CC BY
49
УДК 37.011.33:81
Х. Ли-Янке
проф. Университета г. Женевы (Швейцария),
Почетный доктор Международной ассоциации устных и письменных переводчиков (CIUTI); e-mail: [email protected]
СПЕЦИАЛЬНЫЕ ЯЗЫКИ: ПОЧЕМУ, КОГДА И КАК ОНИ ИСПОЛЬЗУЮТСЯ?1
В статье речь идет о важности владения переводчиком специальным языком. Обращается внимание на факторы, затрудняющие процесс межкультурной коммуникации при переводе научно-популярных текстов, которые представляют собой прекрасный дидактический материал для будущих переводчиков и должны быть учтены при составлении программ обучения.
Ключевые слова: специальный язык; научно-популярный текст; обучение переводчиков; медицинский дискурс; факторы, затрудняющие процесс межкультурной коммуникации.
Lee-Jahnke H.
Prof., Honorary President CIUTI; University of Geneva, Switzerland; e-mail: [email protected]
LSPS: WHY, WHEN AND HOW?
The article focuses on the importance of LSPs. It shows potential pitfalls of vulgarized texts. These types of texts offer the trainer a wide range of exercises that give advice on how to avoid such pitfalls. LSPs, therefore, deserve a central role in any translator training program - they are the key actors in any translation market.
Key words: languages for special purposes; vulgarized texts; translator training; medical translation; pitfalls.
Languages for special purposes or LSPs are gaining more and more importance in the daily life of any translator and have, hence, to be thoroughly dealt with in any translator training. This is the reason why we would like to structure our paper basically along with the following three questions:
• Why should we concentrate to a great deal on LSPs?
• When should they best be integrated in the T&I training?
• How can they be integrated in order to serve future translators and interpreters in their professional life?
1 Статья публикуется в авторской редакции.
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1. Why LSPs?
Before answering this question, it might be useful to define LSPs. In short, LSPs concern all languages which are non-literary. Languages for special purposes are sometimes also called Technolects1, which may give the erroneous impression that only purely technical domains require LSPs. But also in legal, linguistic, economic and any other specialized domain, LSPs have their raison d'être and are part and parcel of any given special domain. In short, LSPs describe the means of communication within a special field and are often opposed to standard language. They have as major task to give subject matter information and they also enhance scientific and technical development. One of the best definitions today is still the one given by Hoffmann as early as 1985 [3, c. 53]:
"Fachsprache - das ist die Gesamtheit aller sprachlichen Mittel, die in einem fachlich begrenzten Kommunikationsbereich verwendet werden, um die Verständigung zwischen den in diesem Bereich tätigen Menschen zu gewährleisten".
As far as LSPs are concerned, it would however be wrong to use this term in the singular form, since according to the different subject matters, the domain can be divided in a large number of sub-domains, which, in turn, have their own specialist identity.
The above question: "Why LSPs?" can be clearly answered: because they are the means of communication in any specialized field and encompass mainly: a) specialized terminology, b) special language registers according to the target public; c) experts consider LSPs as a rather independent means of communication [3, c. 50]. The two slides below may illustrate with the example of scientific texts how fine-tuned the differentiation of LSPs is or can be.
Each of these domains possesses its own special language, its own vocabulary, and its own language register. LSPs are however not independent language systems, they do not have their own grammar, but are part of general language; in other words, they are part and parcel of the
1 Vgl. Fluck: "Diese als Fachsprachen oder Technolekte bezeichneten Gebilde erschienen - und erscheinen teilweise noch - in der deutschen sprachwissenschaftlichen Forschung unter Benennungen wie Arbeitssprache, Berufssprache, Gruppensprache, Handwerkersprache, Sekundärsprache, Sondersprache, Standessprache oder Teilsprache" [2, c. 11].
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meaning of all linguistic means of any given language1.
1.1. Markers of LSPs
Since languages for special purposes are instruments for the transmission of information, such texts are bearing special markers, as described by Fluck [2, p. 47]:
^ Technical terms,
derivations, abbreviations, etc.
are the major markers of specialized texts. The more such terms in a text are the higher its specialization is. Such terms are more precise and also more autonomous from the context than general language; i.e. they are independent of situation and context, even though this may differ from one LSP to another.
^ Nominalized style reflects the fact that such texts render much information in a short and concise way2. Special attention there has to be paid to composition and their right interpretation: such as "growing-pains" meaning the pains during the period of growth and not increasing pain.
^ Abbreviations
can be a problem although there are many abbreviations included in dictionaries, such as within law, medicine or statistics.
But there are of course still more markers, such as the lack of emotional terms, no direct speech, no dialogue and English terms in non-English texts.
1 They have particularities to be taken into consideration, such as plural vs singular in certain languages - notably in German. A very good handbook for LSPs is: Kalverkämper, Baumann. Fachliche Textsorten [6].
2 This is also called "economy of expression" [4, c. 1347].
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The growing importance of LSPs can be seen in the fact that each special field has now some 1'000 to 10'000 highly specialized terms which the qualified translator has to be able to identify and properly research.
2. When should LSPs be introduced in training?
To familiarize students, they are best to be introduced at the BA level -starting year 2. And the training, as described hereafter, with different text-types should be offered at the MA level in a very exhaustive way.
3. How to best train students in LSP?
The ideal would be to introduce the specialties of a given field - with a text which has to be translated. Here, it is very important to show the pitfalls in this given domain in order to make the students feel more at ease in a field which a priori is unknown and, hence, difficult.
It is certainly more exciting to show students the importance of the given field in the market. Because then they will better understand why such subject has been chosen for training. After this kind of introduction, hands-on exercises should be made, choosing texts of different degrees of difficulty, texts which are apparently easy to handle, and defectuous texts.
3.1. Medical translation as an example
In this field it is of interest to present a large variety of text-types: from publicity texts, via forensic medicine and clinical trials up to the scientific articles and textbooks. The given choice is not exhaustive, but indicates somehow the large spectrum which has to be offered to learners in this field.
The pitfalls here are obvious:
• Terminology
• Abbreviations
• Eponyms
• Orthography
• Style (redundancy)
• Pre-and suffixes
There are many methods to train medical translators and one of the important steps is, of course, the knowledge of the specific terminology. Although we are dealing here with LSPs, I would like to stress some pitfalls within the LSPs rather than go through the terminology which would be too exhaustive for this article.
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Eponyms that have been mentioned above, often cause problems since one would think that given names don't need to be translated. This is normally taken for granted. In the field of medicine, however, given names may vary if, for example a syndrome or procedure or illness has been discovered at the same time in two different linguistic regions. In this case, the name has to be adapted and taken from the respective linguistic region. Current eponyms are Alzheimer disease, named after the German neurologist Alois Alzheimer, or the famous regions in our brain which are responsible for the language: Broca- and Wernicke area.
3.2. Vulgarized language and LSPs: a special field
Within the framework of LSPs and specialized texts, Koller makes the following division into three groups:
a) LSP-Texts with prevailing general language are used in non-specialist communication and we can find it in different text-types;
b) LSP-Texts presenting general and specialist features and which help to communicate specialist topics amongst non-specialists;
c) LSP-Texts which have prevailing specialist features; for example scientific-technical texts [7, p. 274-275].
This division makes it easy to handle the texts and their respective translations, especially if they are matched with the text-typology by Katharina Reiss [9].
Vulgarized texts very often have a different text structure than highly specialist texts, and differ of course in style, since they are meant for a different target public.
Vulgarization is a special challenge because the style is more difficult to translate, sometimes the prevailing vague expressions make the translator hesitate and wanting to be more precise than the source text is and, more than often, the target public is not well defined.
3.3. Rhetorical means in vulgarized texts
Vulgarized language can be found in magazines dealing with health issues and which are meant for a wider public. For instance journals, such as the Scientific American which amongst others is very useful for training since it comes in many languages. Instructions for use are certainly prevailing in this domain and present a major interest in the market. Vulgarized texts are also very often characterized by hypothetical
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questions, such as rhetorical questions at the beginning of a sentence1; or they include the target reader in the question: "did you know that..."?
3.4. Special skills for the translator
In the field of adaptation, the translator has to get very good knowledge about the target public, what the target public expects and feels. In other words, he or she has to be able to judge how scientific the target text can be and how much knowledge the target public is expected to have. In this field, cultural issues play a major part and must by no means be neglected. Also, information given in a highly technical or scientific text is being generalized in adaptation, which leads to the fact that paraphrasing2 [10] is used in many cases to best render vulgarized texts.
The translator has to show very specific skills in reformulation and subject matter knowledge. A real challenge for the translator! Whereas highly technical texts underlie very precise rules3, adaptations and vulgarized texts normally have little technical information but are stylistically slightly more refined.
3.5. Transmission of information
The lower the technical aspects of a text are the lower is also the amount of information this text carries4, because in adaptations subject matter is often generalized and sometimes even skipped, with the result that these texts become less interesting for specialists but far more "readable" for lay-persons. The items which are skipped are more than often statistical indications, but also nonverbal text elements such as figures, graphs, and tables.
4. Outlook
The purpose of this short contribution is to highlight the importance of LSPs in everyday translation tasks. To show the importance, but also the
1 Auf welchem Weg werden Viren übertragen?
2 Spillner: "Bei der paraphrasierenden Reformulierung oder der gemeinsprachlichen Paraphrasierung wird ein Fachterminus zwar im Text genannt, doch gleichzeitig mit einer Paraphrase zusätzlich erklärt" [11].
3 ISO-Norms; DIN-Norms; IMRAD-Scheme: This is an Acronym which designs the parts of texts in a scientific paper; Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. The IMRAD-Structure is used since the 1980s in scientific journals and helps to find the needed information very easily. For further reading see: Sollaci & Pereira [10].
4 For further reading: Kalverkämper [5].
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pitfalls, namely underlining that vulgarized texts are often more difficult to translate because, on the one hand, the target public is not clearly defined, hence the translator cannot know how "technical" his translation should be; and on the other hand, the lack of special terminology normally is compensated by vague expressions which again make the translators' task more difficult and give him a higher responsibility. These types of texts offer the trainer a wide range of variety and exercises, including the improvement of skills in developing translation strategies, problem solving strategies and gaining new subject-matter knowledge. LSPs therefore, deserve a central role in any translator training program especially because they are the key actors in any translation market.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Delisle J., Lee-Jahnke H., Cormier M. Terminologie der Übersetzung. -Amsterdam : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1999.
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3. Hoffmann L. Kommunikationsmittel Fachsprache. - Tübingen : Gunter Narr Verlag, 1985.
4. Hoffmann-La Roche AG & Urban & Fischer (eds.). Roche Lexikon der Medizin. - München : Urban & Fischer, 2003.
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8. Lee-Jahnke H. Medizinische Übersetzung, leicht gemacht? // ASTTI. - Bern : Hieronymus, 2004. - S. 3-13.
9. Reiss K. Texttyp und Übersetzungsmethode. Der operative Text. - Heidelberg : Julius Gross Verlag, 1993.
10. Sollaci L. & Pereira M. G. The Introduction, Methods, Result, and Discussion (IMRAD) structure : a fifty year survey // Journal of the Medical Library Association. - 2004. - 92 (3). - S. 364-367.
11. Spillner B. Die Übersetzung naturwissenschaftlicher und technischer Literatur. - Berlin-Schöneberg : Langenscheidt KG, 1961.
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