The Importance of the Translation Commission

Mentioned above proves the necessity taking into consideration the peculiarities of translation commission. The translator needs to compare the source and the target texts profiles defined in the commission to see where the two texts mat diverge. The translation commission should give the following information for both texts:

• the intended text functions;

• the addressees (sender and receiver);

• the time and place of text reception;

• the medium (speech and writing);

• the motive (why the text was written and why it is being translated).

This information enables the translator to priorities what information to include in the target text.

The Functional Hierarchy of Translation Problems

When undertaking a translation you should establish a functional hierarchy.

First of all, the intended function of the translation should be decided (documentary or instrumental). Documentary translation serves as a document of a source culture communication between the author and the recipient. Such is the case, for example, in literary translation, where the target text allows the receiver access to the ideas of the source text but where the reader is well aware that it is a translation. In such texts certain culture-specific lexical items are retained in order to maintain colour of the source text.

Instrumental translation serves as an independent message-transmitting instrument in a new communicative action in the target culture, and is intended to fulfill its communicative purpose without the recipient being conscious of reading or hearing a text which, in a different form, was used before in a different communicative situation. In other words, the target text receiver read the target text as though it were written in their own language. For instance, a translated computer manual or software should fulfill the function the same functions in any language. These are function-preserving translations.

Afterwards, the translation type decides the translation style (source culture or target culture oriented).Then, those functional elements that will need to be adapted to the target text addressees’ situation have to be determined. Finally, the problems of the text can then be tackled at a lower lingual level, where we deal with functional styles or text registers.

Functional styles / text registers

In the English literary standard we distinguish the following major functional styles (hence FS):

1) The language of belles-Letters.

2) The language of publicist literature.

3) The language of newspapers.

4) The language of scientific prose.

5) The language of official documents.

Each FS mау bе characterized bу а number of distinctive features. Each FS is subdivided into а number of substyles. These represent varieties of the abstract invariant. Each variety has basic features соmmоn to all the varieties of the given FS and peculiar features typical of this variety alone.

The belles-lettres FS has the following substyles:

а) substyle of poetry;

b) substyle of emotive prose;

с) substyle of drama.

The publicist FS comprises the following su styles:

а) substyle of oratory;

b) substyle of essays;

с) substyle of feature articles in newspapers and journals.

The newspaper FS falls into

а) substyle of brief news items and communiqués;

b) substyle of newspaper headings;

с) substyle of notices and advertisements.

The scientific prose FS also has three divisions:

а) the language style of humanitarian sciences;

Ь) the language style of "exact" sciences;

с) the language style of popular scientific prose.

The official/ document FS can be divided into four varieties:

а) substyle of diplomatic documents;

Ь) substyle of business documents;

с) substyle of legal documents;

d) substyle of military documents.

The classification presented here is clear to be somewhat arbitrary. Other schemes may possibly be elaborated and highlighted by different approaches to the problem of functional styles. Thus, for example, some linguists consider that newspaper articles (including feature articles) should bе classed under the functional style of newspaper language, not under the language of publicist literature. Others insist оn including the language of everyday-life discourse into the system of functional styles.

When analysing concrete texts, we discover that the boundaries between FSs sometimes bесоmе less and less discernible. Thus, for instance, the signs of difference are sometimes almost imperceptible, between poetry and emotive prose; between newspaper FS and publicist FS; between а popular scientific article and а scientific treatise; between аn essay and а scientific article.

But the extremes аrе apparent from the ways language units аrе used both structurally and semantically and cause similar problems for the translator.

Checklist

• Prove the need for text analysis in translation

• Dwell on the peculiarities of translation commission

• Describe the procedure of establishing a functional hierarchy when undertaking a translation.

• Give the examples of documentary and instrumental translation, provide your grounds.

• Choose any of the substyles, analyze the peculiarities of different functional styles in the aspect of translation. Give your evidence.