Lecture 7. ASPECTS OF TRANSLATING PROCESS II: MODELS OF TRANSLATION
Definition of the translating process.
The notion of a model of translation.
Situational model of translation.
Transformation-semantic model of translation.
Psycholinguistic model of translation.
Operation mode description of translation.
1. Definition of the translating process.
188. Description of the translating process is one of the major tasks of the translation theory. To understand the dynamic aspects of translation means trying to understand how the translator performs the transfer operation from ST to TT.
The translating process or T in a narrow sense of the term means Tr’s actions when he creates the text of T (T proper). Psychologically viewed, the translating process must needs include two mental processes - understanding and verbalization. First, the translator understands the contents of ST, that is, reduces the information it contains to his own mental program, and then he develops this program into TT. The Tr’s actions are mostly intuitive, and he may not know sometimes what he is guided by in his preference of this or other variant. This does not at all mean that the choice is fully occasional or arbitrary. It is largely determined by the correlation of modes of structure of the messages in the ST and the TT. Translation theory tries to clear out how the transition from the O to the T is effected, what regularities there are behind the Tr’s actions.
2. The notion of a model of translation.
189. The problem is that these mental processes are not directly observable and we do not know much of what that program is and how the reduction and development operations are performed. That is why the translating process has to be described in some indirect way. The translation theory achieves this aim by postulating a number of translation models.
A translation model (TM) is a conventional representation of the translating process describing mental operations by which the source text or some part of it may be translated, irrespective of whether these operations are actually performed by the translator.It may describe the translating process either in a general form or by listing a number of specific operations (or transformations), the choice of which is conditioned by the linguistic peculiarities of the O and the corresponding phenomena in the TL. A TM has a conventional character, because it does not necessarily reflect Tr’s real actions in the process of creating the TT. The majority of such models has a restricted explanatory power and do not pretend that on their basis translation of any text can be performed with the necessary degree of equivalence. The aims of a TM are only to describe the succession of actions, with the help of which it is possible to solve the given Tr’s task with the given conditions of the process of T. TMs disclose certain sides of the T linguistic mechanism functioning. Though in his practical work a Tr can achieve the necessary result by some other way, which does not coincide with any of the TMs known so far, the knowledge of such models can help him in the solution of difficult translation tasks.
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190. Description of the T process with the help of models of T includes two mutually bound aspects: 1) model’s general characteristics with the indication of its possible sphere of application (the explanatory power of the model); 2) types of T operations (transformations), realized within the framework of this model. Translation models can be oriented either toward the situation reflected in the ST contents or toward the meaningful components of the ST contents. The example of the model of the first kind is situational (or referential) model of T (STM), the example of the second kind is semantic-transformational model of T (STTM).
The existing models of the translating process are, in fact, based on the same assumptions which are considered in discussing the problem of equivalence. The STM is based on the identity of the situations described in the original text and in the translation, and the STTM postulates the similarity of basic notions and nuclear structures in different languages. These postulates are supposed to explain the dynamic aspects of translation. In other words, it is presumed that the translator actually makes a mental travel from the original to some inter-lingual level of equivalence and then further on to the text of translation.
3. Situational model of translation.
191. In the situational model this intermediate level is extralinguistic. It is the described reality, the facts of life that are represented by the verbal description. The process of translating presumably consists in the translator getting beyond the original text to the actual situation described in it. This is the first step of the process, i.e, the break-through to the situation. The second step is forthe translator to describe this situation in the target language. Thus the process goes from the text in one language through the extralinguistic situation to the text in another language. The translator first understands what the original is about and then says "the same things" in TL.
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It is necessary to admit that the is universal for the whole mankind. The commonness of the world, the biological structure, production and life processes of the people, irrespective of their linguistic identity, results in the fact that all people exchange ideas mainly about the same reality phenomena. Principally, any situation may be successfully described with the help of any developed language.
192. The main contents of any message is in reflecting some extralinguistic situation. The STM treats the T process as the process of describing the situation presented in the O in the TL. The Tr’s actions are understood in the following way:
Situational model of translation
original T translation
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