Введение в теорию и практику перевода (на материале английского языка) - стр. 8

Usually translation of free phrases does not cause any specific difficulties. The main thing to be remembered here is the interplay of the meanings of components, because every component should be translated in such a way as to form the whole meaning of the phrase. In the English language, however, there are some types of phrases, which deserve special attention due to peculiarities of their semantic structure. Fist of all it refers to phrases with preposed attributes. All these phrases are built according to the pattern ATTRIBUTE + (ATTRIBUTE + …) + SUBSTANTIVE, but their semantic structure may vary considerably. Preposed attributes may denote properties and qualities of the substantive itself or of other attributes (cf. "south-coast convalescent camp" – where both "south-coast" and "convalescent" characterize "camp" – and "free educational institution" where "free" is not connected semantically with "institution"); besides properties and qualities, they may denote some notion with which the substantive is connected, they may express local, temporal and other characteristics. That is why it is often impossible or at least undesirable to translate such phrases using similar Russian constructions, since in Russian semantic relations between a preposed attribute and a substantive are rather uniform: if a "happy man" is certainly "счастливый человек", "a medical man" can hardly be translated as "медицинский человек". There may be several attributes in a phrase and they are not necessarily expressed by adjectives. Very often the function of a preposed attribute is fulfilled by a noun (the "stone wall" type of phrases) which, in its turn, may also have an attribute (e.g. "the front door key"). Sometimes it is not easy to see which of the nouns is characterized by a particular attribute (does "retail philanthropy business" mean "business of retail philanthropy" or "retail business of philanthropy"?). Such ambiguity is practically impossible in Russian attributive phrases.

Another peculiarity of English phrases with preposed attributes is that an attribute may modify a noun which is as it were omitted and only implied (e.g. "dry pruning" does not mean that the process of pruning is dry, the word "dry" denotes the state of branches that are being pruned).

These semantic and structural peculiarities should be taken into consideration when translating attributive phrases with preposed attributes. First of all it is necessary to translate the final noun, which is always the main word in such a phrase. Then one should single out sense groups within the phrase and analyze relations between them. If all these groups modify the final noun they may be translated in the same succession as they are in English, or in a different succession, according to the norms of the Russian language. If they modify each other consecutively the reverse way of translation is often recommended: