§ 3. Communicative approach
We communicate to transfer information from one person to another. Translation helps people communicate if they speak different languages.
Thus, translation is a two-facet phenomenon: on the one hand, it is the process of transferring information; on the other hand, it is the result of this process. By the result is meant a new text created in translating.
The communicative situation consists of several elements:
Source
of information
Receptor
(Addressee)
TEXT
A speaker or writer (an author) makes a meaningful utterance called the text and addresses it to the listener, reader, or receptor, who understands the purport of the text and reacts to it.
Source
of information
Receptor
(Addressee)
TRANSLATOR
SOURCETEXT
TARGET TEXT
The
translation situation doubles the elements of communication.8
The receptor of the original text in turn becomes a translator who makes a translated text, or target textintended for the receptor speaking another language:
The
source text is the text to be translated. The target text is the
end-product, the translated text.
For the translation to be adequate and effective, the target text should be equivalent to the source text. Indeed, when reading tragedies by Shakespeare in Russian, the receptor is but seldom aware that the words s/he sees in the text were not written by Shakespeare but by some other person, a translator. The form of the target text is new but the purport and the content are very close to the original. Paradoxically, the better a translator's work, the less his/her work is observed. The translated text is attributed to the author speaking another language and this text is used everywhere as if it were the original.
Thus translationunifies two different language speech acts in one communicative situation. It can be defined as a special type of communication intended to convey information between the participants speaking two different languages. As E. Nida and C. Taber put it, “translating consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language meaning and secondly in terms of style.”9
§ 4. Dialectics of translation
Inseparability of form and meaning.10
A translator is to convey not only the ideas and themes of the source text (meaning, sense); s/he should also pay attention to the adequate form to express these ideas. S/he should not become carried away with a free (loose) form of translation, nor force the target language by following the source text word for word. A translator always bears in mind a stardard language of the target text, for, as W.Benjamin put it figuratively, «while content and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds.» 11
Social functions.
Translation does not exist outside of society. It appeared in society when communities began to trade and exchange ideas. At the same time, translation helps the world community develop. Nations could hardly have achieved the technological success as it is in the 20thcentury if there had been no translations in electronics, physics, chemistry and other branches of science and technology.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica12
, in the 20thcentury most of the world’s people speak one of about 75 primary languages. A small minority speak one of 450 secondary languages, and more than 4,400 other languages are in use. Without translation and translators the world would not be able to progress.