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Example research essay topic: Communicative Activity Aiming Translation Quality However Often Ignores Text - 1,874 words

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The practical circle of translation is very wide. Poetry, fiction, scientific and science fiction books, business documents and letters, the political articles and speeches, newspaper materials and discussions are being translated from one language into another. In all these variety of demands, which are made by some specific task, in all the quality of required knowledge and information there are required two common conditions. First - the aim of the translation is the ability as close as possible introduce the text to the reader (or listener) with all its nuances. Second translation means the idea that is already expressed with the means of one language should be most fully and adequately expressed with the means of another language in inseparable unity of its form and contents. The idea of the text, originally expressed in one language and addressed to the recipient should be conveyed into another language with the use of the linguistic means.

But the importance of translation, which clearly bears the idea of the original to the fullest, also includes the adequacy of translation and the common norms of language. The content of the original is directly and continually connected with the forms of the language on which it was done. In every case, even with the shortest or easiest text the process of translation includes two factors. Above all the translation requires correct understanding of the original, or the source text. And then the corresponding linguistic forms (words, phrases, grammatical forms) should be found for the translation, or target text. Any interpreting of the original, whether right or wrong, the translators attitude towards it has the resulting choice of linguistic means.

The translator, who works not automatically but consciously, can never be indifferent to the choice of the linguistic means. The translation, it is the communication between the author of the source text and the reader of the target text thought the prism of the translator. The main factor here is the ability of the translator to convey the intended meaning of the source text into the target text. Nowadays in analysis and research of the translation many works is being done for understanding the process and the goal of the translation. The evaluation of the translation in great deal depends on the adequacy of translation and the original.

In terms of theory, the assessment has been based on a traditional contrastive approach to the meaning of sentences. This approach to the assessment of translation quality, however, often ignores the basic premise that translation is a kind of communicative activity, aiming at conveying a message to the recipient. This communicative activity is of course not merely a matter of the linguistic code changing from the source text into the target text. Rather, it must involve negotiating a certain message with the target text readers, so that the closest meaning of the source text to its readers can be realized by the target readership. Hence, one of the crucial questions in translation studies should be how the reader via a textual form realizes the message or intended meaning of a text. In terms of cognitive information processes, it is now commonplace to look for an answer to this psychological aspect of verbal communication in general.

One of the main arguments on the translation equivalence, the 'literal' against 'free' controversy, is rather a constant in translation studies. The reason for the argument is the issue in the traditional 'literal' versus 'free' debate has too often been discussed without reference to the context in which translation takes place; the social circumstances of translation have been lost from sight. The equivalence is preferable in some circumstances. It is a means of providing some degree of insight into the lexical, grammatical or structural form of a source text. The common means is the dynamic equivalence. Most translations are in between the two types, somewhat increasing emphasis on dynamic equivalence.

Dynamic equivalence is the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language. This definition is not absolutely correct, because the cultural and historical realities might be too different, but there should be a high degree of equivalence of response, or the translation will have failed to accomplish its purpose. Willis Barnstone in his book The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice describes to such factors of the translation, as prosody, translatability, fidelity and methodology, equivalence and difference, diction, and syntax. He describes the "enigma of originality, " the "stigma of translation." The author explains what he calls the "three fundamental areas of translation theory and practice: register, structure and authorship." As the register he take the literalism, middle ground, and license; as structure takes such notions as the degree of source text in the translation; as authorship, or dominant voice he understands retaining the target language voice or yielding to the voice of the translator.

The author criticizes the translations that are not "original" or "creative", because they depend on a source. Barnstone writes: Given the bad atmosphere over the precinct of translation, there is an anxiety-ridden conflict between originality and translation in which the paternal source of a translation must be killed or at least concealed in order to grant the translated child the dignity of originality. Hence the aim of the child is self-disguise ment so that the translated self can pass as self-created and original, with minimal reference to tradition and its modeling force. The source should be buried. If the burial is complete, with nothing showing, then the shadow of translation is forgotten. A number on translation errors, mistakes, and howlers leads B.

to argue that "infidelity to quality" is "the most grievous error" among "petty language crimes." Translation is also an art to be learned, even by poets. Critical for the poem is when it changes tongues, that moment of translation truth when fire and knowledge come alive to commingle and create. In that instant the poem becomes everything or nothing. The Barnstone insists that without the artistic primacy owed to enlightened translation and interpretation humans will forever remain scatterings from Babel's murky tower. Mikhail Bakhtin developed in his book Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays and developed the approach to novels and related forms of prose that takes them on their own terms.

Dialogue according to Bakhtin is the important concept. This term possess ambiguity of meanings in his work. As the common notion it carries the concept "truth" as a conversation. Some kinds of truth are monologue, or they can be stated by a single person and in a single voice. Other kinds require at least two interacting consciousnesses and are therefore essentially dialogic in nature. This approach to the assessment of translation quality, however, often ignores the basic premise that translation is a kind of communicative activity, aiming at conveying a message to the recipient.

This communicative activity is of course not merely a matter of the linguistic code changing from the source text into the target text. It must involve negotiating a certain message with the target readers, so that the closest meaning of the source to its readers can be realized by the target readership. One of the essential questions in translation studies should be how the reader via a textual form realizes the message or intended meaning of a text. In terms of cognitive information processes, it is now commonplace to look for an answer to this psychological aspect of verbal communication in general. However, translation theorists have limited their attention predominantly to describing only the translation process and the translator's activity as a cognitive behavior, not the response of target text readers. Since the two major concerns of translation studies are the idea, meaning and context of the source and the target reader's understanding of it through the target text, any discussion about the task or process of translation is basically inadequate unless it fully takes account of the mechanism of text processing from the reader's point of view.

We need to understand how the text and the reader's mind interact with each other, and on what ground the source text and the target text can be compared for the assessment of translation quality. The dialogue carries two principal meanings in application to language. It means that language is essentially a matter of utterances rather than of sentences; and utterances are dialogic in nature. The rehears or listeners are real. The result is that all language is a dialogue. There are no monologue utterances.

But a second sense of "dialogic language" does allow for monologue utterances. Some kinds of spoken and written text make the foregrounding of interacting voices the essential "task. " The author outlines three kinds of translation. In "enclosure within the epoch, " the translator should see the world in terms set by the other period or culture. The benefit is that the translator begins to appreciate the different view of the world; but despite that, the translator does nothing significant with that appreciation. Moreover, with "modernization and distortion": translator sees in the text only the concerns and values of their own epoch, which are assumed to be especially wise or privileged. The language must not be simply understood in the sense in which it viewed by professional linguists.

It cannot be analyzed with the same set of ideas about the relation of language to style that we bring to bear on other genres. Most versions of literary style assume that language operates more or less as professional linguists tell us it does, both in our everyday lives and in literary texts. The literary texts deepen various forms of language. Style here is the sum of the operations performed by the poet in order to accomplish the violence necessary to mark the text off as literature.

The author criticizes those theorists who assume that is the only possible kind of translation. The best form is the "creative understanding, " the understanding of the difference of the other world through the prism of the own. One creates a special sort of dialogue with the other, and it results in the combination of insight. This concept allowed the author to rethink the idea of internationality, for works may contain potentials put there by the author, who may realize their richness but may not comprehend specific insights to which they might lead. It includes the idea of literary value according to which works are intrinsically great: great works contain great potential. The translation differs from other literary communication in search of correspondence with its source text.

The aim depends on the transferred ideas, the linguistic properties, meaning, author's intention, function, purpose, reader's response, and so forth of the original text. The key to this whole collection in this book is the final essay, Discourse in the Novel. This is perhaps his most influential work and it contains some very interesting ideas about the novel, the definition of language and how languages interact with one another. As is often the case with Bakhtin, this essay is also open-ended. The main idea of contextual language and the poly voicedness of novels against the backdrop of an authors voice and that of his times is the sum total of what the...


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Research essay sample on Communicative Activity Aiming Translation Quality However Often Ignores Text

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