Zrazhevska L K.
NOTES
ON TRANSLATION AS A METHOD OF LANGUAGE PRESENTATION
As far back as the history of
language instruction goes, conscientious teachers have sought new and better ways
to facilitate and accelerate language learning.
The study of translation and the
training of professional translators is without question an integral part of
the explosion of both intercultural relations and the transmission of scientific
and technological knowledge. The need for a new approach to the process of
teaching and learning is certainly felt in translator and interpreter training
programs around the world. Translator training mainly revolves around the
semantic transfer of words, phrases and whole texts from one language to
another.[2]
Language seems to have a
life of its own. It changes and it stays the same. It is difficult to catch
individual speakers of a language in the act of changing it or of preventing it
from changing. Language, as the shaping force of a people or a culture or a
nation molds all of its individual speakers in more or less uniform ways. Tell
me what language you speak, and I will tell you who you are. The language
inside the heads of translators-interpreters seems to have a shape and size and
colour and feel that rejects or at least resists
other ways of saying things – especially when those other ways come from people
outside the group, speakers of different regional dialects of the language or
of other languages. The sentence structures and idiomatic expressions of
foreign languages seem not only alien but wrong to students. It is widely
current notion that the presentation of new language forms such as words and
structures by means of translation into the learner’s mother tongue is bound to
be inaccurate and therefore misleading. This is thought to be so especially in
the case of structural items such as tense forms and words which are supposed
to be untranslatable. Students should be given the opportunity to engage in
translation as an activity. The targets for the students are to teach
translation as a skill so that students acquire the ability to translate
semantically, syntactically and stylistically complex texts from various
discourse areas with a high degree of communicative equivalence and to enhance
students’ awareness of the different stylistic variations of both the source
language and target language. Special emphasis should be placed on selection of
lexical items in order to bring students to the realization that although words
share the same semantic field, they can have different syntactic, semantic and
stylistic restrictions.
Translation involves the
exploration of the potential of two languages. The ability to synchronize the
source language (English) and target language requires as a precondition a
comprehensive syntactic, lexical, morphological and stylistic knowledge of both
source and target languages. Translation is a means to both explore and develop
such knowledge. Throughout the translation course students are given guidance
in interpreting the source language material correctly. Before attempting to
reproduce the text in the target language they are asked to consider its
function and style and make the appropriate syntactic and lexical adjustments.
In English a formal scientific text with
a purely informative function calls for frequent use of passives and nominal
groups, and the lexical choice is dictated by the specific scientific register,
whereas in an informal piece of popular literature with a persuasive function
collocation and connotation greatly influence the selection of the correct
lexical item. The hunt for the right word should be intense, the right word,
later, will be easy to remember. This hunt can be painfully slow but it can
also be one of the translator’s greatest professional joys. The solution to the
translator’s problem sticks easily in her or his memory and can be retrieved
quickly for later use. Translation-memory software performs this same function
for many translators, remembering not only the words the translator has used in
the past but the contexts in which she used them. But since this software too
requires a few keystrokes or mouse-clicks, most translators who use it, do so
mainly for back up, relying primarily on their own neutral memories for most
words and phrases.[4]
Linguistically speaking,
the translator is experiencing a transformation of semantics
and syntax, or to put it simplistically, of words and word orders. Words and
word orders appear in the source text and have to be carried across or led
across into the target language. In the process they undergo a change which
feels at first like a metamorphosis of infinite variety, so infinite that it
cannot be reduced to patterns; every word and every sequence of words must be
taken on its own, thought about, reflected upon, weighed and tested. The more
one translates the more familiar the transformations become. Gradually they
begin to fall into patterns and translation comes to seem easier and easier.
One of the fundamental
assumptions is that learning is most effective when it is learner centered,
when each learner, each student and teacher as well has experiences and makes
discoveries on his or her own, and those experiences and discoveries arise out of
and are tied back into his or her previous experience and knowledge as well.
The teacher has to be willing to enter into a learner-centered environment – to
work with his or her students to create that kind of environment. This means
that the teacher is not the source of all knowledge, but a facilitator of
students’ learning experience and a learner along with the students. It also
means that the students are not passive recipients of knowledge or knowhow but its active generators, that there are no right
or wrong answers or solutions to the discussion topics and not all discussion
topics will work with all groups, since people are different. The teacher must
be prepared to “fail” with some topics and exercises and try something else
instead.
Translation conceived of
as intra- and interlingual interpretation leads to a
deeper awareness of the complexity of language and enhances students’ ability
to develop source language analyzing techniques and source-language/target
language transfer strategies.
Literature
1.
Blair, R.W. Innovative approaches to language teaching.-
2.
Robinson, D.
Becoming a translator.-
3.
Brower, R.A. On
translation.-
4.
Newmark, Peter, A Textbook of Translation.
5. Brislin,
R.W.Translation:Applications
and ResearchNew York:Gardener
Press.