Psycholinguistics and translation

• Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Introduced by Jacob Robert Kantor (1888-1984).

• Eugene Nida suggested two schemes of translation:

1. Formal translation (finding equivalent elements in vocabulary, grammar, syntax and phraseology).

2. Conscious / intelligent translation which consists of three stages: analysis of the material, transfer of the material from SL to TL; reconstruction of the material.

 

A(source) →analysis→ X →transfer→ Y →reconstruction→ B(receptor)

 

The first type is used in interpreting and simultaneous translation, which are based on the probabilistic prediction of the massage content and the anticipatory synthesis of its equivalent in TL (Г.В. Чернов).

Another important psychological component of translation is the competency of a translator (R. Stolze, W. Wills), which includes his acquaintance with the subject of translation, cultural background, professional terminology both SL and TL.

• There is one important advantage for a translator in the case of oral translation: he / she can see and hear both the speaker and the audience; the translator can also perceive paralinguistic elements of the speaker’s speech (changings in tones, gesticulation, facial expression, ironic connotations of voice, specificity of communicative situation).

• In the case of writing translation the translator must reconstruct the historical background and communicative situation in his / her imagination. Moreover, it is necessary to adapt the material of translation to the needs of the target (modern) audience.

 

Translation and textual linguistics

Text linguistics is a branch of linguistics that deals with texts as communication systems; it includes the following aspects:

• Cohesion

• Coherence

• Intentionality

• Acceptability

• Informativity

• Situationality

• Intertextuality

One of the most famous scholar – Robert Alan de Beaugrande (1946-2008)

 

Translation and semiotics

Semiotics is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication. This includes the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

Three branches of semiotics:

q Semantics: relation between signs and the things to which they refer.

q Syntactics: relations among or between signs in formal structures.

q Pragmatics: relation between signs and sign-using agents or interpreters.

 

Roman Jacobson’s Theory of translation

Roman Jacobson (1896-1982) was a Russian-American linguist and literary theorist; the pioneer of the structural analysis of language. The most important essay is “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959).

The most important aspects of his theory:

• Jakobson believes that meaning lies with the signifier and not in the signified. Thus it is the linguistic verbal sign that gives an object its meaning (“there is no signatum without signum ”, 1959, p. 232).

• Interpretation of a verbal sign according to Roman Jakobson can happen in three ways:

-Intralingual (within one language, i.e. rewording or paraphrase)

-Interlingual (between two languages)

-Intersemiotic (between sign systems)

Intralingual translation

The intralingual translation of a word uses either another, more or less synonymous, word or resorts to a circumlocution. Yet synonymy, as a rule, is not complete equivalence: for example, “every celibate is a bachelor, but not every bachelor is a celibate.” A word or an idiomatic phrase-word, briefly a code-unit of the highest level, may be fully interpreted only by means of an equivalent combination of code-units, i.e., a message referring to this code-unit: “every bachelor is an unmarried man, and every unmarried man is a bachelor,” or “every celibate is bound not to marry, and everyone who is bound not to marry is a celibate.”

Interlingual translation

Likewise, on the level of interlingual translation, there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units, while messages may serve as adequate
interpretations of alien code-units or messages. The English word “cheese” cannot be completely identified with its standard Russian heteronym “ сыр,” because cottage cheese is a cheese but not a сыр. Russians say: Принеси сыру и творогу “bring cheese and [sic] cottage cheese.” In standard Russian, the food made of pressed curds is called only if ferment is used.

 

Bruno Osimo (born in 1958)

Bruno Osimo is a follower of Roman Jacobson’s theory of translation whose approach integrates translation activities as a mental process, not only between languages (interlingual translation) but also within the same language (intralinguistic translation) and between verbal and non verbal systems of signs (intersemiotic translation).

"Translation is the creation of a language of mediation between various cultures. The historic analysis of translation presupposes the readiness of the researcher to interpret the languages of the translators belonging to different ages, and also to interpret their ability to create new languages of mediation (Osimo 2002, Torop 2009). "

 

Yuri Lotman (1922-1993)

He developed R. Jacobson concept of language as a code system: the language cannot be considered as only a code, that is an artificial and contractual system which has appeared recently, but Y. Lotman suggests the formula

Language = code + history.

In accordance with R. Jacobson, the aim of intercourse is adequacy of communication.

The abstract model of communication: a structure without memory (1) and with memory (2)

 

 

Peeter Torop (born in 1950)

He expanded the scope of the semiotic study of translation to include metatextual, intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual translation and stressing the productivity of the notion of translation in general semiotics.