СЕНСАЦИОННЫЕ ФАКТЫ
Translation and Its Main Objectives
Presumption of semantic similarity – WTF????????????????
Translation is a human activity known since ancient times, and the profession of a translator or an interpreter is among one of the oldest professions dating back to the Biblical era or even earlier. Translation is a human activity which presents one of the most complex problems that the human intellect may face. The stated goal of translation is the transformation of the text originally in one language into an equivalent text into a different language preserving the contents of the original message, the formal features and functional roles. In studying this complex process at work we are in fact seeking insights towards the whole relationship between language activity and the social context in which it takes place.
The purpose of translation is implementation of speech communication between people speaking different languages. Communication is impossible if there is a distinct non-coincidence between transmitted and received information. This act of communication is different from communication acts carried out in 1 language. In the process of translation communicators use 2 different language systems. And as a result this communication is always bilingual. Linguistics of translation focuses on the system of communicatively equal units of 2 languages which can replace each other in the process of interlingual communication. Translation presupposes communicative similarity of texts in different languages, the interchangeability in a definite act of communication.
It’s a long lane that has no turning – Перемелется – мука будет.
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
In the first example translation provides communicative similarity between the original and translated texts, but not their semantic identity. The essence of translation is to reach communicative equivalents, that is to retain functional (communicative) relevance of the original. Communicative similarity of texts in different languages discovered in translation is an objective phenomenon that reflects universal properties of the language as a means of exchange of ideas.
The study of translation has been dominated, and to a degree still is, by the debate about its status as an art or a science. The linguist inevitably approaches translation from a scientific point of view seeking to create some kind of objective description of the phenomenon. Nevertheless, the supposed dichotomy between art and science is still current enough, as the QUINTESSENCE of translation as art is even more patent (evident) in literary texts.
The term “translation” presupposes that the content and style of the original text should be preserved as far as possible in the translated text; the aim is to reproduce as accurately as possible all grammatical and lexical features of the source language text by finding equivalents in the target language. At the same time all factual information contained in the original must be retained in translation. We would suggest that there are in fact 3 distinguishable meanings for the word “translation”. It can refer to: 1) translating – the process to translate – the activity rather than the tangible object; 2) a translation – the product of the translating process, that is the translated text; 3) translation – the abstract concept which involves both the process of translating and the product of that process.
Description of the translating process is one of the major tasks of the translation theory. Here we deal with the dynamic aspects of translating, trying to understand how the translator performs the transfer operation from source text to target text. The study of the translating process reveals both the translator’s strategy and specific techniques used to solve typical translation problems. Translation makes possible an exchange of information between the users of different languages by producing in the target language a text having an identical communicative value with a source text. This target text isn’t completely identical with the source text as to its form or content due to the limitations imposed by the semantic and formal differences between the source language and target language. Nevertheless, the users of target text identify it with source text functionally, structurally, and semantically.
The functional identification presupposes that the users treat target texts in such a way as if it were source texts, a creation of the source text author. The functional status of translation is supported by its structural and semantic similarity. The translator is expected to avoid interference with the process of communication between source language, sender, and target receptors. The structure of the translation should follow that of the original text: there should be no change in the sequence of narration or in the arrangement of the segments of the text. The translator has to achieve maximum parallelism of structure. Any bridge of parallelism is not arbitrary but can be predetermined by the need for precision in conveying the meaning of the original. The translator is allowed to resort to a description or interpretation, only in case direct translation is impossible. Structural parallelism makes it possible to compare respective units in the original text and in translation so as to discover elements which have equivalents and those which have not, elements which have been added or omitted in translation. In other words, similarity in structure is preserved in respect to the smallest segments of the text.
Of great importance is also the semantic identification of the translation with source text. It is presumed that the translation has the same meaning as the original text. The presumption of semantic identity between source text and target text is based on the various degrees of equivalents of their meanings. The translator usually tries to produce in target language the closest possible equivalent to source text. As any observable phenomenon, translation can be the object of scientific study aimed at understanding its nature, its constituence and their interaction as well as various factors influencing it.
The science of translation, or translatology, is concerned both with theoretical and applied aspects of translation studies. A theoretical description of the translation phenomenon is the task of translation theory. Theoretical research is to discover what translation is, to find out what objective factors predetermine the translator’s intuition, to describe the ways and methods by which the identity of the communicative value of source text or target text is achieved.
The theory of translation provides the translator with the appropriate tools of analysis and synthesis makes him aware of what he is to look for in the original text, what type of information he is to convey in target text, and how he should act to achieve this goal. Translation is a complicated phenomenon involving linguistic, psycholinguistic, cultural, literary, and other factors. Different aspects of translation can be studied with the methods of respected sciences. Up to now, most of the theoretical research has been done within the framework of linguistics. The linguistic theory of translation is concerned with translation as a form of speech communication establishing contact between communicants who speak different languages. The basis of this theory is linguistics in the broadest sense of a word, that is macrolinguistics with all its new branches, such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, communicative linguistics etc. studying the language structure and its functioning in speech in their relationship in mind, culture, and society.
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.
An important part of the general theory of translation is the theory of equivalence, aimed at studying semantic relationships between source text and target text.
What Is a Translator? (Translator’s strategy)
All communicators are translators.
All communicators, whether listeners or readers, face essentially the same problem: they receive signals containing messages encoded in a communication system which is not identical with their own.
Making sense of a text, he’s to deconstruct it and then reconstruct it. Any model of communication is at the same time a model of translation.
In what way then is the role of a translator different from that of a normal communicator? The translator has been defined as a mediating agent between monolingual communication participants speaking different languages, that is the translator decodes a message in one language and reencodes it in another.
It is this reencoding process which marks off a translator from a normal communicator. A professional translator should not only possess a bilingual ability but also a bicultural vision. Translators mediate between cultures seeking to overcome those incompatibilities which stand in the way of transfer of meaning. What has value as a sign for one cultural community can be devoid of any significance in another and it is the translator who is uniquely placed to identify this disparity and try to resolve it.
But there is another sense in which the translators are mediators; in a way they are “privilege” readers of the source language text. Unlike the ordinary reader (source text and target text reader), the translator reads in order to produce, decodes in order to reencode. Processing is likely to be more thorough, more deliberate than that of the ordinary reader. Inevitably, a translated text reflects the translator’s reading, and this is yet another factor which defines the translator as a non-ordinary reader: whereas the ordinary reader can involve his or her own beliefs and thoughts into the translated text during creative reading process, the translator must be more guarded. Ideological nuances, cultural predispositions and so on in the source text have to be relayed untainted by the translator’s own vision of the reality.
The translator, while rendering a source text, has to perform a set of actions. These actions are largely initiative and the best results are achieved by translators who are best suited for the job, who are best trained and have a talent for it. It seems indisputable that the translator must possess all-embracing linguistic knowledge on which all else depends. There should be an integration between the linguistic knowledge of the two languages with specific and general knowledge of the domain and of the world via contrastive linguistic knowledge. The translator must possess linguistic competence in both languages and communicative competence in both cultures.
The professional translator has access to four distinct kinds of knowledge: source language knowledge, target language knowledge, subject area (real world) knowledge, contrastive knowledge. Add to this, decoding skills of reading and reencoding skills of writing.
What are the main principles of translator’s strategy? When confronted with the text to be translated, the translator’s first concern is to understand it by assessing of language units in the text against the contextual situation and the pertaining extralinguistic facts. At the same time, the translator must take care to avoid “thinking into the text” – that is adding the information which is not in fact present in source text.
The semantic analysis of the text must take into account both the immediate surroundings, that is the meaning of other words and structures in the same sentence, and the broad context which comprises the contents of the whole original text.
Analyzing the contents of the original, the translator makes the assessment of the relative communicative value of different meaningful elements. In most cases, his professional aim is to achieve the closest approximation to the original, that is to reproduce its contents in all the details.
But quite often one meaningful element of the original can be retained in translation only at the expense of omitting some other part of the contents. The translator has to decide what bits of information he’s prepared to sacrifice and which elements of the original are of greater communicative value and should be rendered by all means.
In a literary text, the poetic or stylistic effect is no less important than the ideas conveyed. The loss of the figurative element can make at least part of the text quite meaningless, and it is often considered as the dominant component to be preserved in translation.
The choice of the structure in translation often calls for a good deal of ingenuity and imagination on the part of the translator. He should be able to make an accurate assessment of the semantic possibilities of the given syntactic structure in order to see whether the latter can be used to convey the original meaning.
It should be born in mind that parallel target language structures are as good as any and they should by no means be avoided or considered inferior. On the contrary, the translator should use a parallel structure whenever possible and resort to grammar transformations only if they are unavoidable. As we see, translation is a creative process of search and discovery, and it takes much effort from the translator to apply the general principle of the translation theory to the practical purpose.
It’s a fact recognized by all translators that familiarity with the ideas and meaning of the author of the source language text is a vital aid to translating whereas unfamiliarity breeds lack of confidence or at least inability to anticipate meaning when a text is in some way obscure or just elliptical. The best translators of works of literature are often said to be those who are most in tune with the original author. The translator must possess the spirit of the original, make his own the intent of the source language writer. The translator invades, extracts and brings home.
The view that intention should be relayed in translation is no longer controversial.
Clearly, there is a link between the intentionality in such matters as the structure and wording of target language texts. Translation is a matter of choice but choice is always motivated. Additions, omissions, alterations may indeed be justified but only in relation to intended meaning.
The intentions are always within the framework of the source language. The intentions of the translator add a second dimension to the process.
The translator’s motivations are bound up with the socio-cultural context in which the act of translating takes place. Consequently, it’s important to judge translating activity only within a social context. Before there is a translation, there has to be a need for it. The need may be client-driven (as when someone commissions, asks for or requires a translation), market-driven (when publishers show demand for a work of foreign literature) and translators-driven (when a work of ancient literature is translated or retranslated because someone feels that by doing so she or he can communicate with somebody and render something new).
Main Types of Translation
Alongside with common features, separate types of translation can have essential specific characteristics. According to genre and style classification of translation all translations are divided into literary (artistic) and informative (special) translation.
Literary translation is aimed at rendering works of fiction which are opposed to other texts as to the communicative function – aesthetic, poetic and artistic. All literary texts are characterized by high artistic value which must be appropriately rendered in the target language. Sometimes the text of the translation can be quite different from that of the original in its form as the main purpose of translation is to render artistic properties of the original text. Literary works are known to fall into a number of genres. Literary translations may be subdivided in the same way as each genre calls for a specific arrangement and makes use of specific artistic means to impress the reader. Translators of prose, poetry and plays have their own problems. Each of these forms of literary activities comprises a number of subgenres and the translator may specialize in one of them in accordance with his talent and experience. The particular tasks inherent in the translation of literary works of each genre are more literary than linguistic. The great challenge to the translator is to combine the maximum equivalence and the high literary merit. The translator of a belles-lettres text is expected to make a careful study of the literary trend the text belongs to, the other works of the same author, the peculiarities of his individual style and so on. A good literary translator must be a versatile scholar and a talented writer or poet.
Informative translation is the translation of texts whose main function is to convey information. Aesthetic influence on the reader isn’t its essential feature. Such texts involve all materials of scientific, technical, business, socio-political and everyday character.
Apart from the given above types it may be expedient to single out translation of official diplomatic papers as a separate type of informative translation. These texts make a category of their own because of the specific requirements to the quality of their translations. Such translations are often accepted as authentic official texts on a par with the originals. They are important documents, each word of which must be carefully chosen as a matter of principle. That makes the translator very particular about every little meaningful element of the original which he scrupulously reproduces in translation.
Journalistic texts dealing with social or political matters are sometimes singled out among other informative materials because they may feature elements more commonly used in literary texts (metaphors, similes and other stylistic devices) which cannot but influence translator’s strategy. More often, they are regarded as a kind of newspaper materials.
Psycholinguistic Classification
According to psycholinguistic classification of translation it is subdivided into oral and written, which, in its term, has a more detailed subdivision. The line of demarcation between written and oral translation (interpretation) is drawn not only because of their forms but also because of the sets of conditions in which the process takes place. The first is continuous, the other – momentary. In written translation the original can be read and reread as many times as the translator may need or like. The same goes for the final product. The translator can reread his translation, compare with the original, make all necessary corrections or start the work all over again. He can come back or get the information he needs from the further going (subsequent) messages. These are most favorable conditions. And here we can expect the best performance and the highest level of equivalence. The conditions of interpretation impose a number of important restrictions on the translator’s performance. Here the interpreter receives a fragment of the original only once and for a short period of time. His translation is a one time act with no possibility of any return to the original or any subsequent corrections. These creates additional problems and the users have sometimes to be content with a lower level of equivalence.
There are 2 main kinds of interpretation: consecutive and simultaneous. In consecutive translation the translating starts after the original speech or some part of it has been completed. Here the interpreter’s strategy and the final result are very much dependant on the length of the segment to be translated. If the segment is just a sentence or 2, the interpreter closely follows the original speech. As often as not, however, the interpreter is expected to translate a long speech. In this case he has to remember a great number of messages and keep them in mind. To make this possible, the interpreter has to take notes of the original messages, various systems of notation having been suggested for this purpose.
Sometimes the interpreter is set a time limit to give his rendering which means he will have to reduce his translation considerably selecting and reproducing the most important parts of the original. This implies the ability to make a judgment on the relative value of various messages and to generalize or compress the received information. The interpreter must obviously be a good and quick-witted thinker.
In simultaneous translation the interpreter is supposed to give his translation while the speaker is uttering the original message. This can be achieved with a special radio or telephone-type equipment. The interpreter receives the original speech through the earphones and simultaneously talks into the microphone which transmits his translation to the listeners. This type of translation involves a number of psycholinguistic problems, both of theoretical and practical nature.