups.
It has been mentioned that when borrowed words were identical in meaning with those already in English the adopted word very often displaced the native word. In most cases, however, the borrowed words and synonymous native words (or words borrowed earlier) remained in the language, becoming more or less differentiated in meaning and use. As a result the number of synonymic groups in English greatly increased. The synonymic groups became voluminous and acquired many words rarely used. This brought about a rise in the percentage of stylistic synonyms.
As a result of the differentiation in meaning between synonymous words many native words or words borrowed earlier narrowed their meaning or sphere of application.
Abundant borrowing intensified the difference between the word stock of the literary national language and dialects as well as between British English and American English. On the one hand a number of words were borrowed into the literary national language which are not to be found in the dialects. In a number of cases the dialects have preserved some Anglo-Saxon words which were replaced by borrowings in the literary language. On the other hand, a number of words were borrowed into dialects are not used throughout the country.
In spite of the numerous outside linguistic influences and the etymological heterogeneity of its vocabulary the English language is still, in essential characteristics a Germanic language. It has retained a ground work of Germanic words and grammar. A comparative study of the nature and role of native and borrowed words show that borrowing has never been the chief means of replenishing the English vocabulary. Word-formation and semantic development were throughout the entire history of the English language much more productive than borrowing. Besides most native words are marked by a higher frequency value. The great number of borrowings bringing with them new phonon-morphological types, new phonetic morphological and semantic features left its imprint upon the English language. On the other hand under the influence of the borrowed element words already existing in the English changed to some extent their semantic structure, collectability, frequency and word forming ability. Borrowing also considerably enlarged the English vocabulary and brought about some changes in English synonymic groups, in the distribution of the English vocabulary through sphere of application and in the lexical divergence between the two variants of the literary national language and its dialects.
Uzbek language is also under constant influence of borrowings. We are living in the age of progress and technology. New discoveries new inventions, bring about new notions which are accepted by languages, and Uzbek language is also among them. The words connected with development of technology, sport terms, everyday words have been penetrating into Uzbek language from other languages, especially from English, Russian and through Russian or English from many European languages.
In its turn many Uzbek words entered the word stock of world languages, such as of sport terms: Kurash, halol, chala, the names of quinine: plov, manti, somsa, the names of clothes: chapan and etc.
When in two languages we find no trace of he exchange of loan words one way or the other. We are safe to infer that the two nations have had nothing to do with each other, but if they have been in contact, the number of the loan-words, and still more the quality of the loan-words, if rightly interpreted, will inform us of their reciprocal relations, they will show us which of them has been the more fertile in ideas and on what domains of human activity each has been superior of the other. If all other sources of information were closed to us except such loan-words in our modern North-European languages as «piano», «soprano», «opera», «libretto», «tempo», «adagio» etc. we should still have no hesitation in drawing the conclusion that Italian music has played a great role all over Europe.
There are many words, one a native word, the other a Romance loan, originally of lither identical or similar meaning with some distinction made today, such as «freedom», and «liberty», «happiness», and «felicity», «help», and «aid», «love», and «charity», and we should find that the native word has a more emotional sense is homely and unassuming whereas the loan word is colder, aloof more dignified more formal.
1.4 Recent Translation Theory and Linguistic Borrowing in the Modern Sino-Chinese
Fascinating developments in the new field of translation studies may help us advance our understanding of the evolving vocabulary of the Chinese Revolution in the twentieth century. Indeed, there has been an unconscious theoretical convergence between translation studies outside the China field and modern Chinese cultural history. The key concept is «culture» writ large in both cases.
Translation theory has been virtually unknown in China until recent times. It is not that the Chinese historically have never been forced to confront the issue; on the whole, however, until the later decades of the nineteenth century, most of those who came to China were prepared to communicate in Chinese. The important exceptions were the nativization of the Buddhist canon and the undoubtedly extensive use of Manchu during the early decades of the Qing dynasty. Since the Western nations only tagged on to the long parade of countries coming to China over the centuries, we need to look first at the other countries of East Asia for clues about translation theory in an ideographic context. Literary Chinese was the lingua franca of the East Asian world for two millennia. Although the Japanese invented a native script as early as the tenth century, the Vietnamese in the thirteenth, and the Koreans only in the fifteenth, in all of these cases Chinese remained the primary domestic language for politics and high intellectual culture until the dawn of the twentieth century. We shall return to this issue below.
There have been several traditions of translation theory in the West. The oldest and most long-lasting of them–the transmission of holy scripture into lands in which its language was impenetrable–interestingly parallels developments in East Asia. The story of the Septuagint graphically typifies a whole conception of translation. When the community of Greek rabbis was called upon, ostensibly, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek, seventy rabbis separately assumed the task. They reconvened to discover that all seventy Greek translations were identical. The implication is that only one true and correct–and implicitly divinely inspired–translation existed of this text and accordingly any text. The veracity is thus guaranteed if the translator is properly trained and equipped for the task. In the case of Bible translation, the translator performs a semi – divine function–working with God–to spread the holy word to those unable to master the original, for via translation they will now be assured of the equivalent experience. God may have spoken in Hebrew, but He also guided the Greek translators to the one and only possible translation of His word. By the same token, translation errors were, on occasion, regarded as blasphemy and punished accordingly.
This conception of translation bespeaks a word-by-word transmission of a text from one context into another. It was not important that the Greek rabbis merely conveyed the general meaning of the Hebrew Bible nor that they simply had the sentences more or less in the same order. The telling points were two: first, that every word was the same in all seventy translations, and second, that the unique translation was the equivalent (though not the equal) of the original0.
Despite the multilingual nature of literate culture in Europe through the turn of the nineteenth century, no specific theory of translation was forthcoming. Many would write in Latin or translate their ideas mentally from the vernacular into Latin rather than write them down in the mother tongue. Few needed translation. George Steiner has suggested one possible reason for the lack of translation theory: «The epistemological and formal grounds for the treatment of `meaning' as dissociable from and augmentative to `word' are shaky at best.» In spite of the absence of theory, translation not only continued, but was deeply intertwined with the evolution of modern languages: «The evolution of modern German is inseparable from the Luther Bible, from Voss's Homer, from the successive versions of Shakespeare by Wieland, Schlegel, and Tieck.»
Translation theory began to undergo a radical transformation in the nineteenth century, as translation began to involve a conscious manipulation to «move the author toward the reader,» to make literary texts as palatable in the target language and culture as they were in the source language and culture. This development marks the effective realization that precise translation, especially in the case of literary works, was inconceivable without regard for norms of the target language and culture. It is also cotemporal with the widespread emergence of vernaculars as literary mediums, where in the past Latin would have been more frequently employed. As people became less and less multilingual and as Latin declined in generic use, the multilingual knowledge necessary for remaining abreast of «world» literature made translation all the more crucial.
We have here the emergence of a new understanding of the relationship between source text (and perhaps author) and target text (and translator). No longer was a work worthy of translation approached as a long string of words, but as an entire text. The translator now performed the all-important function of bringing into one universe a text from another which often might have remained unknown. Without English or French translations of their work, it is highly unlikely, for example, that the writings of Ibsen or Strindberg or Kierkegaard or Tolstoy or, in more recent times, I.B. Singer would have been known outside the realm of native speakers of their mother tongues; it is inconceivable, as well, that Singer would have won the Nobel Prize.
This development has now reached the point that readers outside the native languages of such authors have ceased thinking of their writings as foreign. The same is true of the King James Bible. Translation has actually energized the target languages with new themes and genres deriving from the source languages. The phrase, «Yea, that I walk through the valley of the shadow of death» – despite the fact that it is not an entirely correct translation–has so fully entered our discourse as to make ordinary mortals believe King David spoke English.
Advances over the past two decades in translation studies have evolved from this trend. We are now in the midst of a «cultural turn.» The important unit for translation is now seen not as a series of words or sentences between languages nor even as a text moving from one setting to another. Rather they themselves are now seen as emblematic of their contexts, as cultural entities that emerge from one distinctive cultural universe. Without an appreciation of that enveloping context, translation into the target language loses much. But traditional bemoaning of what is «lost in the translation» should also not consume our efforts excessively, for there are countless instances in which translation can clarify or elucidate a cryptic original, in which the target language rises above the source language. Generations of Germans have turned to the English translations of Kant's critiques to understand them, and you have not lived until you have read Tsubouchi Shy's translations of Shakespeare: «Yo ni aru, yo ni aran. Sore ga gimon jya!»
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