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“Unique items” in learners’ translations 199
on translation processes, this phenomenon has been described in several ways,
depending on the perspective (and experimental conditions, subject population
and the data), e.g. “form-oriented learner translation” vs. “sense-oriented
professional translation” (Lörscher 1987), “shallow processing” as a feature of
non-professional and unsuccesful behaviour and semi-professional translators’
growing awareness of potential translation problems (Jääskeläinen 1999:202;
Tirkkonen-Condit 1987) or “unmonitored equivalence generation” manifested
in novices’ performance (Tirkkonen-Condit 2002:12). The basic observation,
however, remains the same: the idea or ideal of establishing translation relationships
on higher levels than that of one single word or compound has not
been adopted by (most of the) volunteers of this experiment, yet. 4
Such task performance may have to do with a number of so called
implied rules of translation in novice translators’ thinking. As Hönig (1988:158,
1995:25) has shown, these include rules such as “translate word-for-word
whenever possible and as freely as necessary”, “translate as exactly as possible”,
so that “the correctness of the translation” can be checked with bilingual
dictionaries. According to these rules translation is inevitably poorer than the
source text and usually sounds odd or in any case not like a non-translated
target language original. This is, as the train of argument goes, inevitable and
therefore quite normal (ibid.). The repertoire of such and other encultured
rules not only defines the way the discourse on translating, translations and –
consequently – on the status and role of translators is manifested in our
contemporary society, be it by users of translators’ services, in reviews of
translated novels, in foreign language exercises in schools and universities, in
layman discussions on the correctness of subtitles etc., but also constitutes
the basis of students’ “translatorische Inkompetenz” (Hönig 1988: 156) at the
beginning of their studies. Moreover, it will continue to mark their translation
performance, if our teaching is unable to challenge this disposition. After all,
in an endeavour to construct a more realistic view of translation processes
and translations as products, of features of expertise and/or professionality
etc., scientific knowledge provides an evident tool kit. This is why “theories”,
“models”, “concepts” and experimentation with them should have an essential
role in the pedagogics of translation, not only in research seminars but also
and above all in the translation class: they open a way to novices’ better
understanding of their future status as experts of human translation.