A Translator and a Recepient as Discourse Agents: The Axiological Aspect

The article focuses on the discourse analysis of translation activity as an integral component of modern speech studies, the foundations of which were laid by M. N. Kozhina. As a general linguistic discipline, speech studies determine the development of related fields, including translation studies, where the translator and the foreign-language recipient are regarded as critical communication factors. The research is based on the concept of the epistemic situation, developed by M. P. Kotyurova and E. A. Bazhenova, which encompasses the ontological, methodological, and axiological aspects of scientific communication taken in their unity. The author of the article emphasizes the axiological component of the translation process, proposing that translation quality should be assessed from both the translator’s and the recipient’s perspectives. The article shows that differentiation of the translation quality assessment is possible on the condition of the integration of Russian and Chinese concepts within modern eco-translation studies, including Hu Gengshen’s eco-translatology and the author’s synergetic model of translation space. The axiological category proposed by the translation space concept is harmony, i.e. the proportionality of meanings of the source and target texts, while eco-translatology introduces the category of ecological compatibility, defined as the comprehensibility of the translation to foreign-language recipients belonging to a different culture. It is concluded that, from the translator’s perspective, the proportionality of eco-concepts is revealed, which is reflected in the cultural, natural, and anthropological conformity of the eco-concepts of the source and target texts, while, from the recipient’s perspective, ecological compatibility is revealed, which corresponds to the comprehensibility of the text and its natural integration into the target linguocultural environment.