constructing pathways to translation - Higher Education Commission

Braugrande and Dressler (1981), proposes that Text, itself, should be viewed as a system,
being a set of elements functioning together. Whereas language is a virtual system of
available options, the text is an actual system in which options have been taken away
from their repertoires and utilized in a particular structure via procedure of actualization.
In actual practice, the actualization is carried out in ways which are not applicable to
virtual systems, there seems to be heavy interdependency of decisions and selections
within one level and among different levels, which exerts powerful control on possible
variations in utilizing a single text.
Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) concludes that a text constitutes a CYBERNATIC
system which continuously regulates the function of its constituted occurrences and can
be well presented in the figure: 2( Appendix A).
It thus becomes clear that Text Processing is an instance of procedural knowledge and
factual knowledge: skills in applying that knowledge; communicative competence.
Procedural knowledge is the linguistic knowledge which underlies the user’s ability to
process text, and it can be divided into syntactic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge, all
of which constitute the production and comprehension of texts.
It is difficult to keep knowledge and the use of knowledge separate. Text processing
operates in both directions – reception and production: listening and speaking – and
processes involved are essentially a mirror image of each other. There is far more
involved than a simple ballistic model of the type.
Figure 2.2 Text Processing
Text is a macro-speech act with its own propositional content and illocutionary force.
Retrieving the illocutionary force of the entire text, as well as the forces of the elements
making up the text, is the one basic principle in explicating texture–negotiating structure
and ultimately reconstructing context, and this ability is a required for efficient
translation. The interconnection between production and reception is clear from the
following figure:
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