Functional style of scientific and technical speech as an object of translation studies

Intensive international exchange of scientific and technical information has become, as is known, one of the necessary conditions for scientific and technological progress. The leading form of such an exchange is scientific and technical translation, which has taken an increasingly important place in the structure of social labor in recent decades. Such significant changes in the content and organization of translation in the field of scientific and information activities could not, of course, be reflected in the scientific study of the translation process itself. If in the 1930s and 1950s. Since the problems of literary translation have been intensively developed, over the past 20 years the focus has been shifted to the development of a general linguistic theory of translation, as well as to the substantiation of the theory of scientific and technical translation. At the same time, related areas of scientific knowledge were intensively developing, which have a strong influence on the linguistic theory of translation: system-structural analysis of language, linguistic semiotics, comparative stylistics, linguistic statistics, functional stylistics, research in the field of automatic text processing, primarily in the field of machine translating, general theory of speech activity, etc.

The following example shows how fast the pace of the mentioned changes in the structure of translation practice and in the theory of translation was. In a sense, there is a sharp difference between the Western and socialist countries: in the West, the training of interpreters and translators of scientific literature is well established, both have their own professional organizations, in which for the most part they cooperate with translators of fiction. In the socialist countries, on the contrary, organizations are very active translators of fiction within the framework of writers' unions, which organizationally affirms the writer's character of this work. In the West, the level of, first of all, the general linguistic theory of translation is high - in all systematic monographs on translation that have come out so far, all types of translation activities. In Eastern Europe, on the contrary, most theoretical works are focused on the study and criticism of literary translation". It is easy to see that now this characteristic has the value of only historical evidence.

The extensive development of new sections of the theory of translation, the expansion of translation problems, the diversity of initial assumptions and specific research tasks could not but give rise to significant theoretical diversity. While the development of translation practice itself urgently requires the creation of a unified general theory of translation, which has a fairly clear structure, an explicated substantiation of theoretical objects and their stratification, developed by the conceptual and terminological apparatus, in fact, one can see a lot of not always consistent, and often mutually exclusive approaches. The theory of scientific and technical translation has not received the required substantiation either, which, of course, also indicates that this type of activity has not been sufficiently studied. Meanwhile, the creation of a well-founded and developed theory of scientific and technical translation, which (along with other special theories) is a rationally isolated and structurally necessary part of general translation knowledge, is a prerequisite for improving the translation activity itself and increasing the efficiency of translation work.

The analysis of information and translation activity from the standpoint of the general theory of translation allows us to identify the main components that make up its structure, and information analysis allows us to reveal the content and clarify the functional relationships of these components. Such a two-dimensional approach to translation activity is necessary both for its rationalization and improvement, and for determining the most relevant directions for its further scientific study.

The 70s of the XX century turned out to be very fruitful for the development of linguistic translation research. More books on the linguistics of translation were published between 1970 and 1980 than in the previous twenty years. It was at this time that theoretical concepts were developed and brought together.

Usually, the description of translation facts is preceded by a presentation of linguistic concepts extended by the author to the field of translation. This provides consideration of translation issues by proper linguistic methods and makes the description of the translation process much more specific and conclusive.

It should also be noted that the study, as a rule, is conducted on a large material of actual translations. Comparison of such translations with their originals made it possible to identify special patterns in the functioning of language systems in the process of interlingua communication.

In early 1973, a book by V.N. Komisarov "A word about translation", the main provisions of which were further developed and clarified in the subsequent work of the same author “Linguistics of Translation”. In these works, an attempt is made to reduce the various aspects of the linguistic analysis of the translation of scientific and technical literature into a single theoretical concept, considering them as interrelated sections of the linguistics of translation. Particular attention is paid to the development of the principles of linguistic analysis of translation and the problem of translation equivalence. Along with consideration of various ways of describing the translation process and models of translation, the concepts of the pragmatic “super task” of translation and the norms of translation of scientific and technical literature are introduced and defined.

A large complex of linguistic problems is considered in the book by A.D. Schweitzer “Translation and Linguistics”, where the author of the book considers the possibility of using the methods of generative grammar and semantics, as well as component analysis, in the analysis of the translation process. Widely using the proposed V.G. Gak classification of models of language synthesis, A.D. Schweitzer proposes to distinguish between grammatical transformations, lexico-semantic paraphrasing and situational transformations in the process of translation. Of particular interest are the sections of books devoted to the stylistic problems of translation, which provide extensive material illustrating the features of the translation of scientific and technical, as well as newspaper and informational texts. The analysis of this material implements a number of principles for constructing special translation theories.

In 1974, a book by Y..I. Retzker “Theory of Translation and Translation Practice”, in which the author outlined in detail the foundations of the theory of regular correspondences, outlined by him back in 1950. The book clarifies the classification of correspondence types, describes various types of lexical and grammatical transformations in the translation of scientific and technical literature. The author pays special attention to the issues of phraseological units and the transfer of expressive and modal aspects of the content of the original in translation.

A serious contribution to the development of the linguistic theory of translation was the work of L.S. Barkhudarov. The paper clearly reveals the main problems that have arisen in the transfer of scientific and technical texts and articles in the translation of various types of meanings of language units: referential, pragmatic, intralinguistic and grammatical. Various types of translation transformations are described in particular detail. It should be noted a very successful selection of illustrative material, simply and convincingly revealing the stated provisions.

A significant contribution to the development of the principles for classifying various types of translation, including scientific and technical, and methods for evaluating translations, was made by the works of K. Rice, who divides translations depending on the nature of the original text into content-oriented, form-oriented and appeal-oriented (or call). The paper deals with the linguistic and pragmatic aspects of the text that should be reproduced in translation, as well as some types of adaptation of the source text in the translation process.

It should also be noted the work of the West German linguist W. Vilss, where a wide range of translation problems is considered. The book compares the points of view of Western translation theorists regarding the principles of developing the theory of translation, methods of studying the process of translation, the concept of translation equivalence, the relationship between translation theory and text linguistics.