Chapter 6. Translation Models § 1. Translation process

To start a machine translation, computer designers invited a group of experienced translators to ask them a question, seemingly naive but directly referring to their profession: how do you translate? Could you tell us in detail everything about the translation process? What goes on in a translator's brain? What operation follows what? Dmitri Zhukov, a professional translator, reminisces⁵⁴

that this simple question took everyone by surprise, for it is a terribly difficult thing to explain what the process of translation is.

Attempts to conceptualize the translation process have brought to life some theories, or models, of translation. The translationmodel is a conventional description of mental operations on speech and language units, conducted by a translator, and their explanation.

Approximately, four translation models can be singled out:

1. Situational (denotative) model of translation

2. Transformational model of translation

3. Semantic model of translation

4. Psycholinguistic model of translation.

Each model explains the process of translation in a restrictive way, from its own angle, and, therefore, cannot be considered comprehensive and wholly depicting the mechanism of translation. But together they make the picture of translation process more vivid and provide a translator with a set of operations to carry out translation.

§ 2. Situational model of translation

One and the same situation is denoted by the source and target language. But each language does it in its own way.

To denotemeans to indicate either the thing a word names or the situation a sentence names. Hence is the term ofdenotative meaning, or referential meaning, i.e. the meaning relating a language unit to the external world; and the term ofdenotation,or a particular and explicit meaning of a symbol.

To translate correctly, a translator has to comprehend the situation denoted by the source text - as P. Newmark stressed, one should translate ideas, not words⁵⁵

and then find the proper means of the target language to express this situation (idea). If the translator does not understand the situation denoted by the source text, his or her translation will not be adequate, which sometimes happens when an inexperienced translator attempts to translate a technical text. The main requirement of translation is that the denotation of the source text be equal to the denotation of the target text. That is why a literary word-for-word translation sometimes results in a failure of communication. Возьми хлеба в булочной.is equivalent to the EnglishBuy some bread in the bakery.only because the receptor of the Russian sentence knows that the situation of buying in Russian can be denoted by a more general wordвзятьwhose primary equivalent (not for this context) isto takewhich does not contain the seme of money-paying.

Thus, this model of translation emphasizes identification of the situation as the principal phase of the translation process.

This theory of translation is helpful in translating neologisms and realia: to give a proper equivalent to the phrase Red Guards, which is an English calque from Chinese, we should know what notion is implied by the phrase. On finding out that this phrase means ‘members of a Chinese Communist youth movement in the late 1960’s, committed to the militant support of Mao Zedong, we come to the Russian equivalent of this historic term –хунвэйбины.

As a matter of fact, this model of translation is used for attaining the equivalent on the situation level. It is the situation that determines the translation equivalent among the variables: instant coffee is equivalent toрастворимый кофеbut not*мгновенный кофе.

The situation helps to determine whether a translation is acceptable or not. For example, we have to translate the sentence Somebody was baited by the rights.Without knowing the situation, we might translate the sentence asКто-то подвергался травле со стороны правых as the dictionary’s translation equivalent forto baitisтравить, подвергать травле.But in case we know that by thesmbPresident Roosevelt is meant, our translation will be inappropriate and we had better use the equivalentПрезидентРузвельтподвергался резким нападкам со стороны правых.

A weak point of this model is that it does not explain the translation mechanismitself. One situation can be designated by various linguistic means. Why choose this or that variable over various others? The model gives no answer to this question.

Another flaw in this theory is that it does not describe the systemic character of the linguistic units. Why do the elements of the idiom to lead somebody by the nosenot correspond to the Russianобвести за нос? Why does this idiom correspond to the Russianдержать верх над кем-то? This model does not describe the relations between the language units in a phrase or sentence and thus gives no explanation of the relations between the source and target language units. This model gives reference only to the extralinguistic situation designated by the sentence.