TRANSLATION AND MEANING: A CULTURAL- COGNITIVE ...

Procedural concepts
A part of our knowledge about translation methods and strategies
has been systematized by the psychologically - oriented translation studies
(Hönig, Kussmaul, 1987; Lörscher, 1991; Kussmaul, 1995). Another part
comes from work on communication and second language acquisition
strategies (Chesterman 1998). The term of translation technique has been
widely used in the linguistic approach and in translation pedagogy, but often
interchangeably with the term procedure. We shall use the term procedure as
a superordinate word to refer to all the methodological devices.
Let us now see what defining criteria they share and which
distinguish them from the others. We have adopted some of the defining
criteria from the literature on communication, language learning and
translation strategies (Kintsch, van Dijk, 1983; Færch, Kasper, 1983;
Lörscher, 1991), but we have also formulated some new ones.
A strategy is
• goal – oriented,
• problem – oriented,
• used potentially consciously, i.e. consciously or
unconsciously,
• represents an individual option from an array of
available cognitive operations,
• operates on a large or small scale,
• requires general and specific subject matter
knowledge,
• leads to an optimal achievement of the goal.
A method is
• goal – oriented,
• used consciously (may be supported by unconscious
mental operations),
• represents an individual option from a definite
number of supraindividual text-processing
procedures,
• operates on a large scale and achieves superordinate
goals,
• requires specific subject knowledge,
• leads to a probable achievement of the goal.
A technique is
• goal – oriented,
• used potentially consciously,