The Problem Of Equivalence In Language Process
Translation is the act that renders skills, 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 borders of its primary 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 a crucial element in its intellectual history, and goes on to be so at present.
Despite such importance, science and medical translation has been a theme of only sporadic scholarly study. The so-named “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. These 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 spreading them by adaptation to new cultural contexts. Just as the world has benefited greatly from the translation of scientific and medical techniques in to variety of lingvas, so has this knowledge been advanced by translation in turn.
As translation theory evolved, however, the consensus view expanded to include cultural, interpretive, interpersonal, cognitive, and even general 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 opinion lacks space to even outline the great variety of factors that have been investigated to date, it is fair to say 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. Possibly one of the most overriding shifts in languages 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 positive source of knowledge about how experts and novices translate differently.
This investigation can well make necessary commitment to translation pedagogy in the future, for example in specifying a plan for strategy and creativity training.
Partly as a result of the equivalence-to-action shift in translation theory, there is an rising awareness that translation experts must be widely engaged in the strengthening of personally built skills for dealing with the myriad unpredictable arrangements of factors that they will definitely came across in their professional work. Language like the space cannot be ever measured!