Lekture 5.Basic translation theory.

Lekture 5.Basic translation theory.
In translation to varify the inf. about the extralinguistic objects we should consider extralinguistic situation and background information.
An object of translation cosists of the following components:
• Elements and structures of the SL
• Elements and structures of the TL
• Transformation rules to transform the el. and str. of the source text into the target text
• Systems of the languages involved in translation
• Conceptual content and organisation of the target text
• Interrelation of the conceptual contents of the S and T texts
In short, translation is functional interaction of languages (definition suggested by Комиссаров).
During translation one fulfills such operations:
• deduces the target language elements and rules of equivalent selection and substitution on the basis of observed source text elements;
• builds a model consisting of the target language elements selected for substitution;
• verifies the model of the target text against context situation and background information;
• generates the target text on the basis of the verified model.
Thus, the process of translation may be represented as consisting of three
stages:
1. analysis of the source text, situation and background information,
2. synthesis of the translation model, and
3. verification of the model against the source and target context, situation, and background information resulting in the generation of the final target text.
Verification against semantic and grammatical contexts is performed either simultaneously or the verification against semantic context is delayed.
Human translation studies divided into 3 groups :
• Transformational approach
• Denotative –/-
• Communicational –/-
According to the Transformational approach translation is a set of multi-level replacements of a text in one languageby a text in another one governed by specific transformation rules. In Transformational approach we distinguish 3 leels of substitutions:
• Morphological equivalencies
• Lexical -/-
• Syntactic -/- and or transformations
In the process of translation:
At the morphological level morphemes of the TL are substituted for those of the SL
At the lexical level words and word combinations -/-
At the syntactic level syntactic structures -/-
According to the denotative approach the process of translation consists of the following mental operations:
• translator reads (hears) a message in the source language;
• translator finds a denotatum and concept that correspond to this message;
• translator formulates a message in the target language relevant to the above denotatum and concept.
As opposed to the transformational approach, the relationship between the source and target word forms is occasional rather than regular.
Communication may be defined as an act of sending and receiving some information, which is called a message.(suggested by a German linguist Otto Kade)
In order to formulate the message we use our system of interrelated data, which is called a thesaurus.
2 types of thesauruses in verbal communication:
 language thesaurus(is a system of our knowledge about the language which we use to formulate a message)
 subject thesaurus(is a system of our knowledge about the content of the message)
In order to communicate, the message sender formulates the mental content of his message using subject thesaurus, encodes it using the verbal forms of language thesaurus, and conveys it to the message recipient, who decodes the message also using language thesaurus and interprets the message using subject thesaurus as well.
In regular communication there are two actors, sender and recipient. In special bilingual communication (i.e. translation), we have three actors: sender, recipient, and intermediary (translator). The translator has two language thesauruses (source and target one) and performs two functions: decodes the source message and encodes the target one to be received by the recipient (end user of the translation).
0. Kade's communicational tbeory of translation describes the process of translation as an act of special bilingual communication in which the translator acts as a special communication intermediary, making it possible to understand a message sent in a different language.