Translation strategies for languages for special purposes

translation strategy professional

The translation is a complicated process that can be explained as encoding the meaning and type in the target language using the source language's decoded meaning and form. Different scholars explain the translation differently. According to R. Bell, translation is the method of replacing a text in one language with a similar text in another [3]. Afterward, under P. Newmark, the ability to replace a written message or declaration with the same message or declaration in one language is a skill [8]. D. Kelly specifies translation as the ability to interpret the source text and render it in the target language using register, meaning, and other language resources to produce the desired result [5]. So far, the focus has been on translation studies, which identify difficulties and recommend the best translation approach to tackle them. As a consequence, translation can be defined as a problem-solving exercise and a decision-making mechanism. It's also a tough task because the interpreter will encounter certain difficulties or concerns that will necessitate observation, identification, and appropriate response. The choice process requires devising a suitable strategy for addressing any such problems [1; 9].

There are different concepts of “translation strategy”, however unambiguous interpretation of this concept is not found in the works of scientists: the opinions of scholars differ in what is called “translation strategy”, and dictionaries do not even provide a definition of this concept.

Research of translation strategies, their characteristics, methods and many linguists have devoted their works to translation methods, including I. Korunets, V Karaban, A. Cohen, A. Chesterman, W. Lцrscher, L. Venuti. However, although this area of research is constant develops, but there is no unanimity in the interpretation of the concept “Translation strategies”. It is important to specify its definition and certain aspects and it determines the relevance of our research.

The aim of the research is to formulate the concept of “translation strategies”. The task of the study is to analyze the approaches of scientists to interpretation of this concept and to propose its definition.

Strategic competence, when forming it by future translators, should be considered as an integral part of translation competence. In turn, translation competence combines both the receptive competence of comprehension and the productive competence of formulation; life experience of a translator; idiomatic knowledge of the language of translation: comprehension of the translated text; selection and implementation of translation strategy; determination of the functional perspective of the statement, which is aimed at adequate transmission of communicative intention and a sufficient degree of communicative efficiency.

Research results

Translation competence involves a special “translation” knowledge of two languages; ability to “translate” interpretation of the source text; possession of translation technology; knowledge of the norms of a certain style and genre of the text; knowledge of translation norms that determines the strategies of the language of translation; a certain minimum of background knowledge. Exactly these factors influence the formation and content of the concept of translation strategy.

Translation strategy is considered as a program of translation actions, methods performing a translation task, which consist of in adequate transfer from foreign language into the language of translation of the communicative intention of the speaker, with taking into account his culturological and personal characteristics, basic level, language super category and subcategory [3]. Translation strategy is defined as a program of translation activities, which forms the general approach of the translator to the translation in the conditions of a certain communicative situation of bilingual communication, which determines specific features of this situation and the purpose of translation, as well as establishes the nature of the professional behavior of the translator within a certain communicative situation [4].

R. Bell understands the translation strategy as a “joint action plan of the translator”, due to a set of its basic settings aimed at achieving goals that he consciously or unconsciously sets for himself translator [3, 116]. A. Cohen considers the translation strategy from the standpoint communicative- pragmatic approach: “strategy is a method of execution translation task, which is an adequate transfer from abroad languages into the language of translation of the communicative intention of the sender, taking into account culturological and personal characteristics of the speaker, basic level, language super category and sub category” [4, 169].

R. Kern considers strategic competence closely with discursive and rhetorical aspects. All three competencies are available at a set of knowledge, speech skills and communication skills that provide compositional and semantic organization of the translated text (discursive competence); which form the ability of variable using of language tools to provide structural and semantic organization of the translation text (strategic competence); using linguistic tools for building communicative strategies for achieving the desired effect of expression (rhetorical competence) [6]. The text of the translation should represent the content as much as possible original, the author's way of expressing his opinion, his communicative strategy achieved by maintaining the maximum possible structural and semantic similarity of the source and translation texts [2].

The translation strategy does not involve a fixed sequence translation actions, and flexible variation of translation methods and techniques within selected guidelines and the “general line” of translation, which in turn determined by numerous factors: communication attitudes and intentions of the author of the original and the purposes of translation, and the specifics of the subject situation behind the text, etc. [7, 231].

The choice of translation strategy is influenced by the following factors: the purpose of translation, type of text being translated (there are two main functional types of translation: artistic (literary) translation and informative (non-literary) translation)) and the nature of the putative receptor translation (in some cases the translation does not have an exact addressee, and the translator focuses on the so-called “averaged receptor”).

The dependence of the translator's strategy on the type of text is obvious.

W. Lorscher identifies three groups of translation strategies: 1) conative strategies that express a focus on the recipient of interaction with taking into account the content and functions of communication and aimed at definition semantic content of the source text and the impact on readers the text of the translation conceived by the author of the original; 2) personal translation strategies - patterns of cognitive information processing (perception, interpretation and generation), which are determined by traits the nature of the translator; 3) cognitive-linguistic strategies are based on linguistic and textual knowledge of the translator: knowledge of cognitive, emotional, aesthetic information and features of its verbalization [7, 126-132]. The difficulty, complexity and even the frequency and desirability of each technique is more or less implicitly measured against the ideal literal translation, following the Newmark's motto “translate as literally as possible and as freely as strictly necessary”.

P. Newmark mentioned three stages of translation strategy:

1. Pre-translation analysis of the text (collection of external data about the text; identification of the source and recipient; composition of information and its saturation: cognitive, operational, emotional, aesthetic information; communicative tasks, genre of speech).