After the lesson I looked the word up in the largest bilingual dictionary we had in our English library. I found no one-word equivalent, only the following definition: ‘a pupil in charge of maintaining order in the classroom this week’. When I later used it in class, the children looked at me as if I had come from Mars. I explained to them that students in Britain don’t probably have to do such a job, and that’s why English doesn’t have a one-word equivalent for it. Now, for the sake of simplicity, I only ask my students ‘Who’s in charge?’ or ‘Who’s on duty?’ if the týždenník’s job hasn’t been done properly.
The same problem arises when we want to translate names of typical Slovak things such as bryndzové halušky. According to the above-mentioned dictionary, they are sheep cheese haluskas; according to another one, they are gnocchi with brynza. Another typical Slovak thing, a fujara, is a long shepherd’s pipe (dlhá pastierska píšťala) or simply a fujara (with the stress on the second syllable), and a valaška is a shepherd’s hatchet (pastierska sekerka), or a shepherd’s pick (pastiersky krompáč). However, you would hardly find such English expressions in monolingual dictionaries. These things simply don’t occur in English-speaking countries, and that’s why it is difficult, if not impossible, to translate their names.
Even if an object’s extra-linguistic reality is identical, different languages often deal with it differently. Let’s take the human body as an example. Prst can be a finger (a part of the hand) or a toe (a part of the foot). Noha can be a leg (a lower limb) or a foot (the part below the ankle). Ruka can be an arm (an upper limb) or a hand (the part below the wrist). A dictionary in one of the English textbooks I use for teaching translates an arm as paža, trying to distinguish it from ruka as a hand. OK, but it would be quite strange to hear somebody say ‘Zlomil som si pažu,’ wouldn’t it? It is interesting that we say ‘Raise your hand,’ not ‘Raise your arm,’ although we actually raise an arm, not just a hand. If you wanted to tell somebody ‘Budem ti držať palce,’ you wouldn’t do well with the word-for-word translation ‘I’ll hold my thumbs for you.’ Instead, you’d say ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,’ literally ‘Budem mať prekrížené prsty.’
You certainly know that jazyk is either a tongue (a part of the body), or a language (a system of communication). It is not always true, though. We say a foreign language or a native language, but we say a mother tongue. In formal or literary speech a tongue is sometimes used in the meaning of a language, as it is in the sentence ‘None of the tribes speak the same tongue,’ for example. And what about jazyk as a part of a shoe? Don’t worry, no trick here – it is a tongue.
‘Dobré ráno, slečna,’ said a pupil to her teacher in a dubbed British film. This sounds quite unnatural to a Slovak viewer. What is more, the teacher was a woman in her late middle age. In the original the pupil said ‘Good morning, Miss,’ as in British schools Miss is usually used as a form of address by children to a woman teacher, whether she is married or not. So in a school context Miss means pani učiteľka and ‘Dobré ráno, pani učiteľka’ would sound more natural in the Slovak version. However, another problem arises here. Since pani učiteľka contains six syllables, it would be quite difficult to put these words into the mouth of a speaker who had originally said a one-syllable word, especially if it would be too noticeable. Male teachers are normally addressed as Sir by British pupils. Both Miss and Sir are used on their own, i.e. without a teacher’s name.
Slovak students sometimes address their English teacher by means of a word-for-word translated phrase such as Mrs teacher or Mr professor. Well, this isn’t the best way. In English we don’t normally use Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms when addressing somebody by their title, job or function. So when you want to get your English teacher’s attention, it’s better to say just ‘Excuse me, teacher,’ or use the above-mentioned ways of addressing them as Miss or Sir. The addressing of secondary school teachers as professor could be a bit tricky for native speakers of English since in the UK and the USA, it is used only for university teachers.
Last but not least, here is a funny mistake made by one of my students. ‘We stayed on a cottage,’ he said when describing his holiday spent na chate. He intended to say in a cottage or at a cottage, I guess, unless he and his family have an unusual hobby – staying on the roof of a cottage. You never know.
