CC BY
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ISSN 1998-4812
Вестник Башкирского университета. 2015. Т. 20. №1
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УДК 811:111
INTERPRETATION STRATEGIES AS CONSTITUENTS OF PRE-TRANSLATION ANALYSIS
© Yu. Belova
Bashkir State University 19 Kommunisticheskaya St., 450076 Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia.
Phone: +7 (347) 273 28 42.
Email: julietta_belova@bk.ru
Due to the present-day tendency for algorithmizing the translation process there should be devised a model which would have a sufficient prognostic potential to account for translators' divergent choices given in similar contexts. Many popular translation models are aimed at identifying a hierarchy of overlapping and differentiating features in the original and the translation. Another option of a translation model is compiled without merely criticizing one translator's work and favoring another's. Pre-translation as an organized purposeful analysis of the source text is the first step of the translation model. We offer a scheme for pre-translation analysis which is to comprise a more thorough investigation of the source language text by using interpretation strategies. This translation phase is aimed at identifying the major landmarks of the translation to ensure its adequacy. The general principles of the pre-translation analysis allow us to make the text more observable in terms of structure and language, outline the semantic and communicative organization of the text, and render its entire meaning and sense. Alongside with the well-known scheme of the pre-translation analysis comprising external information about the text, its components and density of information, communicative purpose and genre, we deal with semanticized and lingvocultural strategies. They enable us to comprehend the notion of the SL text more thoroughly and further render it fully and completely into a target language.
Keywords: pre-translation analysis, interpretation, strategy, culture, translation theory.
Nowadays the intensity of cross-cultural contacts is becoming more and more apparent, expanding the range of interaction spheres between representatives of different cultures, and therefore increasing the number of situations that require participation of an interpreter. During the period of massive penetration of English as a language of global communication into the intercultural space, it is necessary to improve the quality of the interpreter, and this imposes special obligations on him/her, namely to serve an adequate retranslator of the message from the sender to the recipient, a transmitter of the information expressed in one language by means of another.
Interpreters from different cultures obtain their own cultural perception, beliefs, values and social customs which greatly determine their interpreting habits. It is cultural difference that gives rise to many mis-communications. Therefore, interpreters should raise their intercultural awareness of "the other culture" to build bridges across misunderstanding among different cultures.
One of the long-standing challenges of translation studies has been the task of algorithmizing a translation process and devising a model which would have a sufficient prognostic potential to account for translators' divergent choices given in similar/identical contexts. Conventional translation theory as well as some contemporary approaches within the framework of translation studies view the mechanism of translation as a system of transformations on various language tiers which result in a translated version of the text which is compatible (among commonly employed terms are equivalent or adequate translation) with the original
(see works by V. N. Komissarov [1], Ja. I. Rezker [2], L. K. Latyushev [3], etc.).
Many popular translation models are aimed at identifying a hierarchy of overlapping and differentiating features in the original and the translation. The sit-uational-denotative model proposed by I. I. Revzin and V. U. Rozentsveig [2] views translation as a series of cognitive transformations: a sequence of language units (words) -> an arrangement of denotates (objects) with a focus on their relations (situation) -> recoding this situation in a different language. Alternatively, the semantic translation model (J. Catford [5]) focuses on analyzing the semantics of language units. This analysis results in a semantic map featuring the number and the arrangement of the smallest semantic units (semes). These findings are employed when deciding which foreign word or word combination offers an identical or similar semantic structure. It is not critical to find a word which features identical semantics: in some cases this job proves futile. It is crucial that semantic structures are relatively close (as in a popular example by V. N. Komissarov: студент - student, where the number of semes present is different, though these differences are insignificant and can't prevent us from employing student as an equivalent of студент in an English translation of the text). Similar principles lay the foundation for other translation models: transformational model based on the premises of the generative grammar by N. Chomsky, three-phase model by O. Kade, interpretational model by D. Seleskovitch and M. Lederer [6], correlative model described by J. I. Rezker [2], A. V. Fedorov [7], L. S. Barchudarov [8], V. Koller [6], etc. At the same time there exists a hermeneutical model proposed by the Russian profes-
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sor E. A. Morozkina, according to which the interpreter is to get over the hermeneutical modality circles [9].
Even such a superficial overview of approaches to modeling translating suggests that conventional translation models focus on individual practical steps, relevant when translating, still they shouldn't be seen as tools to model translating as a complex activity. Besides, they have limited prognostic potential and can hardly be employed when algorithmizing a translator's work. On the contrary they are meant to classify and interpret those translation choices which have already been made. A. N. Kryukov suggests, that "contrastive paradigm is lagging behind practical translation. This relates to the fact that contrastive paradigm is based on the assumption that the text of translation is equivalent to the original. In other words, the equivalence of two texts is merely stated rather than seen as a scientific concern" [10].
It is commonly assumed in translation studies that translations are specific kinds of texts that are not only different from their original source language (SL) texts, but also from comparable original texts in the same language as the target language (TL). For instance, it has often been observed that translations tend to be longer than their SL originals, on the one hand, and that they are simpler than their SL originals or than comparable original texts in the TL, on the other hand. There has recently been an increased interest in more exact formulations of such general contentions in terms of explicit hypotheses and in providing empirical evidence to confirm or reject them.
Simplification. Translations tend to use simpler language than original texts in the same language as the TL, possibly to optimize the readability of the target language text. Possible measures for simplification are average sentence length, lexical density and type-token ratio, the latter being the standard measure for the vocabulary variation of a text.
Explicitation. Translations show a tendency to spell things out rather than leave them explicit. A possible measure of explicitation is a text length; translations tend to be longer than their SL originals or mono-lingually comparable original texts.
Normalization. Translations have a tendency to conform to the typical patterns of the TL, exaggerating its typical features.
Levelling-out. In a collection of translations compared to a collection of comparable original texts, the individual texts in the set of translations are more similar to each other than the individual texts in a set of translations [11].
Taking into account the above-mentioned difficulties, we may say that the interpreter's competence should be viewed as an ability to recognize, understand, and interpret his/her own and another world picture. On top of that, the intercultural component is to be integrated with bilinguial, information and technological, strategic etc. sub-competences. Functioning in
conjunction, these competences help to create a secondary text devoid of multiple drawbacks.
One of the means we are to resort to may be stated as an organized purposeful analysis of the source text, namely a pre-translation analysis. This translation phase is aimed at identifying the major landmarks of the translation to ensure its adequacy. The general principles of the pre-translation analysis allow us to make the text more observable in terms of structure and language, outline the semantic and communicative organization of the text, and render its entire meaning and sense. This is the pre-translation analysis that enables the interpreter to determine:
S correct translation vectors;
S translation strategy;
S landmarks of translation;
S typical structures and features of the text type;
S linguistic peculiarities;
S informational value of text segments, etc.
The objects of pre-translation are quite differentiated proposing to conduct the analysis along the following lines:
S external information about the text, its components and density of information, communicative purpose and genre (I. S. Alexeeva [12]);
S genre and style of the source text (M. P. Brandes, V. I. Povorotov [13]);
S key, additional, specifying, repeating, and zero information (R. K. Minyar-Belorutchev [14]), etc.
I. S. Alexeeva's point of view seems to be quite exhaustive apart from the lingvocultural and semantic information forever present in all texts. This information may be deciphered by two types of interpretation strategies.
1. Semanticized strategies are aimed at language semantics level allowing to extract all content factual and conceptual information out of the text [14]. Semanticized strategies reveal direct and transferred meanings of language units. As we treat any language unit as a part of the text, we resort to the sentence to illustrate the work of the strategies in question.
E. g. Cancer patients will not have to pay anything for their drugs, the morphological and syntactical analysis of this text to which we apply to before its TL translating, enables us to conclude the following: this is a simple two-member sentence with a modal verb have to in Future Simple tense and infinitive of the notional verb. The stylistics of the sentence is rather neutral and all words here are used in theor direct dictionary meanings (cancer - a very serious disease in which cells in one part of the body start to grow in a way that is not normal, often causing death; a drug - a medicine or substance for making medicines; a patient - someone receiving medical treatment from a doctor) (LDCE).
2. Lingvocultural strategies are aimed at a deeper semantic level and decipher the sense of a
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text from the point of view of cultural values and mentality of the SL and TL societies.
E.g. FBI chief unlocks cupboard to let Clinton skeletons burst out. Here we deal with 1) a precedent situation Clinton skeletons connected with the scandal of US president Bill Clinton and Monica Levinsky, internal relations of the Clinton family couple, etc.; 2) a precedent name FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation - the police department in the US that is controlled by central government and is concerned with crimes in more than one state); 3) a precedent utterance the skeleton in the cupboard, being both a phraseological unit and a title of the novel by S. Maugham "Cakes and Ale or The skeleton in the Cupboard".
We offered another tool to analyze and interpret the SL text without merely criticizing one translator's work and favoring another's. We consider it vitally important to introduce interpretation strategies into the pre-translation analysis as they enable us to comprehend the notion of the SL text and further render it fully and completely into a target language.
REFERENCES
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Received 09.02.2015.
