Translation strategy: misperceptions and reality

Abstract

Thought the notion of “translation strategy” is widely used in research, Translation Studies lack the commonly accepted definition of the notion. The wide range of views concerning the content of the notion is partly due to the use of different approaches to the research of the translation activity. The so called text-based approach designed to investigate purely linguistic factors which determine the translation process and its outcomes resulted in the notion that translation is a set of operations aimed to transform a source text in accordance with predetermined rules based on the analysis of discrepancies between the languages colliding in the translation process. Consequently, translation strategy is often viewed as a set of operations, or methods, used in translation. This misperception of translation strategy contradicts the general definition of strategy according to which a strategy is a plan of performing an activity aimed to achieve a certain goal. Moreover, if a translation strategy is just a set of operations, it can hardly serve as a basis for performing translation/interpreting. It means that such perception of translation strategy does not conform to the reality. Another approach to translation termed as the communicative-functional approach implies that a translation event is viewed within a certain communicative situation, and both linguistic and extralingual factors are taken into account. Analysis of peculiarities of a real communicative situation in which translation is performed and determining the translation purpose allow to choose an appropriate translation strategy. Thus, translation strategy is defined as a general program (plan) of performing translation activity in a particular communicative situation whih is aimed to achieve the goal of translation and to produce a text that satisfies the needs of both translation users and the translation commissioner in the process of their substantive activity.