The Level Of Similarity In Language Works
Translation is the act 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 original setting. Discussions related to the theory, practice, and history of translation have preferred to focus on literary and holy texts. Yet translation services have been a central determinant in the history of scientific knowledge as well, therefore ultimate part in its intellectual history, and continues to be so at present.
Despite such importance, science and general translation has been a topic 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 important exclusions. These exceptions for example, concerning the transmission of ancient Greek and medieval Islamic knowledge 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 in to many lingvas, so has this knowledge been improved by translation in turn.
As translation theory developed, however, the consensus view expanded to include cultural, interpretive, interpersonal, cognitive, and even general factors 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 center of attention, where it remains presently.
Although this piece of text lacks space to even outline the great variety of factors that have been checked to date, it is fair to underline 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 translation 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 primarily 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.
This study may seriously make valuable 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 ever-increasing awareness that translation experts must be actively engaged in the development of individually found skills for dealing with the thousands unforeseeable sets of factors that they will definitely meet in their professional work. Language like a see cannot be ever measured!