Translation concept

The article deals with the translation concept and the goals of translation.

Key words: translation, concept, notion, Target language, Source language.

What is “translation” in our daily, nonprofessional understanding? Any case when the text created in one language, changing means of other language, we name translation. Thus the term “text” is understood extremely widely: any oral statement and any written writing from the instruction to the refrigerator, and for example, to the novel means.

If to believe that language is some kind of a code, that is any subjects designation and the phenomena of the validity by conventional signs means it is possible to name translation code conversion as each of conventional signs is replaced while translating familiar other sign system.

Translation — one of the most ancient occupations of the person. Languages distinction has induced people to this hard, but to so necessary work which served and serves the purposes of dialogue and an exchange of cultural wealth between the people. The word “translation” is multiple-valued, and it has two terminological values which interest us. The first of them defines cogitative activity, translation process of the maintenance expressed in one language by means of another language. The second names result of this process — the text oral or written. Though these concepts different, but they represent the dialectic unity, one isn't thought without another. Also pertinently to notice that in linguistics there is wider, than translation concept of bilingual communications. The main place in it occupies language intermediary which concern both translation, and an abstracting, both retelling, and other adapted transpositions [1].

So, translation is reexpression or code conversion. However this code conversion isn't objective natural process, it is carried out by the person. The person possesses individuality and ability to creativity. These two factors allow him to choose at code conversion from several or many possible variants of translation the necessary variant. Therefore sometimes speak even about heuristic character of translation process which is understood first of all as a freedom in choosing.

Translation is a difficult and many-sided kind of human activity. Though usually speak about translation “from one language on another”, but, actually, in translation process there is not simply a replacement of one language with another. In translation the various cultures, the different persons, different attitude of minds, the different literatures, the different epoch, and the different levels of development, different traditions and installations face. Culture specialists, ethnographers, psychologists, historians, literary critics are interested in translation, and the different parties of translational activity can be object of studying within the limits of corresponding sciences. At the same time in a science about translation and theory translation can be allocated — psychological, literary, cognitive, culturological and other aspects [1].

However, traditional representation that the leading role in translation is played by languages, has received a serious scientific substantiation, and in modern theory translation the leading place belongs to linguistic theories of translation. It is necessary to notice that translation inclusion in linguistic interests sphere has occurred rather recently and thus it was necessary to overcome considerable difficulties. Till now in the majority of fundamental works on linguistics there is no even a mention of translation as about possible object of linguistic research.

Translation is a peculiar type of communication — interlingua communication.

The goal of translation is to transform a text in the Source Language (SL) into a text in the Target Language (TL). This means that the message produced by the translator should call forth a reaction from the TL receptor similar to that called forth by the original message from the SL receptor. The content, that is, the referential meaning of the message with all its implications and the form of the message with all its emotive and stylistic connotations must be reproduced as fully as possible in the translation as they are to evoke a similar response. While the content remains relatively intact, the form, that is, the linguistic signs of the original, may be substituted or replaced by other signs of the TL because of structural differences at all levels. Such substitutions are justified; they are functional and aim at achieving equivalence. Therefore, translator has a difficult task to transfer every meaning of his translation. Interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing; translation began only after the appearance of written literature. As the Mexican poet and essayist, Octavio Paz, pointed out that each language is a way of seeing, of interpreting the world in a specific way. Even though the shape of natural phenomena does not change from one country to the next, the way we interact with and interpret these phenomena is distinctly different from one language to the next. In German the moon happens to be “masculine” (der Mond), in French it is feminine (la lune); in German the word for sun is feminine (die Sonne) in French masculine (le soleil). Thus, as translators, people cannot take anything for granted. A person must be involved in a constant process of unlearning, because the realities and expectations of his culture are not necessarily the same in the other culture. Not only that, a person doesn’t even know whether his cultural and social situation wants to open itself up to an influx of ideas and perspectives that are prominent in another culture [2].

As translators, carry across language borders is always packaged in words: pronouns, verbs, nouns etc. However, the problem with words is their imprecision hardly any word can be forced into clearly defined conceptual contours that would suggest the exact same thing to every person who comes in contact with the word.

In order to reconstruct that which is or might be behind the words, it is important that the translator becomes familiar with the nature of words. A pianist will listen over and over again to the intrinsic quality of a note or a composition of a chord. With respect to the word, a person defines its semantic parameters, listen to its sound and rhythm, and explore its existence within its immediate and larger context. The specific placement of a word within a sentence or a page, even in terms of its graphic design (point side, bold, italics etc.) continuously changes the energy and the possible associations that the word might be establishing with another word. This is particularly true in the realm of literary works, and most conspicuously present in poetic works. The only way that a translator can get close to the specific association that a poet attributes to a word is through a contextual analysis. If indeed the poet has created a new perspective of seeing or interpreting the world, or a moment in that world, then the established meanings of a word are in a process of being changed or modified by cultural or social changes. Creation in whatever form presupposes some kind of discontinuity, a degree of disruption. Whatever the new creation might be, it constitutes a difference to what there was before. In a sense, that is both the attraction we find in creativity and at the same time the fear we have in the presence of creativity. Some of the established ways of thinking or interpreting are being challenged [3].

People know that translation is not the translation of words, even though the final product of translations appears in the form of words and sentences. Words in themselves are very fragile entities. Each one of people develops different connotations in their encounter with every word. Thus, people have to acquire a sense for the magnetic field of words, their semantic fields both in the present as well as in the past. Translators often need to go back to the origin of a word, the moment that a word entered the world because at that time words were still very closely related to the visual image they project. Some of the visual energy inherent in words gets lost over a longer period of time. Translators fail to experience the original power and intention of a word.

Each translator should receive a thorough training in the etymological and philological development of words. Every word that translators use today has its roots somewhere in the past and as people know new words are being created every day which means that they will better understand and experience a word, if they become familiar with the original moment of the word's coming into life: in other words, its etymological origin. However, words never stay the same; therefore, translator should follow the transformation of meanings that accompany a word through a longer period of time, whether it will be just a few decades or a few centuries: the word's philological history. Each historical period as well as each human being impresses its own refined connotations on a word. The philological study allows people to get a feeling for the semantic changes that words have undergone from one generation to the next. When XVIth century person talks about “art”, then the connotations and implications of the word “art” indicate different directions of thinking from our contemporary concept of art. Etymological and philological probing into the realities of words in their cultural and historical context enriches the experience of the usage of words in the present and brings those words to life for people [3].

For a text to be transported from a foreign language into English or vice versa, an interpretation and an understanding of the text under consideration must be initiated first. A great number of mistakes in translation occur because translators do not fully understand the text that they are supposed to transplant. Naturally, the misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the text has very little to do with the fact that the translator might not know a word, on the contrary, the words are known as words but they are not known as constructing elements of a particular situational context. Differently said, the words have a clearly defined boundary of meaning.

A short factual insert might be called for in this context. The English language has about four hundred and fifty thousand words, the German and French languages hover between two hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand words. This fact immediately throws a different light on the usage and practice of the respective languages. It so happens that words in the French language are much more clearly defined in terms of the conceptual boundaries attributed to each word in comparison to the English language. In the English language we might have eight or ten different adjectives to say the same thing, each adjective expressing a slight nuance of meaning [4].

The notion of cultural incompatibility can be thought out in greater length. The exact transferal of the nuances underlying cultural traditions seems questionable, if not impossible. However, the translators, because of their living intensely in two different languages and cultures, develop an insight into the refinements of the other culture and therefore keenly perceive the differences that separate nations. In a sense, these translators hold the keys to certain secrets in the other culture that they know cannot be adequately transplanted into the receptor language. As translators, deeply rooted in the language from which they translate, they recognize the refined differences of seeing the world in the other language, and they are clearly aware of what cannot be carried into the new language. It is also a recognition that causes us, the translators, and many moments of keen frustration. Yet, because the translators are tuned in to these differences, they can often illuminate, through the possibilities of critical language, the foreignness of the other language. One might even say that translators hold certain secrets that they discovered in the source — language environment, and that they alone and not the critic or the scholar can provide entrances into these secrets for people who were not brought up in that language. In our multicultural context, the translator therefore must become the most indispensable mediator, if indeed true communication between people of different languages were to happen. Translation fosters the understanding of a foreign culture, and through the juxtaposition of our cultural habits with those of the other culture, we begin to clarify how we think and feel, how we interpret the world often in entirely different ways from the people in other cultures.

By its very nature, translators are always in between two places: the reality of the source — language and the possibilities of the receptor language. Through the act of translation the translator opens the door for “dialogue”. That must be the translator's greatest mission in today's world in which nations and countries fall back into building walls among themselves rather than opening themselves to the foreignness of other cultures. [5].

The parameters of concept considered by us “translation” concerned mainly its descriptions as process, but during its studying as process became obvious that the same term we designate also result of this process. Thus, as working concept definition of “translation” we can accept the following:

“Translation is an activity which consists in variative expression, code conversion of the text generated in one language, in the text in other language, carried out by the translator who creatively chooses a variant depending on language variative resources, a kind of translation, translation problems, a text type and under the influence of own individuality; translation is as well result described above activity” [5].

Hence, to translators, as well as writers, the multilateral life experience, indefatigably filled up impressions stock which studying of culture, history, country study and so on consists in constant studying not only language features of other language [5].

Language of the writer-translator, as well as language of the writer original, develops of supervision over language of the native people and from supervision over a native literary language in its historical development. Only those translators can count on success that starts to work with consciousness that language will win any difficulties that barriers to it aren't present.

National color is reached by exact rewriting on of its portrait painting, all set of household features, way of life, internal furniture, labor conditions, customs, a reconstruction of a landscape of the given country or edge in all its distinctness, revival of national popular beliefs and ceremonies.

At any writer, if only it the original artist, the vision of the world is own, and, hence, and the means of the image too. Individuality of the translator is shown and what authors and what writings for a reconstruction in a native language he chooses. After all very often happens that while translating this or that work of art the translator doesn't arise deeply perceptions of the given writing, in such cases original translation turns out “dry” and, We will not be afraid of this word, “soulless”.

For the translator the ideal is, some kind of, merge to the author, uniform thinking and understanding of that they want to transfer to the reader. But merge demands searches, an invention, resource, infusion, empathy, visual acuities. Constant necessity is to open creative individuality but so that it doesn't cover an originality of the author. Nothing personal, only ability to think as the author feels and speaks as the author.

References:

1        Бархударов Л. С. Язык и перевод.- М.:1975.- 238 с.

2        Savory, T. The art of translation. Jonathan Cape, 1968. — 253 p.

3        Snell-Hornby, M. Translation studies. An integrated approach. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1988. — 389 p.

4        Коршак Е. Н. Авторские новообразования и контекст.- Спб.: 1981, 32 с.

5        Комиссаров В. К. Теория перевода. — М.: 1990, 253 с.