12.2. Special terminological abbreviations

Special terminological abbreviations (reductions, shortenings) (EKG = electrocardiogram) and common language (non-technical) (etc. = and so on). They should (and must) be used in translation, without inventing one’s own reductions. If abbreviation is absent or the term is not well known, it is general practice to decipher this abbreviation. If it has to be accompanied by its abbreviated variant, usually abbreviation is proposed by translator himself, being guided by the type of abbreviation in the original: if in the original there is an acronym – abbreviation, made of initial letters, then in translation – there also will be an acronym; if in the original there is an complex abbreviated word – the translator constructs the same model.

Means of arranging cognitive information block emotional information – they are presented in erased, extremely formalized shape of modality means of scientific discussion. Every language has its own means: English – by all means, in no way, in Ukrainian these are modal words, word-combinations with the verbs of definite semantics: ймовірно, можливо, ми вважаємо, which are lexical amplifiers, belonging to the written literary language norm. International means of emotiveness in scientific discussion, such, as rhetorical questions, are not numerous.

Absolute prevalence of cognitive scientific information in scientific speech dictates the logical and not associative-image-bearing way of its construction. This way is provided by special language means which provide text coherence by means of semantic and formal cohesion. Often they duplicate each other, in scientific text their number being maximally great, even redundant, their abundance is one of dominating features of a scientific text. Rendering means of semantic cohesion in oral translation of special complexity does not represent any difficulty for translator, as the most part of lexicon, which organizes this kind of text, is rendered by mono-semantic equivalents (semantic kernel is preserved). Owing to redundancy of the cohesion means translator has full right to reduce the number of the term repetitions.

Logicality in scientific performance is also connected with a high level of complexity and maximal variety of syntactic structures. However, sometimes a complex syntactical structure in translation is transformed in such a way that ambiguity occurs.

In these instances the principle of logicality is broken and one should make syntactic transformation, to simplify or split a compound sentence into two. If the logical principle is maintained, when listening to such translation, everybody receives a sheer pleasure, admiring the logic of presentation.

Communicative task of scientific performance is communicating new data in the given sphere of knowledge, which are based on significant volume of information already known to an expert. The level of base competence, common for a source and recipient, is very high, often unclear to outsiders. Translator should “enter the subject-matter”, i.e. to raise his level of competence, not to be mistaken in rendering the content.

The scheme of pre-translational analysis includes gathering external data on the topic of translation. If it is found out, that the given topic of speaking at the conference is a part of scientific work or a scientific article in the thematic collection, the interpreter should get familiarized in general with the book or article.

Conclusions:

• In scientific-technical oral translation the means providing equivalence to the original, are objectivity, logicality and compactness of performing, terms, general scientific lexicon without evaluating coloring, verbal forms of present time (passive verbal constructions), indefinite-personal and impersonal structures, complex words, word-formation models with abstract semantics. When interpreting into Ukrainian it is more expedient to express process through a noun (replacement of a noun by a verb with the same semantics in scientific style is undesirable!);

• Precision information (abbreviations, figures, formulas, schemes) is rendered without changes;

• In case of maximal complexity and variety of syntactic structures, if logical principle is violated, phrases may be divided into parts. Base unit of translation is a word, for some complex words – a morpheme. The most widespread kind of correspondence is a mono-semantic equivalent and a variant correspondence (sometimes descriptive translation).