2 Translation, Translator, Process of translation

2.1 Translation, Translator, Process of translation

Understanding and interpretation of the term translation singles out among number of theoretical and practical issues in the study of translation. More definition of the term translation is brought by the process of scientific research. Vilikovský´s definition of the translation runs in a spirit of communication model: “It is the reproduction of invariant contextual – germane information with preservation of functional equivalency between original and result text.”
According to Newmark, “it is, often, though not by any means always, rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text.”

Miko understands text as a complex of values of the meaningly stigmal character. According to it, he determines the value of expressional dimensions of the text in order to systematize them later to the model of meaning system, which helped to enforce communication conception on the level of text by means of a real communication between author and translator with a reader of the original and translated text.
Popovič defines translation as a “decoding of linguistics and stylistics form set” , while he emphasizes partial approach to the interpretation of the term translation. He uses philological definition, which comes out of opposition so-called adherence and latitude of linguistic translation. To him, a linguistic approach which defines translation as exclusively linguistic operation, a semantic conception, which comes out of linguistic-meaning opposition invariant-variant. Also as a semiotic, like semiotic stylistics-communicative approach that is based on semiotic and information theory, which brings term translation from the level of linguistic to the level of confrontation of the two literary and cultural systems. Popovič understands translation as a communication act.

Attempts to define translation meet in the process of translation, mainly at issue of equivalency, which is regarded as its principal conception. An equivalency represents heterogeniety of the elements of the language of the origin and the language of translation. According to linguistic level followed during translating, we distinguish these kinds of equivalency:

1 Linguistic equivalency – equivalency on the level of phoneme and grapheme, morpheme, word, syntagma and sentence.
2 Text or systematic equivalency – based on possibility of choice of the expressional means from expressional system and their arrangment in the text.
3 Stylistic equivalency – elements of the origin is substituted in translation the way that their meanings will lead to the invariant concord.
4 Pragmatical equivalency – equivalency of the elements on the level of style, it is related to the system of elements of expression.

The process of translation is understood mainly as a fact of linguistic communication, which deals with the action of reception of information encoded by transmitter (author) to the text and decoded by recipient, receiver of the text. In the process of translating it goes about transformation of the text of the reference language (original) to the text of the target language (translation) by processes, which run in our mind, in memory – from analysis of the original to universal semantic image to the form of translation.

Newmark`s description of translating process is operational. It begins with choosing a method of approach. There are two main approaches to translating:

1 Translator starts translating sentence by sentence, for the first paragraph or chapter, to get the feel and the feeling tone of the text, and then deliberately sits back, review the position, and read the rest of the SL (Start Language) text.
2 Translator reads the whole text two or three times and finds the intention, register, tone, marks the difficult words and passages and starts translating only when he has taken his bearings.

Then there is four levels translator uses more or less consciously in his mind:

1 The SL Text Level, the level of language where he begins and which he continually goes back to.
2 The Referential Level, the level of objects and events, real or imaginary, which he progressively has to visualise and build up, and which is an essential part, first of the comprehension, then of the reproduction process.
3 The Cohesive Level, which is more general and grammatical,which traces the train of though, the feeling tone and the various presuppositions of the SL text. This level encompasses both comprehension and reproduction: it presents an overall picture, to which he may has to adjust the language level.
4 The Level of Naturalness, of common language appropriate to the writer or the speaker in a certain situation. This level is concerned only with reproduction.