The Problem Of Equivalence In Language Works
Translation is the activity that renders info, whether literary or scientific, a mobile nature 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 tended to pay attention on literary and holy texts. Yet translation services have been a central determinant in the history of scientific knowledge as well, thus sensitive 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 labor and worth tend to be ignored in favor of the original writer, doubly applies to the scientific translator, who has been neglected even by the sphere of translation studies, with a few important exceptions. Such exceptions for example, regarding the transmission of ancient Greek and medieval Islamic science discover 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 broadening them by adaptation to new cultural contexts. Just as the world has benefited greatly from the translation of scientific and medical techniques into variety of lingvas, so has this knowledge been improved by translation in turn.
As translation science developed, however, the consensus view expanded to include cultural, interpretive, interpersonal, cognitive, and even general factors as well. With the introducing of the functionalist vision in translation theory, the function or purpose of translated texts as communicative tools moved into the center of attention, where it remains these days.
Although this article lacks space to even outline the impressive number of factors that have been investigated until now, it is fair to stress that translation studies as a spot has moved radically in the direction of embracing an integrative approach to translation that sees itself as a multidiscipline with virtually no aspect of the communicative process being outside its scope of reference. Perhaps 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, focusing first 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 research may well make valuable contributions to translation pedagogy in the future, for example in specifying a plan for strategy and creativity exercises.
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 growth of individually adapted skills for dealing with the endless number unforeseeable sets of factors that they will obviously came across in their professional work. Language like an ocean cannot be ever measured!