The Nitty-Gritty of Teaching Translation
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
process 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 microcontext and macrocontext, are to be emphasized in the training (Savignon 2002). 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 (Rodgers 2003). 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 data 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/and 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 behaviour.
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 and adequacy 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 the 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 a way of approaching a text, whether the translator
chooses the author-centered traditional model, the text-centered structuralist
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, calque,
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 "non-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. Consequently
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 interlingual communication, are
considered obligatory skills that can help ensure high quality translation.
The majority of
contemporary renowned linguists, who carry out research in
the field of translation, claim that
comprehension and interpretation of texts/ messages imply the necessity of
considering the textual, referential, cohesion and naturalness levels, i.e. it
includes reading comprehension and message interpretation (encoding and
decoding). Besides the application of various strategies, appropriate choice of
adequate techniques is another key factor. In addition, it is the importance of
the evaluation/ assessment of the quality of translation, being predetermined
by the capacity of translators to assess the problems and obstacles correctly,
that cannot be underestimated either.
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 (Communication
Strategies 1999; Hall 1959). Translating problems such as linguistic or
cultural untranslatability, are to be
dealt with through application of various mechanisms (compensation, loans,
explanatory notes, adaptation, equivalence, paraphrasing, analogies, etc.).
Translators should also be aware that meaning is not only conveyed by words as
transferring messages requires adequate decoding and re-coding of information.
Regarding the use
of translation procedures and strategies, translators must constantly make
choices, in order to decide which are the most useful for the transfer of the
ideas and the meaning of the text under consideration. Basically, the process
means adapting the most suitable strategies and techniques to the requirements
of the text and the procedure as well as adopting a certain technique and using
it in a proper way.
Thus teaching
future translators within the framework of European requirements to training,
that deals with a number of matters of contemporary interest in the world of
ELT, should be based on a special theoretical model that will outline the main
ideas, approaches, methods and techniques to be used in the classroom
effectively. Given the international context and the ever increasing interest
among language learners to internationally formatted training process, the
model should 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 around the methodological considerations, teaching procedures,
trainers’ expertise, and the materials
that can be used in the classroom effectively.
References
1. Condon, E.C. (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. L.& N.Y.: 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.
.