3. Is Translation an Art or a Craft?

Translation is a means of interlingual communication. But is it an art or a craft?

This question has been under debate for many years. According to Natalia Strelkova “Ideally, the translator is like a talented artist who when he looks at his sitter or a landscape, sees something more than the ordinary viewer – he sees the essence of what is in front of him. A good translator always processes the textual information to allow the reader to see what he sees and feel what he is feeling. He acts as an invisible bridge between the author and the reader. That is what makes translation an art. On the other hand, mastery of craft is important, too, for an inept, ineffectual translator or interpreter can wreak havoc on any effort at communication”. (N. Strelkova. Introduction to Russian-English Translation. New York, 2012, p. 1)

The following example is just a case in point.

The company prides itself on having spent hardly a penny on conventional advertising throughout its history.

Компания гордится тем, что потратила едва ли пенни на обычную рекламу на протяжении своей истории.

1. To translate this sentence correctly, we will have to analyze its components on different levels, namely, lexical, grammatical and stylistic:

• (in Britain) penny is a unit of money equal to one hundredth of a pound;

• the perfect gerund having spent is used as an object;

• the adverb hardly gives some expressiveness to the utterance.

2. Then we should “decode” and reformulate these elements according to the norms of the Russian language.

The translation of the given above sentence involves some lexical and grammatical manipulations, such as: generalization: having spent hardly a penny – практически без всяких затрат; addition: conventional advertising – традиционные способы рекламирования товара; addition: throughout its history – на протяжении всей истории своего существования; moving the phrase throughout its history to the beginning of the sentence.

Taking all these facts into account, this sentence can be translated like that:

Компания гордится тем, что на протяжении всей истории своего существования она использовала традиционные способы рекламирования товара практически без всяких затрат.

This step-by-step analysis demonstrates that any translation requires specific skills which are called translator’s competence. It means that the translator must possess not only profound knowledge of both languages – the ST and the TT, but also to be able to employ some creative tactics. So, we can say that translation is simultaneously a craft and an art consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and statement in one language by the same message and statement in another language.

3. Theory of Translation as a Linguistic Science and Translation Studies as an Academic Discipline

The core of the translation theory is the general theory of translation which is concerned with the fundamental aspects of translation inherent in the nature of bilingual communication and therefore common to all translation events, irrespective of what languages are involved or what kind of text and under what circumstances was translated.

The basis of this theory is linguistics in the broadest sense of the word, that is, macrolinguistics with all its new branches, such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, communicative linguistics, etc.

The task of the theory of translation is to provide students, researchers and professional translators with theoretical description of the translation phenomenon.

The aims of the theory of translation are:

1) to describe general linguistic principles of translation;

2) to elaborate the principles of types of translation;

3) to define the notion of equivalence and / or adequacy in translation;

4) to describe the process (the notion) of translation from the scientific point of view;

5) to reveal pragmatic and social-linguistic factors of translation;

6) to define the notion of norm in translation (for example, professional norms, which regulate the translation process itself, linguistic norms as related to the language system, communicative norms as related to communicative behavior, production norms which concern the methods and strategies by which a correct product can be achieved, etc. (Current Issues In Language and Society Volume 5, Issue 1-2, 1998, Cristina Schaffner The Concept of Norms in Translation, Studies, p. 1)

One of the outstanding scientists who influenced the development of the theory of translation was Eugene Nida. (He is also famous for his translation of the Bible).

Central to Nida’s work is the move away from the old idea that an orthographic word has a fixed meaning and towards a functional definition of meaning in which a word ‘acquires’ meaning through its context and can produce varying responses according to culture. (Introducing Translation Studies, p. 39)

Fyodorov stresses that translation theory is an independent linguistic discipline, deriving from observations and providing the basis for practice. He believes that all experience is translatable and rejects the view that language expresses a peculiar mental word-picture (словесное изображение).

Comissarov sees translation theory moving in three directions:

1. the denotative (informational translation);

2. the semantic (precise equivalence);

3. the transformational (transposition of relevant structures).

Translation studies is the academic discipline related to the study of the theory and phenomena of translation. By its nature it is multilingual and also interdisciplinary, encompassing any language combinations, various branches of linguistics, comparative literature, communication studies, philosophy and a range of types of cultural studies (культурология) as well as sociology and historiography. (Introducing Translation Studies, p. 1)

Translation studies contains elements of social science and the humanities (гуманитарные науки) and deals with the systematic study of the theory, the description and the application of translation, interpreting or both these activities.

Translation studies has become more prominent in recent years due to:

1. a proliferation of specialized translating and interpreting courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, which are mainly oriented towards training future professional translators and interpreters.

2. a proliferation of conferences, books and journals on the theory and practice of translation (The Journal of Translation and New Voices, The Linguist, The ITI Bulletin and In Other Words).

3. The work of such international organizations as the Canadian Association for Translation Studies, the European Society for Translation Studies, etc., which bring together translation studies scholars nationally and internationally.

This thesis can be illustrated with the following example: the book by Jeremy Munday INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES. Theories and applications contains material on historical sources, the works on ethics, ideology, sociology, historiography and other branches of science.