A BRIEF REVIEW OF SOME CONCEPTS AND METHODS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES
Authors: Ворова Т. 
Published: January 2024

Background. A feature of the development of translation studies at the beginning of the 21st century is the creative combination of  science of translation, the expansion of its informational potential, and the improvement of the practical stage of training the translators. The issues of the theory and practice of translation studies, which operate at the intersection of several humanitarian disciplines, have long been the focus of attention for many researchers studying the processes of translation and interpretation. However, it is difficult for the new generations of translators to find quickly their way in a huge array of theoretical and practical information because they lack a well-developed strategy for translating a text and the necessary level of translation skills.

The purpose. The purpose of our work is to analyze the general informational platform of translation studies in order to focus the attention of a novice-translator on the great possibilities of the science of translation and to expand the creative potential of a translator at the preparatory stage of his practical work. 

Methods. To achieve the purpose, there have been used the general scientific methods and techniques based on the analysis and synthesis of existing publications on translation, as well as the explication method, which includes the elements of comparison and generalization in the examples of language material. 

Results. The task of a translator is to accurately convey the sense of the original text by means of the other language, preserving its stylistic and expressive features. If the criterion for accuracy in translation is the identity of information presented in two foreign languages, then a translation, that conveys this information by equivalent tools, can be considered complete. Thus, a translation must convey the meaning of the source text and its form.

A dictionary cannot foresee the variety of contextual meanings realized in a speech, just as it cannot cover  the variety of combinatorics of words. Therefore, the theory of translation can only establish the functional correspondences that take into account the dependence of the transmission of certain meaning categories in the interaction of various factors. This principle is actual for contextual meanings and even for the implementation of various lexical transformations.

The criterion of adequacy can be the correspondence to the reality described in the original text, therefore the equivalence of the translation means is determined either by identity or by the maximal approximation to the effective impact of the original text. An analysis of any translation performed at a high level of translator’s skill shows that the basis for establishing the equivalence of linguistic means can be determined only  at the functional level.

Equivalents are a kind of catalysts in the translation process. Equivalents are characterized by constancy and relative independence from the situation in which the field of speech is processed in accordance with the standards of the target language. If a traditional equivalent correspondence has been established between two languages, the translator is practically deprived of the possibility of choice. 

Appeal to reality within the framework of the situational method of translation helps to clarify not only the content of the original text, but also the process of translation, the implementation of which is facilitated by the creation of the target text. Thus, the reality, reflected in the total content of the source text, serves as the extra-linguistic basis of translation. The situational nature of translation has significant explanatory power.

Discussion. Art and skills of translation are a flexible category that grows simultaneously with practical activity.  The translator constantly has to decide which elements of the original text can be sacrificed in order to fully reproduce different, more communicatively significant parts of it.  The lexical and grammatical difficulties in translation are present in all texts, and the translator needs to train in overcoming these difficulties. Consequently, in the translation process a great deal depends on the individual abilities of the translator, his knowledge of issues, languages and areas of specialization. As a result, the requirements for accuracy in translation are strengthened and the importance of translation equivalence increases significantly; the attention is focused on the relative commonality of content, meaning, semantics, translation style and the original text even if their identity is absent.