The Problem Of Similarity In Linguistic Process
Translation is the process that renders information, whether literary or scientific, a mobile form of culture. Such mobility, in turn, is what gives human understanding a deep and lasting influence beyond the boundaries of its primary setting. Discussions related to the theory, practice, and history of translation have preferred to focus on literary and holy texts. Yet translation services have been a central determinant in the history of scientific knowledge as well, thus ultimate share in its intellectual history, and goes on to be so presently.
Despite such importance, science and general translation has been a theme of only sporadic scholarly study. The so-called “invisibility” of the literary translator, whose efforts and worth tend to be ignored in favor of the original author, doubly applies to the scientific translator, who has been neglected even by the field of linguistic studies, with a few serious exceptions. Such exceptions for example, regarding the transmission of ancient Greek and medieval Islamic knowledge reveal an interesting truth: no less than with literary works, translators of science and medicine have often imposed new elements upon the texts they have rendered, enriching and expanding them by adaptation to new cultural contexts. Just as the world has benefited greatly from the translation of scientific and medical techniques into many lingvas, so has this knowledge been improved by translation in turn.
As translation theory evolved, however, the consensus view expanded to include cultural, interpretive, interpersonal, cognitive, and even technical factors as well. With the advent of the functionalist vision in translation theory, the function or purpose of translated texts as communicative tools moved into the spot of attention, where it remains presently.
Although this piece of text lacks space to even outline the impressive number of factors that have been checked until now, it is fair to say that translation studies as a focus has moved radically in the direction of embracing an integrative approach to translation that sees itself as a cross-subject with virtually no aspect of the communicative process being outside its scope of reference. Possibly one of the most overriding changes in lingvo theory has been from the static to the dynamic: from seeing the translation process as one of establishing equivalence between original and translated texts to seeing it instead as one of cognitive, social, and communicative action. Results of think-aloud studies on the mental processes involved in translation, stopping primarily on the interplay between intuitions and strategies, suggest that mental process research can be a fruitful source of knowledge about how experts and novices translate differently.
Such study may seriously make necessary commitment to translation pedagogy in the future, for example in specifying an idea for strategy and creativity training.
Partly as a result of the equivalence-to-action shift in translation theory, there is an growing awareness that translation experts must be actively engaged in the strengthening of individually found skills for dealing with the myriad unforeseeable sets of factors that they will definitely meet in their professional work. Language like the space cannot be ever measured!