The role and   significance of translation activities

                                                              O.V.Lebedynskaya

                               Odessa State University of Internal Affairs    

 

        The article reveals the theoretical considerations about the translational process and the various approaches that help undergraduate students master the art in the educational context. The author highlights the main problems, teachers should focus on, in order to foster students’ progress and reinforce their linguistic and cultural awareness, in both the source and the target languages. Some methodological recommendations and activities that aim at facilitating the progress of acquiring the skills on the part of translators-trainees in the EFL classroom are discussed briefly.

       Radical changes in all spheres of the modern world, that has to face the challenges caused by globalization, call for the reconsideration of the ways of teaching languages and related study areas with the shift of the focus onto different aspects of language use, linguistic, communicative, expressive and pragmatic features becoming the major ones. Due to the fact that language behavior of the speaker is characterized by the linguistic, psychological and sociolinguistic factors that are determined by the cognitive processes and situational parameters in interaction, societal aspects, as well as micro contexts and macro contexts, are to be emphasized the training. Moreover, it is important to draw a distinct line between spontaneous language production and language acquisition. These tasks are closely connected with the problems that are being raised and studied within the framework of general research of the competence and performance of bilingual and multilingual speakers.

    The role and significance of translation activities as well as the training programmes that offer effective and balanced preparation have reached undisputed popularity in modern methodology due to their objective of serving the purpose of ensuring cross-cultural communication. Translation (both bilingual and multilingual) has developed rapidly as such factors as international trade, increased migration, globalization, internalization of sport and arts, the expansion of the mass media and technology are key features of cross-cultural communication in the world.

       Current researches in the field resulted in the assumption that bilingual or multilingual speakers’ use different codes for different languages, code-switching being regarded a norm for competent language users. The other important factor deals with distinguishing basic knowledge from situational discourse knowledge. These are the very spheres that cause problems, difficulties and ambiguity. The date investigated prove pragmatic and more specific socio-pragmatic ambiguity to be the most difficult to cope with, due to the fact that it inheres in a much wider discourse choices not limited merely by the use of lexical or structural units and require a more complicated procedure of implementing the correct maxims and maxim confluence. The consideration of the maxims and their confluence enriches the content and the methods of EFL as it opens new possibilities for the learners’ awareness and necessity of more diverse linguistic behavior.

        Translation deals with specific purposes of communicating messages and information within the cross-cultural context. For this reason, translators play an important and complicated role as transmitters of cultural, historic, social and political information while interpreting texts, speech and ideas in a variety of texts regardless the accuracy of translation.  Translation is believed to be a transfer process from a foreign language- or a second language- to the mother tongue, though the new demands in the field set forth the task of transferring texts to a target language that is not the mother tongue, but a foreign language, which makes translating process a much harder task. The importance of training knowledgeable translators, who know the language well and are aware of the peculiarities of language acquisition, have mastered the translation strategies and procedures, is the main task of educational establishments. Still it leaves another important issue to consider - - the knowledge of specific areas which needs the systemic use of special activities and techniques. According to E.C. Condon, there is always the way of approaching a text, whether the translator chooses the author-centered traditional model, the text-centered structuralized model or the cognitive reader-centered model (Condon 1973).

        Within the theoretical context it is essential to discuss the problem of translatability. It is common knowledge that the main obstacles in the translation/transfer process are caused by the linguistic complexity of the languages, namely grammar, vocabulary, semantics and phraseology. R. A. Hudson puts the idea of ‘culture’ into focus, explaining that ‘linguistic untranslatability’ is connected with so called true and false friends, calques, and other kinds of interference; terms in different areas, neologisms, aphorisms etc., while ‘cultural untranslatability’ is understood as the peculiarities of stable linguistic expressions such as idioms, sayings, proverbs, nonce words, jokes, puns et cetera (Hudson 1980). Thus, to convey an accurate meaning becomes a very difficult task if the target language does not have the correlative concept in its semantic and cognitive aspects.

          The most effective way to deal with the problems of untranslatability is “contextualization”, i.e. the ability to find the closest in meaning interpretation of the “no existing” element within its context. The quality of translation is the result of the complex cognitive and linguistic process that is based upon such inseparable elements as knowledge, skills, training and qualifications, cultural background, world outlook, life experience and expertise. The most essential characteristics, that good translators should have, are primarily of linguistic, educational, personal, social and cultural nature.

          Reading comprehension ability, as well as the knowledge of specialized subjects derived from specialized training and a cultural background, the right understanding of major peculiarities of cross-cultural and interlingua communication, are considered obligatory skills that can help ensure high quality translation.

          According to most translation theorists, the specific approaches to text translation tend to be similar, translators will adopt one model or another, but many will tend to an integration of different approaches. Translating problems such as linguistic or cultural untranslatability are to be dealt with through application of various mechanisms (compensation, loans, explanatory notes, adaptation, analogies, etc.). Translators should also be aware that meaning is not only conveyed by words as transferring messages requires adequate decoding and re-decoding of information.

     Hus teaching future Translators within the framework of European requirements to training, which deals with a number of matters of contemporary interest in the world, should be based on a special theoretical model that will outline the main ideas, approaches, methods and techniques to be used in the classroom affectively. Given the international context and the ever increasing interest among language learners to internationally formatted training process, the model should be include the component that will focus on the activities, which offer different forms and types of tasks, competent translators are expected to be fluent in.

   To conclude, the main concerns in teaching translators are centered on the methodological considerations, teaching procedures, trainers’ expertise, and the materials that can be used in the classroom affectively.

        

                                                                                                                                    

 

References

1.     Condon, E.O. (1973). Introduction to Cross Cultural Communication: New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

2.     Communication Strategies: Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives (1999)/ Ed. By G. Kasper and E. Kellerman: Longman.

3.     Hall, E.T. (1959). The Silent Language. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc.

4.     Hudson, R.A. (1980). Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5.     Rodgers, T. (2003). Methodology in the New Millennium. English Language Forum, 2003, Vol. 41, No.4.

6.     Savignon,S.J. (2002). Communicative Curriculum Design for the 21st Century. Forum, 2002, Vol. 40, No. 1.