Филологические
науки / Язык, речь, речевая коммуникация
PhD on Philology, S.V. Pervukhina
Rostov State Transport University
Basic features of text adaptation
One
of the promising fields of applied linguistics is research of professional
communication. A lot of studies have been done to investigate communication in
the sphere of law (N.D. Golev 1999, I.V. Palashevskaya 2010, 2012, L.P.
Shirobokova 2007, G. Pavlakos 1988, A.A. Atabekova 2011), organizational
communication and institutional discourse (V.I. Karasik 2006, 2013, O.A.
Evtushenko 2011), or communication in medicine (N.D. Golev & N.N.
Shpil’naya 2012, E.A. Kostyashina 2010). But these researches mostly dealt with
interaction between specialists in one particular field. There is a different aspect
of this problem, and that is communication between a specialist in a certain
professional field, and a non-specialist, who is interested in this field or
has got a problem to solve in this sphere. For example, applying to a law
agency for a consultation or talking to a doctor involves two partners of
communication: that is a non-specialist who lacks knowledge in this field but
he or she needs to solve a problem in this field, and a specialist who can help
them. A non-specialist is likely to have certain problems in interpretation of
laws or decrees because of the language used in these texts: the syntax is
complicated, the sentences are long, the terminology is unknown. All these
factors lead to a rather vague and obscure meaning for someone who is not used
to this kind of language.
In
the frame of applied linguistics it is effective to investigate text-based
fields, such as law or medicine. A text-based field mostly deals with
accumulating, saving and processing information. It should be noted that the
term is relative, because processing information is characteristic to any
science. But it is useful to distinguish sciences whose product is a number of
texts with definite characteristics: they make sense to specialists in this
field and important to use for non-specialists but these texts are
incomprehensible for them. To overcome the gap between the meanings in such
texts and ability of non-specialists to understand these texts, the texts
should be adapted.
The
process of text adaptation may follow two directions. One of them is changing
the language of the text. It has a wide application in plain English campaign
(http://www.plainenglish.co.uk), which helps to make the language in
organizational communication clear and understandable. Another application of
text adaptation in this direction is adaptation of texts for educational
purposes. It can be teaching foreign languages (I. Frank, M. West 1926, O.M.
Korchazhkina 2009) or adaptation of the educational materials for children
(I.S. Trygub 2006, and others). This direction of text adaptation consists in
avoiding meaningless lexis, using simple syntactic structures, clear graphics
and appropriate text length.
The
second direction of adaptation of the text has a cognitive background. In this
type of communication there are two different minds involved (N.D. Golev &
N.N. Shpil’naya 2012). The specialist has professional knowledge, which is
neatly systematized and classified. He has a system of notions, ideas and
frames, which the non-specialist can not even predict. The text based on the
professional thesaurus is not comprehensible for a person lacking these
specific terms and background knowledge. So, text adaptation in this respect is
about building up lacking background knowledge abd introducing necessary
terminology.
Thus,
in this article we will briefly describe the major trends of these two types of
the text adaptation. Our research shows that usually both methods are used.
The
practical application of adapted texts calls for investigating the most effective
methods of text adaptation. We believe, that these methods are related to
overcoming difficulties in understanding texts. Reasons of misunderstanding or
incomprehension were described before in (V.Z. Dem’jankov 1989, G.F. DeJong
& D.L. Waltz 1983, S.V. Pervukhina 2013). The general idea of these studies
is that unknown lexis or difficult syntax can make texts incomprehensible. Some
research has been done studying the most and the least comfortable fonts (S.P.
Vasyuta & O.G. Khomula 2013), which help to read the text quicker. These
things can make the text more or less comprehensible. But the personality of
the addressee is also very important. The ability to interpret information
received, motivation to read and to understand what they are reading are very
important, too (G.I. Bogin 2001). So, the process of text adaptation can focus
on some of these aspects to make adapted texts more comprehensible for a
definite group of readers.
Having
studied the reasons of incomprehensibility of texts and reasons of
misunderstanding of the texts, we have come to the following trends of text
adaptation.
1. Defining the units of text adaptation.
2.
Finding out the background knowledge
useful for an addressee to understand the ideas of the text.
We
see the following solution to defining the units of text adaptation. In this
respect the process of text adaptation is very close to interpretation of the
text, but this interpretation is like transferring senses and notions from one
mind to another. The units of so-called “translation” have cognitive nature. It
can be concepts (Z.D. Popova & I.A. Sternin 2010) or frames (Van Dijk &
W. Kintsch 1983). So, the author of the adapted text can try to explain the
meaning of a word (a term or a notion) and create a new concept for the addressee.
Or they can try to comment the situation, which can be too complicated to
comprehend for a non-specialist and create a frame structure for an addressee.
For example, comments to laws of the Russian Federation are written so that
general public (non-specialists) can understand the necessary terminology and
understand the system of concepts in jurisdiction. It explains the system of
laws and how they are connected with the real life situations. Thus, a unit of
adaptation can be lexis, or a sentence or a part of the text (a super phrase
unit).
Adaptation
should be performed in the situations, where it is necessary. Actually, one can
adapt terminology, as it happens in the medical literature. Sometimes the unit
of adaptation can be a situation, reflecting specific knowledge of the world,
like professional knowledge. So, the unit of adaptation must have an idea in
itself. Then, the unit of the text adaptation should be a super phrase unit
that explains the situation by using more common vocabulary for the addressee.
This process causes amplification of the text, because it provides additional
data about the topic. In the terms of cognitive linguistics, the author of the
adapted text explicits the necessary presuppositions about the topic, so that
the reader can understand the meaning of the text and he or she can draw
correct conclusions from the text. The adapted text in this situation gives the
addressee the information which is easier to understand, and provides the
necessary context of the situation described in the text. Finding the
background knowledge of the addressee is closely connected with research of
addressee’s characteristics. These characteristics can provoke the addressee’s
interest in the topic of the source-text.
Adapting
belles-lettres has got a different basis. When adapting literature for language
learners, they do not have much to do with creating new concepts or frames, it
is mostly about giving new names to the already existing concepts. Naturally,
good belles-lettres express very complicated ideas, give vast and detailed
descriptions, reflect and provoke emotions. The writers of such texts use
various vocabulary and complicated sentence-structures. So, the second way of
text adaptation is adapting the language of the text to the level of the reader
in their ability to understand texts of a certain length at certain stages. We
will illustrate one of the methods of compression of the information and
paraphrasing by the example of the novel “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” by Thomas
Hardy. The source text gives this elaborate description of the parents waiting
impatiently for their son:
“Occasionally he came in, stirred the small
fire […] and went out again; sometimes pausing at the front door, going on to
the drawing room, then returning again to the front door […]. Mrs Clare, who
had been sitting in the drawing room, followed him hinter”.
The
source-text does not give the exact word “to
wait”, but it describes people, doing some aimless actions in order to
while away the time. The adapted text compresses this long description and
concentrates on the action in the story:
“It was
evening in the parson’s house at Emminster. Mr and Mrs Clare were waiting
anxiously for Angel’s return.”
So,
the unit of text adaptation in this example is the description of the parents,
waiting for their son to return. These two abstracts transmit the same idea,
using different syntactic structures and vocabulary, but having the same frame
and referring to the same situation.
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