The Level Of Equivalence In Translation Works
Translation is the process that renders skills, 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 borders of its original setting. Discussions related to the theory, practice, and history of translation have tended 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 sensitive part in its intellectual history, and continues to be so these days.
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 writer, doubly applies to the scientific translator, who has been neglected even by the field of language 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 traditional contexts. Just as the world has benefited greatly from the translation of scientific and medical techniques into lots of lingvas, so has this knowledge been advanced 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 advent of the functionalist vision in translation theory, the function or purpose of translated texts as communicative tools moved into the center of attention, where it remains at present.
Although this opinion lacks space to even outline the impressive number of factors that have been checked up to date, it is fair to say that translation studies as a field has moved radically in the direction of embracing an integrative approach to translation that sees itself as a cross-subject with virtually no aspect of the communicative process being outside its scope of reference. Maybe one of the most overriding changes 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, focusing first 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.
Such research may well make valuable commitment to translation pedagogy in the future, for example in specifying a plan for strategy and creativity exercises.
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 development of personally adapted skills for dealing with the thousands unforeseeable combinations of factors that they will definitely pass in their professional work. Language like a see cannot be ever measured!