The Language of Translation

(Analysis on Language-Discourse Relations and Translatorial Attitudes)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46991/TSTP/2022.2.2.016

Keywords:

language, discourse, prescriptivism, langue, translation approach, translatorial attitude.

Abstract

The paper discusses the translatorial attitudes to language applied by the translator during the process of translation. It views two types of 'language'- "language and its discourses" (language proper) and "discourses and its language" (langue), respectively ascribing them as prescriptivist and descriptivist approaches to interlingual transfer and argues that a solely prescriptivist approach to any text based on the linguistic material of the language without considering the larger discourse wherein the text is portrayed delimits or alters the original content and leads to aberrations from the source context and discourse. The paper posits that much higher levels of inter-lingual and inter-discursive equivalence can be accomplished by the translators when descriptivism and prescriptivism as translation approaches are applied in a combined (successive, and not amalgamated) form. The paper substantiates the complementarity of these two by using the indivisibility and unexclusiveness of the plains of content and expression further elaborated in the stranding of "language" and "discourse" as a single genetic ladder allowing endless transfer and interaction between the two. The paper then goes on to discuss the relationship between "language" and "language" (discourse) by offering a combined, complex approach to translation.

Author Biographies

Davit Sahakyan, Brusov State Unviersity

Independent researcher of General Semantics and Translation Graduate of Brusov State Unviersity, Armenia. Master of Linguistics. Translator, author, essayist.

Gurgen Karapetyan, Brusov State University

PhD in Philology, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Translation and Intercultural Communication at Brusov State University, Armenia. Translator and interpreter.

References

Berman, Antoine. L'épreuve de l'étranger: culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin, tr. M. Nichanian (2017)

Gödel, K. "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems, tr. B. Meltzer, with a comprehensive introduction by Richard Braithwaite." (1931).

Jakobson, Roman. "On linguistic aspects of translation." In On translation, pp. 232-239. Harvard University Press, 2013.

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics. Institute of GS, 1958.

Luther, M. "Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen. transl. Gary Mann revised by Michael D. Marlowe An open letter on translating." (2003).

Nida, Eugene Albert, and Charles Russell Taber. The theory and practice of [Biblical] translation. Brill, 1969.

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Published

2022-12-20

How to Cite

Sahakyan, D., & Karapetyan, G. (2022). The Language of Translation : (Analysis on Language-Discourse Relations and Translatorial Attitudes). Translation Studies: Theory and Practice, 2(2 (4), 17–26. https://doi.org/10.46991/TSTP/2022.2.2.016

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Section

Articles