Specialized translation

Reflections on translation

It is relatively easy to say what contributes to translation (linguistics, literature, philosophy, etc.), but very hard to define what translation itself is. Peirce and de Saussure considered translation as serving the role of an intersemiotic operation. In Peirce’s view of the relationship between sign and referent, translation is a ‘replica’ of a sign. De Saussure saw translation as the link between thought and sign.

Roman Jakobson, in the 1950s, as well as organizing translation into his famous intralingual, interlingual, and intersemiotic categories, called it ‘interpretation’ and even ‘reported speech’. All these definitions are enriching and profitable, but none is unique, exhaustive, or definitive, resulting in vagueness.

The phenomenon of translation

Translation can safely be called a phenomenon, something that manifests itself naturally in the world and which everybody has experienced. Translation has often been compared to a craft. Thus, while the writer is an artist creating art anew, the translator is a craftsman reproducing the existing equivalence. Perfect, specular equivalence is not possible according to most. Nevertheless, at least some sort of equivalence, however imperfect, is possible, otherwise, translation could not take place at all.

To define what is equivalence, metaphors and similes have been coined. For some, focusing on the transfer, the transmission of the context of a text, it is a truest kind of imitation. Talent is connected with the notion of art and with that of translation if this is to be considered. Both talent and equivalence share a non-quantifiable nature. This raises a number of issues like if it would be possible to evaluate translation and according to which criteria. Also, in translation, talent influences the level of equivalence.

Linguistic elements of translation

To define translation, it is necessary to look at its linguistic elements. Language developed in order for humans to communicate for practical everyday needs. Written language is just a further step in our cultural evolution: a means to enlarge the quality of information we can store and pass on as a community. Then, language in humans developed alongside many other intellectual and practical abilities, this being the reason why it is difficult to clearly separate language from cognition.

Even in linguistics and in translation in particular, the best line of research seems to be to work on breaking the human cognitive code and to focus only on practice. Moreover, linguistics cannot offer any theory of translation equivalence.

Translation studies

The 1980s saw the rise of a new approach to translation, which, under the term of Translation Studies (TS), intended to bring together all the research.