CC BY
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DOI: 10.24411/2470-1262-2020-10092
УДК (UDC) 81255 Natalia I. Ushakova, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University,
Kharkiv, Ukraine
Ушакова Наталья И., Харьковский национальный университет имени В.Н. Каразина, Харьков, Украина
For citation:Ushakova Natalia I., (2020).
Cognitive - Activity Bases for Translational Interpretation of a Foreign Language Text.
Cross-Cultural Studies: Education and Science.
Vol.5, Issue 3 (2020), pp. 80-88 (in USA) Manuscript received 05/09/2020 Accepted for publication: 28/09/2020 The author have read and approved the final manuscript.
CC BY 4.0
COGNITIVE-ACTIVITY BASES FOR TRANSLATIONAL INTERPRETATION
OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEXT
КОГНИТИВНО-ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТНЫЕ ОСНОВЫ ПЕРЕВОДЧЕСКОЙ ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИИ ИНОЯЗЫЧНОГО ТЕКСТА
Abstract:
The article is devoted to the problem of the professional skills development of the future translators among students of the foreign languages faculties, in particular, the formation of cognitive-activity components of the linguistic, interpretive, literary components of adequate understanding and translation of a foreign language text, the development of an algorithm for teaching future translators to translate tropes. On a background of the intercultural communication processes intensification, an analysis of the current state of linguistic research was undertaken, the expansion and deepening of the communicative-activity paradigm due to the cognitive-semantic aspects of speech activity was stated, the prerequisites for teaching translation existing in modern translation teaching were studied, and methodological gaps in this process were identified. It was determined that in the methodology of teaching foreign languages, systems for teaching reading
and adequate interpretation of texts of a socio-cultural nature have been developed, while the formation of adequate translation skills, a description of the cognitive-activity structure of translation competence are necessary. The structure of such competence is proposed, as well as an invariant methodology for the formation of skills in the analysis of the structure of tropes and their adequate reproduction in the target text under conditions of studying in a multinational group, when comparative mechanisms are ineffective. The components of the translator's professiogram are listed and described.
Keywords: cognitive-activity bases, foreign language text, translational interpretation, translator's professiogram, tropes
Аннотация:
Статья посвящена проблеме формирования у студентов факультетов иностранных языков профессиональных умений будущих переводчиков, в частности, формированию когнитивно-деятельностных составляющих лингвистического, интерпретационного, литературоведческого компонентов адекватного понимания и перевода иноязычного текста, разработке алгоритма методических приемов обучения будущих переводчиков переводу тропов. На фоне активизации процессов межкультурной коммуникации предпринят анализ современного состояния лингвистических исследований, констатировано расширение и углубление коммуникативно-деятельностной парадигмы за счет когнитивно-семантических аспектов речевой деятельности, изучены существующие в современном переводоведении предпосылки обучения переводу, выявлены методические лакуны данного процесса. Определено, что в методике преподавания иностранных языков разработаны системы обучения чтению и адекватной интерпретации текстов социокультурного характера, тогда как для формирования умений адекватного перевода необходимо описание когнитивно-деятельностной структуры переводческой компетентности. Предложена структура такой компетентности, а также инвариантная методика формирования умений анализа структуры тропов и их адекватного воспроизведения в тексте перевода в условиях обучения в многонациональной группе, когда сравнительно-сопоставительные механизмы являются малоэффективными. Перечислены и описаны составляющие профессиограммы переводчика.
Ключевые слова: иноязычный текст, когнитивно-деятельностные основы, метафора, переводческая интерпретация, профессиограмма переводчика, тропы
Introduction
In the modern world, there is a sharp increase in the need for communication between speakers of different languages and cultures. The tasks of a foreign language acquisition, mastering a foreign language culture are becoming more and more current. In this context, an adequate perception of a literary, publicistic text, information of a sociocultural nature is necessary to achieve mutual understanding of intercultural communicants. The access to professionally done translations of the world classics masterpieces, texts that highlight current socio-cultural problems of the modern world, expands the possibilities for the personal development of a modern
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individual. To deliver on the potential, it is necessary to train qualified translators with a high level of philological, literary, stylistic, and cultural education, who understand the need for a professional and creative approach to an adequate interpretation of the original text into the target language.
The main contingent, falling into the ranks of professional translators, are students of the foreign languages faculties, studying two or three languages, mastering knowledge about the structure of each language, the system of its expressive means. The problem was formed in the process of working with native speakers of Spanish, Arabic, Turkmen, Uzbek, Chinese, who learn English as the first foreign language and Russian as the second. The mother tongues of students belong to different language families, have different structural features, therefore, the approach to teaching, involving the use of comparative mechanisms, in a multilingual group turned out to be ineffective. The task is to develop an invariant methodology that takes into account, first of all, the peculiarities of the language of the original text, in our case - Russian.
Theory
The modern methodology of teaching future translators [3, 7] has not yet offered a comprehensive description of the model of a translator's professional personality and a list of cognitive-activity requirements for him, that is, the characteristics of professional translation competence have not been described. The foregoing determines the relevance of the turning the spotlight to this topic.
The professional competence of a translator is a complex cognitive-activity construct, which consists not only of a set of linguistic, cultural, literary and other knowledge, but also of a list of skills and abilities to apply an adequate interpretation of the source text by means of the target language. The current state of the study of the problems of teaching the disciplines of the linguistic sciences is characterized by the expansion and deepening of the communicative-activity paradigm due to the cognitive-semantic aspects of speech activity. We see the purpose of our research in identifying the cognitive and activity characteristics of translation competence referring to the texts of the socio-cultural sphere of communication, in particular, literary and publicistic, carrying sociocultural information.
In the methodology of teaching foreign languages (in particular, Russian as a foreign language), there is the concept of a teacher's professiogram [2]. The professiogram is a list of requirements for the depth of knowledge and stability of mastering the activity basics. We are interested in the professiogram of the translator of texts in the socio-cultural sphere of communication (literary, publicistic), its cognitive-activity components. In the actual educational process, the situation is complicated by the fact that students translate from one foreign language (for example, English) into another foreign language (Russian). Or they have to do a reverse translation: from Russian into their first language, and then back into Russian. Unfortunately, in a multilingual group, a Russian teacher can only supervise such a translation.
Translation is a type of speech activity, the purpose of which is to transmit a message in cases where the codes of the source and recipient of information do not correspond. 82
Translation practice is a continuous act of overcoming difficulties at all levels of language and speech, which requires the ability to choose an invariant / variant that best suits the speech situation and the pragmatics of the text. A special phenomenon in this context is the fictional text, its linguistic, literary, cultural and other characteristics have long attracted the attention of researchers. A huge experience has been accumulated in this area, which is highlighted, in particular, in the works of V. Vinogradov, G. Vinokur, L. Novikov, Y. Vereshchagin, V. Kostomarov, N. Kulibina.
Data and methods
In order to achieve the goals of our research, we should pay attention to one circumstance: the combination of linguistic, literary, linguistic and cultural approaches to a fictional text provides grounds for its interpretation, understanding at the deepest level, for the assimilation of ideological, aesthetic and emotional information. The last-mentioned makes it possible to perceive the author's vision of reality. But to understand the text correctly does not mean to translate it correctly.
The commonwealth of sciences, which studies a literary text and teaches its understanding, has sufficiently developed only the first and second components of the chain "reading -understanding - translation". When it comes to describing the activities of translation, there are still many methodological gaps.
I. Zimniaia distinguishes three main phases of translation: a) understanding and comprehension of the primary speech work, when the analysis of linguistic material, situation, translation units is carried out; 2) comprehension of translation invariants for choosing contextual correspondence; 3) external implementation of the translation text [1].
Referring to a publicistic and fiction work, the first phase is reading the primary text. The works of I. Zimniaia, S. Folomkina, Y. Passov, Z. Klychnikova are devoted to the problem of teaching reading in a foreign language, the psychological characteristics of this type of speech activity. Based on the works of researchers, we highlight the main components of reading competence, as well as skills that are elements of these components [6]. Let's try to project forward reading skills to the process of adequate interpretation of the text during translation.
The first component - linguistic - requires the following skills:
Competent reader's skills Translator's skills
1. Ability to highlight words in the text, phrases, sentences 1. Ability to find equivalents of named levels units
2. Ability to synthesize their hierarchy based on grammatical and syntactic links 2. Ability to display the hierarchy of elements using the target language
3. Ability to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words by word-formation components, context, connection with the first and other languages 3. Ability to preserve functionally important wordformation characteristics by means of the target language, to recreate the context
4. Ability to determine the proper and figurative meaning of words in context, their evaluative and emotional nature 4. Ability to use figurative meanings of words of the target language to convey the meaning of the text, to use words that carry emotional and evaluative load
5. Ability to identify units of linguistic and cultural character 5. Ability to translate / interpret linguistic and Vedic units adequately
6. Ability to foresee the structure of complex phrases, to determine the nature of the connection between sentences and parts of complex sentences 6. Ability to display the structure of phrases and the nature of the connection between sentences by means of the target language
An important characteristic of reading and translation competence is independence in the implementation of these skills, which should be the result of teaching this type of activity.
The second component - interpretive - also implies the presence of a certain set of activities.
Competent reader's skills Translator's skills
1. Ability to deduce judgment (to draw conclusions based on the facts of the text) 1. Ability to present the facts of the text in such a way as to bring the reader of the translation to a similar judgment
2. Ability to correlate, evaluate facts, the nature of the author's idea implementation 2. Ability to provide an adequate (explicit and implicit) nature of the author's idea implementation
3. Ability to highlight and evaluate pragmatic and emotional information 3. Ability to convey pragmatic and emotional information, carry out pragmatic and emotional adaptation, make changes that take into account socio-cultural, psychological differences between the reader of the original and the reader of the translation
4. Ability to use dictionaries and other reference materials related to the analyzed / translated text all by themselves
5. Ability to attract and take into account all the necessary information related to the text (knowledge about the era, the author, etc.)
The third component - literary - is represented by the following components:
Competent reader's skills Translator's skills
1. Information awareness about literary methods, styles, etc.
2. Understanding the means of creating literary images, tropes 2. Adequate display by means of the target language of the means of creating literary images, tropes
As you can see, the last-mentioned component of the literary component of the reader and the translator competence is inextricably linked with its linguistic component, which once again confirms that interpretation during reading and translation is a single process, and it makes sense to single out the components of competence only from methodological considerations.
The problem under discussion is in line with the scientific direction, which analyzes the manifestations of worldviews in linguistic semiotic structures. Conceptual reconstruction of the text is carried out in the process of creating a translation. Conceptual reconstruction in translation goes in the opposite direction to that observed while reading in a foreign language.
The difference between the worldviews, the carriers of which are the author of the text and the reader of the translation, is leveled by the translator with the help of translation reduction. Such reduction is carried out on the basis of three interrelated principles: - the principle of balance (a
set of aspects of understanding is taken into account, which is recreated in translation); - the principle of complementation (along with the models in which the text is reduced, and the main attention is paid to the most complete consideration of the aspects of understanding, translation options are also possible when only some aspects of understanding (interpretation) are taken into account, and the text is given unchanged); - the principle of paradigmatism (for each text, you can choose a type of reconstruction (of translation) that distorts, reduces and maximizes the fiction potential of the text. In other words, the reconstruction can be "strict" and "non-strict", in the first case the translator is limited to the structures of the semiotic object, as well as the knowledge to which there are references in the given text. In a "non-strict " reconstruction, information external to the semiotic object is used.
The translation process is the modeling of the worldview reflected in the primary text. As E. Selivanova notes, the problem of reconstructing the conceptual model requires a reversion to the psycho-mental nature of the information structure and the identification of the work of all subsystems of consciousness in the course of its linguistic fixation. The researcher proposed a mental-psychonetic complex, which emphasizes the multiplicity and interconnection of cognitive mental functions of consciousness [4].
Other authors (A. Schweitzer) emphasize that only a philological analysis of the translated text does not give the desired results, an adequate interpretation requires to touch on aesthetics and psychology. In addition, the definition of the translation process mechanism provides the identification of the logic of translation decisions. And they are based on the features of the construction of the source text. Understanding not only the meaning, but also the means by which it is formed, is the beginning of an effective and adequate translation.
The text of a culturological character is characterized by a variety of linguistic constructions, which, by the peculiarities of their form, contribute to the creation of what we call "artistry".
The most common among such constructions are such tropes as metaphor, metonymy, and hyperbole. We believe that these elements of the named types of text play a huge role not only in creating the emotional and pragmatic context of the work, but also take part in the formation of such a macro concept as a national worldview.
The social, cultural, linguistic experience existing in the consciousness of an individual leaves an imprint on the understanding of the figures of speech of a fiction text.
The obtained results
The maximum leveling of the error in understanding and translating a text containing such phenomena is possible provided that their logical structure is clarified and explained.
It should be considered that the metaphor "contains an implicit opposition of the everyday vision of the world, corresponding to the classifying taxonomic predicates, the unusual, revealing the individual essence of the subject. The metaphor rejects the belonging of an object to the class
which it actually belongs to, and asserts its inclusion in a category to which it cannot be classified on a rational basis "[5, 17].
A metaphor is not so much a contracted comparison as a conracted contrast. It is difficult for a foreigner to understand it, because the element containing opposition is only meant, conjectured. It takes some effort to explicate it.
While translating, you need a subtle sense of the target language - is a metaphor possible -the correspondence of the metaphor in the original using the same (bearing the same aesthetic load) image. This linguistic feeling can be formed if you go deep into the linguistic, logical structure and socio-cultural characteristics of the metaphor.
The main features of a metaphor: the fusion of image and meaning in it, contrast with the usual taxonomy of objects, categorical shifts, actualization of random associative connections, the impossibility of literal translation, the possibility of different interpretations, the absence or nonnecessity of motivation, an appeal to imagination, not knowledge.
A transitional stage to understanding the metaphor is a figurative comparison, in which, in contrast to metaphor, a logical connection is maintained through the use of words-helpers alike, similar. A logical explanation of the type "we can say that this is not A, but B" can be used to develop a methodological system for developing skills and abilities to recognize metaphor and other tropes in the text and translate them in accordance with the same logic. This can be done using the so-called metaprocedures, cognitive operations, which all mental actions are composed of. These are operations of analysis, synthesis, analogy, comparison and opposition [6].
The two main characteristics of a metaphor are semantic (we can say that not A, but B) and formal (full or partial ellipsis of this formula in the surface structure).
Conclusion
The use of the proposed scheme in the system of tasks in the process of teaching translation allows achieving an adequate display of the emotional and pragmatic information of the text, which is the main goal of translation.
The linguistic and semantic characteristics of the metaphor elements vary depending on the nationality of the translator. Such concepts as "beauty", "intelligence", "love" and their metaphorical equivalents (стройная березка, шея лебединая, наливные яблочки (щеки), (как) вороново крыло, золотые волосы, золотые руки, золотая голова, ума палата) are translated by native speakers of different languages in different ways. In the reverse interlinear translation, interesting solutions often appear, due to the native national culture of the translator. The proposed solutions in the methodological description of the cognitive-activity components of translation competence and the foundations of translation interpretation can serve as the basis for the further development of the problems of teaching future translators to analyze the structure, interpretation and translation of nationally determined elements of texts in the sociocultural sphere of communication.
References:
1. Zimniaia, I. A. (1989) Psikholohiia perevoda. [Psychology of translation] Moscow.
2. Molchanovsky, V.V. (1990) K voprosu o soderzhanii i strukture professiogrammy prepodavatelya russkogo yazyka kak inostrannogo. Russkii Yazyk za rubezhom. [More on the question of the content and structure of the professiogram of a teacher of Russian as a foreign language. Russian language abroad] № 1. 53-57.
3. Nechaeva, V.M. (1994) Metodika obucheniya perevodcheskoy deyatelnosti. [Methodology for teaching translation activities] Moscow.
4. Selivanova, E.A. Issledovatelskiye vozmozhnosti mentalno-psikhoneticheskogo kompleksa. Visnyk Kharkivskoho natsionalnoho universytetu imeni V.N. Karazina. [Research possibilities of the mental-psychonetic complex. Bulletin of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University] № 635. Kharkiv: Konstanta. 160-164.
5. Teoriya metafory. (1990) Moscow.
6. Ushakova, N. I. (1998) Formirovaniye priyemov umstvennoy deyatelnosti pri obuchenii smyslovomu vospriyatiyu inostrannogo teksta. Russkaya filologiya. Ukrainskiy vestnik. Respublikanskiy nauchno-metodicheskiy zhurnal [Formation of mental activity methods in teaching the semantic perception of a foreign text. Russian philology. Ukrainian Bulletin. Republican scientific and methodological journal] Kharkiv. № 3-4 pp.62-64.
7. Chernovatyi, L.M. (2004) Problematyka doslidzhen u haluzi metodyky navchannya perekladu yak spetsialnosti. Visnyk Kharkivskoho natsionalnoho universytetu imeni V.N. Karazina [Problems of research in the field of methods of teaching translation as a specialty. Bulletin of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University] Kharkiv: Konstanta. 192-197.
8. Schweizer, A.D. (1973) Perevod i lingvistika. [Translation and linguistics.] Moscow.
Information about the author:
Ushakova Natalia Igorevna (Kharkiv, Ukraine) - Doctor of Pedagogics (2010) (Theory and methods of teaching (Russian language), Full Professor (2013), V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Head of the Language Training Department 1, Institute of International Education for Study and Research. Kharkov, Majdan Svobody 4, 61000. The area of scientific research: methods of teaching foreign languages, Russian and Ukrainian as foreign and second languages, language and culture studies, theory of foreign language manual. 150 articles, 30 manuals and textbooks of Russian and Ukrainian as Second Languages and Languages for Special Purposes for foreign students of philological and non-philological specialties, 7 monographs. E-mail:ushakova.khnu@,gmail.com .
Acknowledgements:
The author expresses her sincere gratitude to the colleagues, the professors and lecturers of the Language Training Department 1 of the Institute of International Education for Study and Research of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, for their professional and active discussion of the article "Cognitive-activity bases for translational interpretation of foreign
language text", and also to the students of the Foreign Languages Faculty for verification of this article's ideas in the educational process.
Автор выражает искреннюю признательность коллегам, преподавателям кафедры языковой подготовки 1 Учебно-научного института международного образования Харьковского национального университета имени В.Н. Каразина за активное профессиональное обсуждение материалов статьи «Когнитивно-деятельностные основы переводческой интерпретации иноязычного текста», а также иностранным студентам факультета иностранных языков за верификацию в учебном процесс идей, представленных в данной работе.
Contribution of the author: The author contributed equality to the present research.
