Aspekt kognitywny w przekładzie specjalistycznym, czyli co wspólnego ma tłumaczenie specjalistyczne z literackim?

Abstract

The necessity of finding or producing a precise counterpart or equivalent in a target language has often been considered the main, if not the most difficult problem of technical translation. The aim of this article is to show, on the basis of an example – a short description of the pollutant cadmium – that technical translation (e.g. the translation of owners’ manuals, user guides or texts that contain a high degree of technical or specialized terminology) requires, in addition to correct wording, a sound understanding of the meaning of the source text; cognitive complements play an equally as important role in technical translation as in other types of translation. It is not only the transfer of meaning from one language to another, but also the rendering of the complexity of an author’s language that determine the difficulty of a literary translation (e.g. the translation of novels, short stories, plays, poems, etc.). An Italian translation of a short poem, On Passing the New Menin Gate by Siegfried Sassoon, originally written in English, shows the extent to which cognitive complements help to solve language problems in literary translation. In both technical and literary translation, sense clearly shapes the expressiveness of the target language.