The Problem Of Equivalence In Translation Works
Translation is the act that renders knowledge, 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 original setting. Discussions related to the theory, practice, and history of translation have tried to pay attention on literary and holy texts. Yet translation services have been a central determinant in the history of scientific knowledge as well, therefore critical part in its intellectual history, and goes on to be so today.
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 writer, doubly applies to the scientific translator, who has been neglected even by the field of linguistic study, with a few serious exclusions. These exceptions for example, concerning the transmission of ancient Greek and medieval Islamic science 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 spreading them by adaptation to new national contexts. Just as the world has benefited greatly from the translation of scientific and medical techniques into variety of languages, 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 causes as well. With the introducing of the functionalist approach in translation theory, the function or purpose of translated texts as communicative tools moved into the spot of attention, where it remains these days.
Although this piece of text lacks space to even outline the impressive number of factors that have been checked to date, it is fair to stress that translation studies as a focus 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. Maybe one of the most overriding shifts 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 first on the interplay between intuitions and strategies, suggest that mental process research can be a good source of knowledge about how experts and novices translate differently.
This investigation can really make valuable commitment to translation pedagogy in the future, for example in specifying a role 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 personally found skills for dealing with the myriad unpredictable arrangements of factors that they will obviously pass in their professional work. Language like the space cannot be ever measured!