1. Basic approaches to translation and interpretation.

There exist many rather controversial definitions of translation and interpretation suggested by the representatives of different schools of linguistics and translation. These definitions range from formal, structural approaches to translation, e. g. “translation is substitution of elements or structures of one language by the elements or structures of another language” (A. Oettinger, N. Chomsky, O. Kade, V. Rozentsveig), to semantic and functional treatment of translation, e. g. “translation is rendering in the target language (TL) of the closest equivalent of the initial message from the point of view of its meaning and style” (E. Nida, C. Taber, see also a survey of different approaches to translation in Швейцер 1988: 42-75).

All these approaches contributed to a contemporary understanding of translation as interlingual and intercultural communication recognized by many Ukrainian (I. Korynets, S. Maksymov, G. Miram, A. Panasyev,O. Semenets), Russian (Barkhudarov, G. Chernov, A. Komissarov, R. Minyar-Beloruchev, A. Shveitser) and western (M. A. K. Halliday, M. Hoey) writers on the subject.

According to this understanding translation is a process of transforming speech messages in the source language (SL) into the speech messages in the target language (TL) under condition that their sense and communicative intention remain unchanged (see Чернов 1987: 6). It is quite natural that in the process of translation the form of the message can be transformed due to the structural (lexical, morphological and syntactical) differences between languages. Such transformations which are inevitable in the translation are also called “code shifting” (i. e. substitution of the SL structures by the TL structures).

2. Translation as intercultural communication.

The process of translation is often described for practical reasons as a three-stage pattern (see Швейцер 1988: 49; Miram 1998: 57):

S1 r1 s2 r2 stage 1 stage 3

CODE SHIFTING

(transformations)

Stage 2

Where Stage 1 is communication between the original Sender of information (source language sender or S1) and translator (receiver of information1 or R1), Stage 2 is “code shifting” (transformations, performed by a translator ) and Stage 3 - communication between the translator (S2) and the final addressee (target language receiver 2 or R2).

According to this scheme there are two interrelated communicative acts in the process of translation: communication between the initial sender of information and a translator and communication between a translator and the final addressee (receiver of information). In this process a translator is changing his (her) role all the time, acting as a receiver (at Stage 1) and as a sender (Stage 3) of the respective messages. Focusing upon the code shifting process, this scheme, however, does not consider social, cultural, political and other extralinguistic factors of communication.

A. Shveitser (1988: 51), following Nida and Taber (1969), suggests another scheme of translation which includes both linguistic and extralinguistic factors. This scheme seems to be much more comprehensive and will be used as the basic model in our approach to analysis of the process relevant for translation and interpretation:

TEXT 2

TEXT1

R3

S1

R2 S2

communicative

situation 1

communicative

situation 2

where:

S1 - sender 1 (source language speaker);

R1 - receiver 1 (source language addressee);

R2 - receiver 2 (translator/interpreter in the mode of receiving in-coming messages);

S2 - sender 2 (translator/interpreter in the mode of performing translation);

R3 - receiver 3 (target language addressee);

L1 - language 1(source language);

L2 - language 2 (target language);

C1 - culture 1 (source culture);

C2 - culture 2 (target culture).

According to this scheme translation may be defined as a two-stage process of inter-lingual and inter-cultural communication, during which a translator, on the basis of an analyzed and transformed text in L1, creates another text in L2 which substitutes the source text in the target language and culture. It should be also added to this definition that translation is a process aimed at rendering communicative effect of the source text modified by the difference between two languages, two cultures and two communicative situations.

So an act of translation appears to be an intercultural communicative event, so far as cultures include the corresponding languages, languages include texts and texts pertain to specific subject fields (предметні галузі): politics, economics, business, law, teaching, chemistry, mathematics, physics, agriculture, environmental protection, medicine, etc.