Technical translation as the way of intercultural communication

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Tugan-Baranovsky Donetsk National University of Economics and Trade

Technical translation as the way of intercultural communication

Vorobyova L.V., Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences,

Senior Lecturer at the Department of Foreign Philology,

Ukrainian Studies and Socio-legal Disciplines Mykhailo

Abstract

The article has been devoted to technical translation which is considered as a way of intercultural communication. Centuries of geographical and political separation were concurrent with the development of diverse ways of interpreting and translation.

The challenges of globalization, immigration, environmental sustainability and hi-tech require that we broaden the spectrum of the term technical translation giving it the intercultural context.

Nowadays, entering host culture by the specialists involved into translation business is becoming more and more frequent. The increasing need for global understanding and cross-cultural communication are felt in many areas human activity.

Translation is considered as a variety intercultural communication. The quality technical translation may be recognized as the attempt to improve communication between individuals of diverse cultures in technological aspect.

The general goal of this article is to analyze translation as a variety intercultural communication and appreciate the opportunities and challenges that each language presents to translators and to learn how it could be dealt with those opportunities and challenges.

The role of the cultural factor in the process of translation is investigated. The term “culture” is defined in details in the aspect of cross cultural communication. The comparison of the term was made.

The paper studies the main barriers to impede intercultural communication. The main difficulties, barriers as the potential breakdowns in translation activities and intercultural communication are revealed, being aware of the main stumbling blocks in intercultural communication is the first step in avoiding them.

So, it follows analyze within the framework of linguistic and cultural theory, because translation is not only an act of interlingual communication but also the phenomenon of intercultural communication.

It is a synthesis of languages and cultures that complicates the process of adequate interpretation.

Key words: technical translation, intercultural communication, barriers.

Анотація

Технічний переклад як вид міжкультурної комунікації

Статтю присвячено технічному перекладу, який розглядається як спосіб міжкультурної комунікації. Століття географічного та політичного розділення супроводжувалися розвитком різноманітних способів усного та перекладу.

Виклики глобалізації, імміграції, екологічної стійкості та високих технологій вимагають від нас розширення спектру терміну технічний переклад, надаючи йому міжкультурний контекст. В наш час все частіше трапляється занурення в культуру приймаючої сторони спеціалістами, які займаються перекладацькою справою.

Зростаюча потреба в глобальному розумінні та міжкультурному спілкуванні відчувається в багатьох сферах людської діяльності. Переклад розглядається як різновид міжкультурної комунікації. Якісний технічний переклад можна визнати спробою покращити спілкування між людьми різних культур у технологічному аспекті.

Загальна мета цієї статті -- проаналізувати переклад як різновид міжкультурної комунікації та оцінити можливості та виклики, які мова представляє для перекладачів, а також дізнатися, як можна впоратися з цими можливостями та викликами.

Досліджено роль культурного чинника в процесі перекладу. Детально визначено термін «культура» в аспекті міжкультурної комунікації. Проведено порівняння терміну.

У статті досліджено основні бар'єри, що перешкоджають міжкультурній комунікації.

Виявлено основні труднощі, бар'єри, як потенційні збої в перекладацькій діяльності та міжкультурній комунікації. Усвідомлення основних каменів спотикання в міжкультурній комунікації є першим кроком до їх уникнення.

Отже, переклад слід аналізувати в рамках лінгвокультурологічної теорії, оскільки він є не лише актом міжмовної комунікації, а й феноменом міжкультурної комунікації. Це синтез мов і культур, що ускладнює процес адекватної інтерпретації.

Ключові слова: технічний переклад, міжкультурна комунікація, бар'єри.

Introduction

Today's technical translation challenges are global. The widespread use of English as the language of technological progress and international cooperation increase the feeling of both importance of simplicity in technical translation and considering it as a way of intercultural communication. Centuries of geographical and political separation were concurrent with the development of diverse ways of interpreting. The challenges of globalization, immigration, environmental sustainability and hi-tech marketing strategies require effective translating skills.

The second half of the 20th century saw the formation of science about translation as an independent discipline.

At first, philologists expressed doubts about opportunities to reproduce the national specifics of the original text in translation: its artistic features, historical, cultural and literary associations and subtleties. The uniqueness of the grammatical structure and the vocabulary of each language which were known to the translators, made them insist on the idea, that it was impossible to carry out the full the identity of the original text and translated one. It turned out that the practical activity was carried out for many centuries, it appeared theoretically impossible.

The end of the Second World War was characterized with an information explosion with a sharp increase of information exchange between people and nations. It was accompanied by a corresponding increase of the scope of translation activities worldwide. The new types of translations had appeared: simultaneous translation, dubbing of movies, TV programs and radio broadcasts. Together with the big amount of literary works to be translated, that is, more significant number of materials is translated in the framework of the activity of various institutions, organizations and enterprises. Moreover, the boom in computer technology, DNA sequencing, military technology and medicine is concurrent with the technical documentation to be translated. The interpreter plays an important role in the modern business. In the process of negotiations, he not just translates from one language to another, but also creates an atmosphere of partnership and mutual understanding. The translator helps to achieve understanding between people who communicate in different languages and are representatives of different cultures.

Modern living conditions have radically changed targeting of specialists' training. Nowadays society needs more than just foreign languages teachers and translators, but specialists of much wider spectrum - the experts of the international and intercultural communication. Recently, intercultural communication has become important in many fields of human activity, but especially intensified the need for its specialists in the fields of economy, ecology, international politics and technology.

Results and discussion

The term “culture” is considered and found out why it is an important factor in translation. The term “culture” is ambiguous; therefore let's choose the closest value to it ethnographic and anthropological content.

In the nineteenth century the term “culture” was mostly used as a synonym for the word combination “Western culture”. E. Tylor, an English anthropologist, who is widely considered as the founder of anthropology as a scientific discipline and the first Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford debated about the relationship between “primitive” societies, and “civilized” societies, a key theme in 19th century anthropological literature. Sir Edward B. Tylor considered the Western civilization as “superior” and popularized the idea that all societies come through the stages of development, where the basic stage was considered as “savage” [6, p.67]. He was convinced that in carrying on the enquiry into the development of culture, evidence of some weight is to be gained from an examination of Language. According to Tylor, comparing the grammars and dictionaries of races at various grades of civilization, it appears that, in the great art of speech, the educated man at this day substantially uses the method of the savage, but only expanded and improved in the working out of details ” [6, p.160]. In this variant of definition it is easy to see that Western cultures comprising ancient Greece and Western countries believed that their culture and way of life considered to be superior, the same as Eastern cultures, comprising imperial China.

Nowadays definition of the term “culture” is not associated with countries any more. Transgeografical approach defines the term “culture” as a community or population of people to be self-sustaining, and large enough to reproduce new generations of the members without relying on outside people. The term also comprises the totality of the community's thought, experiences, and patterns of behavior together with assumptions about life, values and concepts.

According to G. Hofstede defined culture as: the programming of the human mind by which one group of people distinguishes itself from another group. Culture is learned from environment and is always a shared, collective phenomenon [3, p.206]. In his theory culture is a complex of four categories: symbols, heroes, rituals and values. According to Hofstede's general idea, culture consists of various layers and can be compared with an onion:

• on the outer layer of the onion, there are the symbols. This category refers to verbal and non-verbal language: eating habits, food, logos of companies, flags, colors or monuments. Symbols attach emotions. But the nature of changes of the symbols could have not stable long lasting deep emotional impact;

• the next layer consists of heroes. The category of heroes includes real life public figures, like statesmen, athletes or company founders, or imaginary people who serve as behavior models within culture. Heroes are the people who have shown behaviour which showcase the national spirit. The Ukrainian example is the President V. Zelenskyi, who united the nation and the country while the war started in 2022. Or, within organisations, heroes show behaviour that set the example. In some cultures, heroes can also be the “anti-hero” - they can be the example of what not to do. A culture heroes are popularized in myths, novels, folk songs and others forms of literature;

• rituals are on the third layer, the closest category to the core. Rituals are the socially essential collective activities, recurring events which shape our unconscious minds. They occur both in society (e.g. celebrating Independence Day, Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, tipping in restaurants, etc.) and in organisations (e.g. meeting practices etc.);

• values are at the core of the onion model culture by G.Hofstede. Values are the broad preferences for a certain state of affairs. In the category of values, the majority of members of a culture shares the feelings and accepts the permanent truth definitions, which are not open for discussion about what is normal or abnormal, beautiful or ugly, good or bad. Transmission of values is performed by the environment in which young generations grow up. The most important role models are introduced by the parents and the teachers who show what is acceptable and what isn't. In fact, that is the process of social transmission of behaviours and thoughts from birth and while getting through school.

By G. Hofstede, this collective programming, consisting of values as the core, and the three layers surrounding that core, is what we mean by culture [3, p. 356]. As culture is considered as a group phenomenon, it is used to analyze and distinguish the maim features of the behaviour of groups. Culture, then refers to the totality of a people's socially transmitted products of work and thought.

Communication issues between cultures and peoples are explored not only by philologists and translators. To study the interaction of cultures is possible in the centers, language courses and while participating in the social projects, where the linguists work together with literary experts, psychologists, fashion designers, historians, sociologists and philosophers.

In the end of 2022, Poland, as the host country launched the social project in the context of providing aid to refugees from Ukraine and Syria who have settled across the country. The city authorities of Krakow, Poland are financing a fashion eco project. The aims of the project are to explore communication issues between Polish, Ukrainian and Syrian cultures focusing on the environmental protection through “Zero waste” approach. The project consists of the sets of workshops for Ukrainian and Syrian women about body language, style, fashion, accessories and clothing hand making.

At the current stage the phenomenon of the translation should be studied in the context of mass training professional translators in higher education institutions and highly raised scope of translation activities to be done. Traditional translation specialty, such as technical translator, was also joined by other sub-specializations as translator-compiler of technical documentation. The spectrum of translation activities is developing, along with consecutive and simultaneous translations there are accompanying translation (tour guidance) and video conferences translation [5, p. 137]. linguistic intercultural communication technical translation

Technical translation together with socio-political, scientific and, legal, economic ones plays an important role in terms of volume and significance of the informative translations.

With the introduction of the theory of translation as educational discipline it became obvious that professional the translator must understand the features of the structure foreign language, the logic of interaction of its elements and parts, as well as have philological knowledge of the native language languages. Technical translation requires the basic knowledge of the technical processes targeted in the translation or at least the translator should be given an opportunity to be consulted by engineers involved in the process. As a result, for the translator the importance is not only in deep knowledge of a foreign language and culture the country whose language he or she is studying.

As for the problems, which face the translators, the main ones lie in the field of difficulty which occurs when the native speakers and translators often do not coincide with ideas about how it is accepted and how it is not accepted to speak. The technical translator may face the technical slang, terms to refer to the specialized vocabulary of subgroups. Less well studied is the technical translation within the framework of linguistic and cultural theory, since it is not only an act of interlingual communication, but also a phenomenon of intercultural communication. This is a synthesis of languages, cultures and technical progress, which complicates the process of adequate interpretations.

The interrelationship of languages and culture should be studied within the course disciplines in the context of translators training. As a result of this, the specifics of social consciousness and the conflict of cultures can be understood. The cultural barrier is much more unpleasant and more dangerous than linguistic, because cultural mistakes are usually perceived more painfully than language and they can be overcome only by going beyond the boundaries of one's culture. Differences between cultures are not possible generalize by putting them into clear rules. For the most part, native speakers are condescending to the language mistakes of foreigners, but cultural mistakes usually have a negative effect on them impressions.

Another set of challenges, the translators may face lie in the field of breakdowns in the untercultural communication. An impossible task may occur if an interpreter or translator tends to learn the norms and the rules governing appropriate and inappropriate behavior of all cultures or subcultures. In this case the communication would rather suffer than to be considered as effective one. The norms violation leads to the decreasing of the communication effectiveness. Tending to behave according to your own culture while respecting the other culture's norms is raises many questions about the effectiveness. The better approach to effective intercultural communication is to examine the possible potential breakdowns of the communication. The generalization of the potential breakdowns will lead us to the defining main barriers to impede intercultural communication.

L.M. Barna [1, p. 350] has developed an approach to examine barriers to intercultural communication on a general level. The categories of barriers are considered as Stumbling Blocks in Intercultural Communication and they refer to the obstacles that can arise in intercultural encounters.

These main stumbling blocks are the following: high anxiety, assumption of similarity, preconceptions and stereotypes, tendency to evaluate, language difference and nonverbal misinterpretation. Taking these common barriers into account helps the interpreters and translators improve the intercultural communication skills [2, p. 259]. In this article a few main barriers are to be studied.

The first barrier listed is high anxiety or tension; the term stress can be also used. It is common in crosscultural experiences due to the number of uncertainties present. As for the translator, he or she can experience anxiety and avoid interaction with the customer to clear the details of device or process described in the text for translation. As for the interpreter, feelings of tension usually occur for both parties in an intercultural communication act. The hostnational is uncomfortable when talking with a foreigner because he or she cannot maintain the normal flow of verbal and nonverbal interaction.

The second barrier is assuming similarity instead of difference. Each culture is different and unique.

When information is ambiguous, the wrong conclusions cam be easily reached. The assumption of similarity does not often extend to the expectation of a common verbal language but it does interfere with caution in decoding nonverbal symbols, signs, and signals. It is better to assume nothing but ask.

The next barrier focuses on the stereotypes. The term “stereotype” here we understand as the judgments made about others. Stereotypes persist because they are firmly established as myths by one's own national culture and because they sometimes rationalize prejudices.

The last barrier is nonverbal misinterpretation. This barrier can occur when nonverbal communication is identified at the different ways. The nonverbal message codes that have been performed can to affect intercultural communication. A language, which an interpreter or a translator mastered, is not avoiding from the stumbling block. The professional training of the future translators comprises the disciplines, where some blocks are focused on comprehension of nonverbal signs and symbols, such as gestures, postures, and other body language. The disability to observe, to learn the meanings and read them may lead to a definite communication barrier [4, p. 81].

During the translation, there is also contact between the two languages, and the clash of two cultures. Let's consider a few examples when, technical terms are acquired altogether unexpected meanings based on the simplest and unambiguous words of everyday life language: aging - визрівання, вистигання (бетону), jack - домкрат, jaws - конструкція «губ» плоскогубців, або пасатижів (витягнуті металеві затиски, оснащені з внутрішньої сторони дрібними зубчиками для поліпшення захоплення), nut - гайка, washer - шайба, sandwich - конструкція, яка складається з декількох шарів, наприклад «сендвіч-панель» - будівельний матеріал, що має тришарову або більше структуру, shoe - колодка, ланка гусениці.

It is important for the translator to have not only deep knowledge of a foreign language, but and culture of the country whose language he or she is studying.

Because the conflict of cultures is most clearly revealed in communication, then a clash of cultures can cause their conflict. Therefore, it is necessary to know what is behind the word and what are its functions performed in the country where such and such a language is real a means of communication.

So, when translating, it is very important get the phenomenon of ambiguity and that the word is traditionally not perceived in isolation. Depending on the context the word can be translated as a single word, a phrase, a semantic group or even a whole sentence, if there is no equivalent in the relevant language.

Conclusion

In view of the above, it may be concluded that the modern society needs more than just teachers, inter translators but international and intercultural communication specialists. Nowadays the entering host culture by the specialists involved into translation business is becoming more and more frequent, especially under the circumstances which Ukraine faced on the 24^th of February 2022 after the beginning of the full-scale war. The increasing need for global understanding and cross-cultural communication are felt in many areas human activity. Translation is considered as a variety intercultural communication. The quality technical translation may be recognized as the attempt to improve communication between individuals of diverse cultures in technological aspect. Being aware of the main stumbling blocks in intercultural communication is the first step in avoiding them. So, it follows analyze within the framework of linguistic and cultural theory, because translation is not only an act of interlanguage communication [4, p. 45], but also the phenomenon of intercultural communication. It is a synthesis of languages and cultures that complicates the process of adequate interpretation.

Bibliography

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