Psychological and linguistic aspects of translation theory

Contents

Introduction 3
Psychological and linguistic aspects of translation theory 4
Conclusion 8
References 9

Therefore translation cannot be simply (and superficially) approached neither as a “skill” nor as an “art”. It is both, and it is also something else. It is in itself a form of meta-communication, based on a deep understanding of the source culture and context (and then of the source text).
Therefore, before beginning a translation it is necessary and useful to scan into the context of enunciation (life of the writer, historical period) in order to be introduced to the actual source text.
In this respect, translation may be seen as a “global process”. But also it can be seen as an inner process which takes place in the mind of translator, and psychological specifics of the translator can influence a lot on the result of the translation. From the other hand there are problems that do not connected to the psychological sphere. Among them, for example, there is the question of the translational equivalence. We can refer them to the linguistic aspects of the translation.
The subject of our paper is “Psychological and linguistic aspects of translation theory”. This subject presupposes the solving of the following problems:
to analise the psychological aspects of the translation;
to analise the linguistic aspects of the translation;
to sum up the interaction between this two aspects.
According to that the object of our paper is the translation itself taken in two aspects of this process. To solve the problems of the paper we use such method as description.

According to the problems listed in the introduction we come to the following conclusions.
First, the question of the psychological aspects of the translation is explored less thorough than the linguistic aspects, but nowadays it takes an important place in the translational theory.
The fundamental conclusion, which must be extracted from comparison between human and machine translation, consists in the following statement: Man translates, applying his understanding of the input and the output text; i.e., by correlating the given text and the formed one with his past and present conscious and subconscious perception of reality. So the psychology of a person is very important in the process.
In the famous essay, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”, Roman Jakobson disproves Bertrand Russell’s argument that one must know a word’s reference in order to know its meaning. We, as people, have the ability to know and understand words without having to first see their reference. Jakobson believes in the translation of a lingual sign into another alternative sign. And this is the connection between the linguistic and psychological aspects of the translaton.
Jacobson also notes that perfect synonymy is very rare both in one language and between several languages. The same concept applies to translation as well; take for instance words made up of different semantic denotations and connotations in different languages, making the translation process rather difficult, albeit not impossible. Hence, translation can never be absolute. And this is the most interesting linguistic aspect of the translation. Translator is always in search of better equivalent, but the ultimate equivalent is unreachable. And in depends on the psychological structure of the translator how their can solve this problem.