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УДК 81'23
ЧАСТЬ III.
ПРАГМАТИЧЕСКИЕ АСПЕКТЫ ЛАКУНОЛОГИИ. ТЕОРИЯ ЛАКУН В ИССЛЕДОВАНИИ ПРОБЛЕМ ПЕРЕВОДА И ПЕРЕВОДОВЕДЕНИИ
И. Л. Панасюк (ФРГ)
DEFINITION OF THE LACUNA PHENOMENON IN THE THEORY OF TRANSLATION/МЕСТО феномена лакунизации в теории перевода
В главе рассматривается проблематика этнопсихолингвистического подхода к теории перевода. В центре внимания находится определение и применение феномена лакунизации в теории перевода. Феномен лакуны объясняется исходя из определения понятия эквивалентности, сформулированного Романом Якобсоном. В соответствии с этим, эквивалентность заключается в различии, что является основным признаком понятия эквивалентности, т.е. выражаясь понятийным аппаратом этнопсихолингвистики, в основе эквивалентности лежит лакуна, семантическая величина межкультурной разницы, измеряющаяся разницей в структуре денотативного значения, которая зависит в первую очередь от контекста. Отношение лакуны к эквивалентности можно объяснить обратной пропорциональностью отношения их величин к друг другу: чем больше семантическая величина эквивалентности, тем меньше семантическая интенсивность лакуны и наоборот. Этот закон обратной пропорциональности двух семантических величин и определяет разницу и дистанцию между культурами в семиотическом смысле и подтверждает этнопсихолингвистический постулат о принципиальной возможности межкультурной коммуникации, разновидностью которой является перевод. В статье определена также семантическая градация эквивалентности, в основе которой лежит семантическая интенсивность лакуны - вариативность, разновидность контекстуальной эквивалентности, основанной на контекстуальном семантическом (денотативном) сдвиге, т.е. лакуне.
Ключевые слова: лакуна, эквивалентность, вариативность, денотат, семантическая интенсивность лакуны, семантическая величина эквивалентности, семантический сдвиг.
The chapter deals with the theory of translation in its psycholinguistic and cognitive aspects. I will focus on the creative aspect of the translation process and try to answer the question, how the lacuna phenomenon can influence the creative decision making process of a translator. It is the next step in applying the lacuna theory in the framework of the theory of translation. The creative aspect of translation consists in a polyvariety and variety of lexical meanings and falls into the
sphere of the equivalence relations. Lacuna as an ethnopsycholinguistic phenomenon shows how languages and cultures differ in their cognitive structures. To overcome these differences a translator has to apply some creativity. In order to understand how it functions we should take a closer look at these processes.
So, the Lacunae Theory is the main area of research of Russian ethnopsycholinguis-tics. The history of ethnopsycholinguistics
originates in the mid-sixties, when the School of Psycholinguistics was established by A.A. Leontyev (1974) in Moscow. The entire set of terms used in psycholinguistics was taken over from A.N. Leontyev's Activity Theory, which had been derived from L.S. Vygotskiy's Historico-Cultural Psychology. The basis of Activity Theory, or Speech Activity Theory is Vygotski's speech utterance model. According to this model there is, at the beginning of each utterance, an idea generated by a person, which is used to solve a specific communicative task. Thus a spoken utterance starts with an idea, and then turns into audible external (verbal) speech that shapes the idea and creates an image of it. Thus the speech generation system begins with the generation of the idea about a specific issue or subject (initial phase), then enters the image-making phase, where the idea is turned into an audible and understandable vocal flow during communication (final phase). The system was later modified and divided into single phases. But the Speech Activity Theory did not involve differences existing between individual languages. Therefore the modification of the system did not pertain to cultural specificity.
Hence the modification consisted in the fact that the cultural specificity of different verbal segmentation arises from the specifics of the transformation of ideas into speech in the interim phase of speech generation. The cultural specifics of verbal activity in particular, but also of non-verbal activity, are of a mental nature and are primarily based upon the mental activity of comprehending extraverbal reality, its mental segmentation, which is oriented towards an already existing order of objects and issues and is then re-coded into linguistic signs. Thus a new task emerged for psycholinguistics, that of fixing external (audible) verbal behaviour in different cultures and of uncovering differences, which led to the introduction of ethno-psycholinguistics. The main fields of research in ethnopsycholinguistics can be derived from it, which, according to Sorokin, Tarasov and Ufimtseva (1982: 5), are the
analysis of relations between language and thought (the influence of different languages on the cognitive activities of their users), the problem of differing categorization of reality (non-congruence of linguistic segmentation of reality), and the problem of the influence of language on human behaviour (the influence of activity patterns on current activity). This also leads to the introduction of a new theory as part of ethnopsycholinguistics, which could be capable of comprehending intercultural differences, and it received the name of "Lacunae Theory". The founder of this theory, which is part of ethnopsycholin-guistic research, is Yuri Sorokin (1977), who derived the term "lacuna" from Contrastive Linguistics (Lexicology) (q.v. Y.S. Stepanov (1965: 120) in the first instance) and developed it into an ethnopsycholinguistic research category. This has permitted the application of the category of the lacuna in various spheres of cultural and linguistic research, which has led to the development of an entire taxonomy of semantic differences. Thanks to Irina Markovina (1983, 1989, 2006, 2008), it took the shape of the lacunae model as a method for the analysis of artefacts from foreign cultures.
The first point of view in the definition of the term „lacuna" in the theory of translation is the structural approach to the definition of the term of Roman Jakobson's equivalence. Jakobson saw the equivalence in difference, which is „the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal concern of linguistics", in his opinion (Jakobson 1959: 233/1978: 14). According to Jakobson, the contextual equivalence can be seen in structural differences of meanings which result from the use of a certain meaning in a certain context. This proves the postulate of translatability and theoretically grounds the translation practice:
„... the relationship between the extalin-guistic content to be communicated and its linguistic expression is not one-to-one but one-to-many; the concept of equivalence in difference' (Jakobson 1959, 233) is what makes translation at all possible..." (Vladimir Ivir 1983: 62)
The lacuna phenomenon plays the main part in this process. Lacuna is the opposite side of equivalence and characterizes it as an approximation of a different semantic dimension. It is expressed as a complete or partial absence of the structural elements in the meaning to be compared or translated in the framework of the context. According to Irina Markovina (2009), in a broader sense, lacunae are gaps on the "semantic map" of a language, text, or culture as a whole, i.e. on the "semantic map" of a certain ethnic verbal consciousness that can be identified only by comparison of two national languages, or texts, or cultures (as a form of verbal consciousnesses). Such comparison typically occurs in the process of intercultural communication. So, the lacuna shows the absence of the meaning (a complete gap) or its structural elements and is a signal or a marker of presence of an intercultural or interlingual difference in the meaning and the starting point for the semantic assessment of an equivalence relation.
The starting parameter for the determination of the semantic intensity of the lacuna is the denotate as a main structural unity of each lexical meaning. The absence or convergence of the separate elements of the meaning allows for talking about the semantic character of the approximation. The lacuna appears to be a semantic dimension, which determines the kind of the equivalence relations. Such characteristic feature leads to the establishment of the relation between the two inversely proportional terms: the greater the semantic extent of an equivalence relation between the lexical meanings to be compared or translated, the lower is the semantic intensity of the lacuna frequently used to express the approximal similarity (equality) of such lexical meanings in the context. On the other hand, greater semantic intensity of the lacuna indicates lower equality of the equivalents to be compared. Lacuna and equivalence mutually complement one another. Equivalence and lacuna are linked to the changing of the denotative structure of the meaning in the intercultural comparison
of languages. Both terms - lacuna and equivalence - are two sides of the same coin (Panasiuk 2005: 156-157).
One of the German translations of Roman Jakobson's equivalence definition quoted above shows the equivalence in variety (Äquivalenz in Verschiedenheit). Erich Prune (2008: 32-33) speaks about it referring to Mary Snell-Hornby (1995: 17), who said, that the translation of the known Jakobson's equivalence definition as Äquivalenz in der Differenz into German was the result of the fault translation of this oxymoron - the same but on the other hand different - by linguists. In Snell-Hornby's opinion the terms equivalence and Äquivalenz, difference and Differenz do not cover each other semantically. The author proposes the more precise or more adequate translation of this definition into German as Ähnlichkeit in der Vielfalt (similarity in variety). This circumstance leads the discussion about the equivalence into the sphere of human communication, the basis of which is the context. The lacunized character of equivalence makes it possible to speak about equivalence as a variety or equivalence in variety. Such relations of equivalence are based on the interlingual synonymity, the lexical meanings with different denotative structure, which are similar contextual connotative meaning. The creative aspect of translation also consists in the lacu-nized or polyvariate character of equivalence.
Applied to translation, the aspect of the polyvariety is the area of translator's creativity. The adequacy of translation can be reached by the invariance of the context and the variety of lexical meanings. This fact makes it possible to apply the stylistic experiment of the Russian translation researcher Fedorov (1971). The stylistic experiment begins there where the translator switches on his creative thinking. The stylistic experiment begins there where there is no over-literal rendering. According to Lakoff (1987) and Kußmaul (2000), the thinking of translator is a fluent chaining of categories, which is not limited by any boundaries except the context and the functional goal of
translation (the skopos). Thus, the creativity of translation consists in the polyvariety of the lexical meanings limited by the context.
The variety of lexical meanings is a lacu-nized phenomenon. The translator looking for some lexical meanings in the target language makes decisions in the form of translation strategies. Those are some target oriented cognitive behaviours, plans for solution of the translation problems. The translator applying procedures or methods of translation can not realise that the target variant has been found, which has a lacuna in its denotative structure compared with the source meaning.
Such semantic shifts are the "category jumps" in the chaining of translator's thoughts, which produce that denotative shifts and are creative solutions of the translation process. The determination of a semantic shift (of the semantic value of lacuna) is only possible through the act of translation, which consists in this semantic shift. In order to determine the semantic value of lacuna in the framework of the context the translator has to do the act of translation. On the other hand, the act of translation is accomplished by the determination of the semantic value of lacuna, which is a semantic shift or a "category jump".
The phenomenon of lacuna gives us the possibility to have a look at the process of translation from a new perspective. The creative thinking is a visual thinking, so the translator imagines a picture (a scene) during
the understanding of the utterance and tries to verbalize this utterance in the target language, to find a frame for it, at the same time. So, the determination of the lacuna kind becomes the starting-point for the equivalence relations, so having determined the semantic value of lacuna the translator is choosing a variant from some semantic field in order to avoid the over-literal rendering in direct sense and mistakes in the choosing of variants. So, the lacuna model presents detail inventory for semantic measurement of the equivalence, the lack of which in the theory of translation the famous German translation researcher Wolfram Wilss (1977: 157) paid attention at.
Lacuna is an invisible witness and the result of the creative activity of the translator. It is omnipresent, it accompanies translators at every step, because the language asymmetry is the result of the human speech activity in different cultures: the words from different semantic fields form a cognitive community to allow the people to understand each other through translating. This confirms the eth-nopsycholinguistic postulate about a possibility of intercultural communication: In the human culture there are no totally original codes, which makes the communication between individual local cultures in principle possible (Markovina, Sorokin: 2008). This, in its turn, confirms the possibility of translation as a variant of intercultural communication.
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