Comparative Analysis of Chess Terms

Full text

Comparative Analysis of Chess Terms
Vlavatskaya M.V.
Faculty of Humanities
Novosibirsk State Technical University
Novosibirsk, Russia
vlavatskaya@list.ru
Sharova I.N.
Faculty of Humanities
Novosibirsk State Technical University
Novosibirsk, Russia
ira_english_2011@mail.ru
Abstract – The article is devoted to the consideration of the
terms of chess game in a comparative aspect. Particular attention
is paid to the concept of “game” in terms of its philosophical,
historical, cultural and psychological understanding. Due to the
fact that the game concept is inherent in each individual, the paper
considers chess game in the process of its development. On the
basis of the reverse method proposed by S. V. Grinev-Grinevich
and E. A. Sorokina, the comparative analysis of chess pieces in
Russian, English and French is carried out.
Keywords – game, term, chess terms, reverse approach,
comparative analysis.
INTRODUCTION
Each game has its own specific rules, features and
properties. Chess game, which is very popular all over the
world, has all these parameters. Chess game is usually studied
from the perspective of sports and sporting events. The
presented comparative analysis of chess terms in Russian,
English and French languages brings the chess game to a new
language level.
The relevance of our study is the use of methods of
comparative and reverse analysis of chess terms.
The purpose of the study is to describe the chess terms in a
comparative aspect.
Arguing about the structure of the state, Socrates (in
dialogues-treatises of Plato) talks with his opponent Adamant
about the role of proper education, training and law in the ideal
state. Socrates believes, “... even the games of our children
should comply with the laws as much as possible, because if
they become disorderly and children do not comply with the
rules, it is impossible to grow them into serious, law-abiding
citizens” [1, р. 194].
Netherland’s historian and cultural scientist Johan Huizinga
gives his insight into the game and its laws. He analyzes the
game character of culture, proclaiming the universality of its
phenomenon. The scientist highlights the free play of children
and animals to derive pleasure from it. Adults have a sense of
responsibility, so they can do without the game, because it is
redundant for them. However the need to play becomes
imperative when it results from pleasure being delivered. “A
game can be postponed, it may not take place; it is not caused
by physical necessity and moral duties. A game does not have
any task. It is indulged in free time. However with the
transformation of the game into one of the culture’s function,
the concept of obligation, tasks, duties, initially minor, turn out
to be more and more connected with it” [2, p. 31].
From the point of view of the psychology of human
relationships, there is a basic principle of game theory. It
consists, according to Eric Bern that any communication is
more useful and more profitable for people than its absence.
When it is said that life in society consists mainly of games, it
does not mean that what is happening is funny or the
participants of games do not take them seriously. [3, p. 8-11].
Such sports as football, volleyball, biathlon, and chess are
not fun, and participants – players take them seriously. Without
going into a detailed description of the meaning of the game by
Eric Bern, the authors distinguish among them: historical,
cultural, social and personal [Ibidem, p. 186-189]. All values
are interconnected with each other: one logically passes to
another.
According to Johan Huizinga [2, p. 32-36] there are four
signs of the game:
1. – a game is free, it is freedom
2. – a game is necessary for an individual as a biological
function, and it is necessary for society because of the meaning,
meaning, expressive value, as well as spiritual and social
connections that it generates as a cultural function
3. – the symptom is closed and limited; it is played out
within certain limits of time and place and for the sense
concluded in it the most
4. – a game begins, and at some point it comes to end
From the signs of a game "its playability" and repeatability
follows an essential property of the game. J. Huizinga
highlights several of its properties.
1. All highly developed game forms contain elements of
repetition, refrain, and alternation as a matter of course.
2. The restriction of place. Every game takes place in a
predetermined playing space: material or conceivable,
intentional or self-evident. The arena, the playing table, the
magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the court
presence – all of them in form and function are the essence of
the game space.
3. Inside a game space dominates inherent only to him
perfect order, another property of a game: it sets the order. In
our imperfect world, in this turmoil of life, she embodies
Humanities and Social Sciences: Novations, Problems, Prospects (HSSNPP 2019)
Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 333
290

temporary, limited perfection. The order established by a game
is immutable. The slightest deviation from it interferes with a
game, invades its original character, and deprives it of its own
value.
4. A game strives to be beautiful, it has an aesthetic factor.
It binds and frees, it has rhythm and harmony.
5. Tension is a sign of uncertainty, but also of a chance. This
element prevails in single-player games of skill or ingenuity:
puzzles, mosaic pictures, solitaire, target shooting. In gambling
and sports, the tension goes to extremes.
The inherent properties of order and tension in the game
lead us to consider the rules of the game. Each game has its own
rules, they are indisputable and mandatory, are not subject to
any doubt. Only a small deviation from the rules and the whole
game collapses overnight. For example, the referee removes all
enchantments, and «ordinary world» in the blink of an eye
comes into its own. Intruder game – «spielbrehrer», anyone
who bypasses the rules. He breaks the relativity and fragility of
the game world in which he is temporarily with others. He must
be expelled, as he threatens the very existence of the gaming
community.
The authors have considered the concept of a game in terms
of its principles, features and properties. Laws passing into the
rules of a game are mandatory and must be strictly enforced;
otherwise any game will lose its meaning.
As it is known, the terms are used not only in chess, they
occupy a significant place in various spheres of people's lives,
so “...understanding the term and its correct use is extremely
important for both the scientific industry and the learning
process” [4, p. 65-68].
The same principles, features and properties, in our opinion,
are obligatory and for chess game. This game also includes
those terms that are involved in this complex game action. In
order to understand this situation, it is necessary to analyze the
terms of chess game.
METHODS AND MATERIALS
To achieve this purpose the following methods were used:
 methods of linguistic description (for the selection
of lexical material and systematic presentation of
its characteristics),
 method of dictionary definitions (to determine the
semantics of the studied lexical units),
 method of comparative analysis (to identify
similarities and differences between multilingual
lexemes),
 reversibility / reversibility method (to establish the
equivalence of terms belonging to different
languages).
The material of the research is Russian chess terms and their
English and French equivalents taken from the following
lexicographical sources: Russian-English dictionary
ed. A.M. Taube, R.S. Daglish; English-Russian dictionary ed.
V.K. Muller; The universal English dictionary / Ed.
H.C. Wyld; Russian-French dictionary ed. L.V. Shcherba,
M.I. Matusevich; New French-Russian dictionary ed.
V.G. Gak, K.A. Ganshina.
CHESS TERMS IN COMPARATIVE AND REVERSE
ANALYSIS
The main part of our research is devoted to the comparative
and reverse analysis of chess terms, namely the terms: король,
ферзь, ладья, слон, конь и пешка in Russian, English and
French.
The purpose of the comparative analysis is to identify
similarities and differences of chess terms in the stated
languages, due to the peculiarities of the lexical and
grammatical systems of analyzed languages. Consider the
method of reversibility or reciprocity proposed by
V.S. Grinev-Grinevich and E.A. Sorokina [5, p. 29].
This analysis is used in view of the need to determine the
lexical equivalence, i.e. identifying the phenomena of
polysemy, synonymy, homonymy, as well as identifying the
degree of influence of the national-language picture of the
world on the adequacy of the translation. The essence of this
method is “the study of semantic aspects of systematic
comparison of vocabulary taking into account hyponymic,
synonymous and polysemic relationships by comparing
information presented in dictionaries of the same volume but
different directions, for example, English-Russian and Russian-
English” [Ibidem, p. 28].
The use of this method involves the allocation of several
stages, called «steps» and «turns». By the «step» is meant the
stage of translation of the concept under study from the source
language to another language, by the «turnover» the subsequent
return to the original language. The term «reversibility» means
“reversibility of the linguistic phenomenon as a result of the
return to the original concept ... by formula «source language /
other language / source language»” [6, p. 3]. Reverse analysis
involves one revolution in two steps.
Chess term – король (Rus.)
The first step of the first turn allows establishing that
шахматный король in English translation has one
correspondence – «king» [7, p. 209]. As a result of the second
step, the resulting version of the king is reversed to the original
lexeme «шахматный король», which indicates the full
equivalence of the lexical unit and the adequacy of its
translation. It should be noted that the selected English lexeme
king – «шахматный король», as well as the Russian lexeme
«король», has another game equivalent «карточный король»
[8, p. 383], which indicates its ambiguity, interlanguage
synonymy and, accordingly, indicates the equivalence of the
two terms of the Russian and English languages.
Next, the authors compare the terms of Russian and French.
The first step of the first turn allows establishing that the
Russian term шахматный король when translated into French
has a correspondence – «roi» [9, p. 259], which indicates its
ambiguity, as well as the interlanguage synonymy of the
revealed correspondences of the Russian and French languages.
In the second step, the resulting version of roi is reversed to the
291

original lexeme «шахматный король», which indicates the full
equivalence of the values of the lexemes in Russian and French.
It should be noted that in addition to the term roi –
«шахматный король», as well as the Russian language uses
another equivalent translation «карточный король» (le roi de
(col.), as well as «мастер (of smth.)» : «непревзойдённый»,
«несравненный», «законченный»; le roi du rire –
«несравненный комик», «мастер смеха») [10, p. 970]. These
data indicate the ambiguity of the French lexeme roi and the
interlanguage synonymy of the presented correspondences of
the Russian and French languages in the aspect of chess/card
game, or the equivalence of their values.
According to the results of the comparison, it can be argued
that the term шахматный король is equivalent to the
corresponding lexemes – the terms of English «king» and
French «roi» – analogues of the Russian term in terms of
polysemy and interlanguage synonymy.
Chess term – ферзь (Rus.)
The first step of the first turn allows establishing that
ферзь, шахматная королева (rarely) in English translation
has one correspondence – «queen» [7, p. 590]. As a result of the
second step, the term queen is reversed to the original lexeme
«ферзь», which indicates the full equivalence of these terms of
Russian and English in the context of chess. It should be noted
that the English lexeme queen – has a different meaning
карточная дама [8, p. 570], which indicates the ambiguity,
while the Russian lexeme ферзь does not have such a value.
The first step of the first turn allows us to establish that the
Russian lexeme ферзь when translated into French has one
correspondence – «reine» [9, p. 699)]. In the second step, the
resulting version of reine is reversed to the original «ферзь»,
«королева», which indicates the interlanguage synonymy of
these terms. According to the data presented in The New
French-Russian dictionary by V.G. Gаk, K.A. Ganshina, the
term chess game reine is identified with the Russian term
«(карточная) дама» [10, p. 932)].
The result of the analysis stage is the conclusion that the
Russian lexemes ферзь and the rarely used шахматная
королева mean the same thing, which indicates the
phenomenon of synonymy within one – the Russian language.
The terms equivalent to English and French are, respectively,
«queen» and «reine».
Chess term – ладья (Rus.)
The first step of the first turn allows us to establish that
ладья when translating into English has one correspondence –
«castle» [7, p. 219]. As a result of the second step, the English
chess term castle is reversed to the original lexeme «ладья» [8,
p. 114], which indicates the interlanguage synonymy and full
equivalence of the terms in question.
However, along with the term castle – «ладья» and the other
term rook used in the English language, also with a value of
шахматная ладья [8, p. 608] that indicate the presence of
synonymy relative to a single chess piece in the English
language. As another confirmation of the ambiguity of the
English term rook refers to the dictionary “The universal
English dictionary” by H.C. Wyld, which states that in chess
rook in turn refers to the word castle in translation ладья [11,
p. 1026].
The first step of the first turn allows us to establish that the
Russian term ладья when translating into French has one
correspondence – «tour» [9, p. 274]. The second step of the term
tour is reversed to the original lexeme «шахматная ладья» [10,
p. 1097], which indicates the interlanguage synonymy and full
equivalence of these terminological units of Russian and French
languages.
The results of the analysis show that in the English language
the Russian lexeme ладья are two of the English equivalent of
«castle» and «rook», which is indicative of the phenomena:
firstly, of polysemy within the framework of one the English
language and, secondly, interlanguage synonymy within the
framework of the Russian and English languages. In
comparison with the French language, the Russian lexeme
ладья fully coincides with the meaning of the French lexeme
«tour», which confirms the presence of interlanguage
synonymy.
Chess term – слон (Rus.)
The first step of the first turn allows establishing that
шахматный слон when translated into English has one
correspondence – «bishop» [7, p. 504]. As a result of the second
step of the analysis, the term bishop is reversed to the original
lexeme «шахматный слон» [8, p. 76], which indicates the
interlanguage synonymy and full equivalence of the considered
terminological units in two languages.
When translating into French, the first step of the first turn
allows establishing that the Russian term шахматный
слон has one French correspondence – «fou» [9, p. 608]. In the
second step, the resulting lexeme fou is reversed to the original
lexeme «шахматный слон» [10, p. 474], which indicates the
presence of interlanguage synonymy and full equivalence of the
considered units.
Thus, the conducted stage of the analysis makes it possible
to assert that the Russian term шахматный слон, English
«bishop» and French «fou» are completely equivalent.
Chess term – конь (Rus.)
The first step of the first turn allows establishing that
шахматный конь when translated into English has one
correspondence – «knight» [7, p. 207]. As a result of the second
step, the resulting term knight is reversed to the original lexeme
«шахматный конь» [8, p. 395], which indicates the
interlanguage synonymy and full equivalence of these
terminological units of Russian and English.
When translating into French, the first step of the first turn
shows that the Russian term шахматный конь has one
correspondence – «cavalier» [9, p. 257]. In the second step, the
resulting French term cavalier is reversed to the original lexeme
«шахматный конь» [10, p. 173], which indicates the
interlanguage synonymy and full equivalence of the units under
consideration.
As a result of the analysis stage it can be stated that the
Russian lexeme шахматный конь has its equivalents in
English – «knight» and French – «cavalier».
292

Chess term – пешка (Rus.)
When translating into English, the first step of the first turn
allows establishing that the term пешка has one English
correspondence – «pawn», in the figurative colloquial meaning
чистая пешка has an analogue of «a mere pawn» [7, p. 357].
As a result of the second step, the term pawn is reversed to the
original lexeme «пешка» [8, p. 515], which indicates the
presence of interlanguage synonymy and full equivalence of
units of Russian and English.
When translating into French, the first step of the first turn
allows establishing that the Russian term пешка has one
correspondence – «pion» [9, p. 448]. As the second step, the
French term pion is reversed to the original lexeme «пешка»
[10, p. 882], indicating interlanguage synonymy and a complete
equivalence of the considered terminological units.
It should be noted that the French term pion in addition to
the «шахматной пешки» means the game term «шашка» of
another sport’s game, which indicates the ambiguity of this
term.
According to the results of the reverse analysis, it can be
argued that the Russian lexeme пешка is equivalent to the
English terminological unit «pawn». However, in French the
lexeme pion, corresponding to the Russian term «пешка», has
two terminological meanings: «шахматная пешка» and
«шашка», which indicates the ambiguity of the term in French
and interlanguage synonymy within the Russian, English and
French languages.
The results of the analysis are reflected in Table I.
TABLE I. CORRELATION OF CHESS TERMS IN RUSSIAN, ENGLISH AND
FRENCH
Russian terms
English terms
French terms
Король
King
Roi
Ферзь / Королева
Queen
Riene
Ладья
Rook / Castle
Tour
Слон
Bishop
Fou
Конь
Knight
Cavalier
Пешка
Pawn
Pion
CONCLUSION
The results of the comparative and reverse analysis make it
possible to identify the following system and semantic features
of the nomination of chess terms: 1. Complete equivalence in
Russian, English and French of such chess terms as:
Король – King – Roi
Слон – Bishop – Fou
Конь – Knight – Cavalier
Пешка – Pawn – Pion
2. The Russian chess term ферзь is a synonymous of term
шахматная королева, which, however, is used less frequently
than the first. The English chess term queen has several Russian
equivalents: «ферзь», «карточная дама». The French chess
term reine has many Russian equivalents: «ферзь»,
«королева», «(карточная) дама». 3. The Russian chess term
ладья is «ладья», the French chess term tour is the Russian
«(шахматная) ладья». The English chess terms castle and rook
are synonymous which have one Russian equivalent «ладья».
These features contribute to the formation of adequate
fragments of the picture of the world, reflected in each specific
language. They unite in the overall picture of the chess world,
forming a single whole. From this whole, fragments are easily
separated, the reverse analysis of which, and allowed
combining them into something in common.
References
[1] A.F. Losev, Plato, Phileb, State, Timaeus, Critius. Moscow: Mysl', 1999.
[2] J. Huizinga, Homo ludens. St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbach publishing
house, 2011, pp. 31–36
[3] E. Bern, Games that people play: the Psychology of human relationships;
People who play games: the Psychology of human destiny. Meganewton:
Potpourri, 2000.
[4] M.V. Vlavatskaya, “Concept of terminological dictionary «Combinatorial
linguistics»”, Philological Sciences. Theory and practice, no. 5/2, pp. 65–
68, 2016.
[5] S.V. Grinev-Grinevich, E.A. Sorokina, “On the methods of linguistic
research”, Bulletin of MSU, ser. Linguistics, no. 1. Moscow: Moscow
state University, 2010, pp. 23–31.
[6] L.Yu. Fadeeva, The Phenomenon of reversibility in linguistics. Samara:
International market Institute, 2008.
[7] A.M. Taube, R.S. Daglish, Russian-English dictionary. Moscow: Rus.
lang., 1990.
[8] V.K. Muller, English-Russian dictionary. Moscow: Rus. lang., 1991.
[9] L.V. Shcherba, M.I. Matusevich, Russian-French dictionary Moscow:
Rus. lang., 1993.
[10] V.G. Gak, K.A. Ganshina, New French-Russian dictionary. Moscow:
Rus. lang., 1993.
[11] The universal English dictionary. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1970.
293