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Translation as specific type of lingual (language)

Most translators prefer to think of their work as a profession and would like to see others to treat them like professionals rather than as skilled or semi-skilled workers. But to achieve this, translators need to develop an ability to stand back and reflect on what they do and how they do it. Like doctors and engineers, they have to prove to themselves as well as others that they are in control of what they do; that they do not just translate well because they have ‘flair’ for translation, but rather because, like other professionals, they have made a conscious effort to understand various aspects of their work.

Unlike medicine and engineering, translation is a very young discipline in academic terms. It is only just starting to feature as a subject of study in its own right, not yet in all but in an increasing number of universities and colleges around the world. Like any young discipline, it needs to draw on the findings and theories of other related disciplines in order to develop and formalize its own methods; but which disciplines it can naturally and fruitfully be related to is still a matter of some controversy. Almost every aspect of life in general and of the interaction between speech communities in particular can be considered relevant to translation, a discipline which has to concern itself with how meaning is generated within and between various groups of people in various cultural settings. This is clearly too big an area to investigate in one go. So, let us just start by saying that, if translation is ever to become a profession in the full sense of the word, translators will need something other than the current mixture of intuition and practice to enable them to reflect on what they do and how they do it. They will need, above all, to acquire a sound knowledge of the raw material with which they work: to understand what language is and how it comes to function for its users.

Translation is a process of rendering a text, written piece or a speech by means of other languages. The difference of translation from retelling or other kinds of transfer of a given text is that that translation is a process of creating an original unity in contexts and forms of original.

The translation quality is defined by its completeness and value. “The completeness and value of translation means definite rendering of the contextual sense of the original piece and a high-grade functional-stylistic conformity.”

The concept “high-grade functional-stylistic conformity” clearly points on two existing ways of rendering the form in unity with the meaning: the first one is a reproduction of specific features of the form of the original piece and the second one is the creation of functional conformities of those features. It means when translating the specific features of an original literature we should rather consider the style inherent for the given genre but than direct copying the form of an original. While translating, we should also remember that different lexical and grammatical elements of an original might be translated differently if accepted by the norms of conformity to the whole original. The translation adequacy of separate phrases, sentences and paragraphs should not be considered separately but along with achievement of the adequacy and completeness of the translating piece as a whole because the unity of a piece is created through collecting the components.

No matter how a translator (interpreter) is talented he should remember two most important conditions of the process of translation: the first is that the aim of translation is to get the reader as closely as possible acquainted with the context of a given text and then second – to translate – means to precisely and completely express by means of one language the things that had been expressed earlier by the means of another language.

A translation can be done:

1. from one language into another, kin-language, non-kin,

2. from literary language into its dialect or visa versa

3. from the language of an ancient period into its modern state

The process of translation, no matter how fast it is, is subdivided into two moments. To translate one should first of all to understand, to perceive the meaning and the sense of the material.

Furthermore, to translate one should find and select the sufficient means of expression in the language the material is translated into (words, phrases, grammatical forms).

There are three, most identified types of translation: literary, special and sociopolitical.

The ways of achieving the adequacy and completeness in those three types of translation will never completely coincide with each other because of their diverse character and tasks set to translator (interpreter).

The object of literary translation is the literature itself. And its distinctive feature is a figurative-emotional impact on the reader, which is attained through a great usage of different linguistic means, beginning from epithet and metaphor up to rhythical-syntactic construction of phrases.

Thus, in order to preserve figurative-emotional impact on the reader while translating a work of art, the translator (interpreter) will try to render all the specific features of the translating material. That’s why, on the first place one should reconstruct the specific features of an original and the creation of functional conformities to the features of the original play the subordinate role.