Moluch conf phil 2015-03. indd

Sonne) in French masculine (le soleil). Thus, as translators, 
people cannot take anything for granted. A person must be 
involved in a constant process of unlearning, because the re-
alities and expectations of his culture are not necessarily the 
same in the other culture. Not only that, a person doesn’t 
even know whether his cultural and social situation wants to 
open itself up to an influx of ideas and perspectives that are 
prominent in another culture [2].
As translators, carry across language borders is always 
packaged in words: pronouns, verbs, nouns etc. However, 
the problem with words is their imprecision hardly any word 
can be forced into clearly defined conceptual contours that 
would suggest the exact same thing to every person who 
comes in contact with the word.
In order to reconstruct that which is or might be behind 
the words, it is important that the translator becomes familiar 
with the nature of words. A pianist will listen over and over 
again to the intrinsic quality of a note or a composition of 
a chord. With respect to the word, a person defines its se-
mantic parameters, listen to its sound and rhythm, and ex-
plore its existence within its immediate and larger context. 
The specific placement of a word within a sentence or a page, 
even in terms of its graphic design (point side, bold, italics 
etc.) continuously changes the energy and the possible as-
sociations that the word might be establishing with another 
word. This is particularly true in the realm of literary works, 
and most conspicuously present in poetic works. The only 
way that a translator can get close to the specific associa-
tion that a poet attributes to a word is through a contextual 
analysis. If indeed the poet has created a new perspective of 
seeing or interpreting the world, or a moment in that world, 
then the established meanings of a word are in a process of 
being changed or modified by cultural or social changes. Cre-
ation in whatever form presupposes some kind of disconti-
nuity, a degree of disruption. Whatever the new creation 
might be, it constitutes a difference to what there was before. 
In a sense, that is both the attraction we find in creativity and 
at the same time the fear we have in the presence of creativity. 
Some of the established ways of thinking or interpreting are 
being challenged [3].
People know that translation is not the translation of 
words, even though the final product of translations appears 
in the form of words and sentences. Words in themselves 
are very fragile entities. Each one of people develops dif-
ferent connotations in their encounter with every word. Thus, 
people have to acquire a sense for the magnetic field of words, 
their semantic fields both in the present as well as in the past. 
Translators often need to go back to the origin of a word, the 
moment that a word entered the world because at that time 
words were still very closely related to the visual image they 
project. Some of the visual energy inherent in words gets lost 
over a longer period of time. Translators fail to experience the 
original power and intention of a word.
Each translator should receive a thorough training in the 
etymological and philological development of words. Every 
word that translators use today has its roots somewhere in 
the past and as people know new words are being created 
every day which means that they will better understand and 
experience a word, if they become familiar with the original 
moment of the word’s coming into life: in other words, its ety-
mological origin. However, words never stay the same; there-
fore, translator should follow the transformation of mean-
ings that accompany a word through a longer period of time, 
whether it will be just a few decades or a few centuries: the 

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7. Вопросы переводоведения
word’s philological history. Each historical period as well as 
each human being impresses its own refined connotations on 
a word. The philological study allows people to get a feeling 
for the semantic changes that words have undergone from 
one generation to the next. When XVIth century person talks 
about “art”, then the connotations and implications of the 
word “art” indicate different directions of thinking from our 
contemporary concept of art. Etymological and philological 
probing into the realities of words in their cultural and histor-
ical context enriches the experience of the usage of words in 
the present and brings those words to life for people [3].
For a text to be transported from a foreign language into 
English or vice versa, an interpretation and an understanding 
of the text under consideration must be initiated first. A great 
number of mistakes in translation occur because translators 
do not fully understand the text that they are supposed to 
transplant. Naturally, the misunderstanding or misinterpre-
tation of the text has very little to do with the fact that the 
translator might not know a word, on the contrary, the words 
are known as words but they are not known as constructing 
elements of a particular situational context. Differently said, 
the words have a clearly defined boundary of meaning.
A short factual insert might be called for in this context. 
The English language has about four hundred and fifty thou-
sand words, the German and French languages hover be-
tween two hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand 
words. This fact immediately throws a different light on the 
usage and practice of the respective languages. It so happens 
that words in the French language are much more clearly de-
fined in terms of the conceptual boundaries attributed to each 
word in comparison to the English language. In the English 
language we might have eight or ten different adjectives to 
say the same thing, each adjective expressing a slight nu-
ance of meaning [4].
The notion of cultural incompatibility can be thought out 
in greater length. The exact transferal of the nuances under-
lying cultural traditions seems questionable, if not impos-
sible. However, the translators, because of their living in-
tensely in two different languages and cultures, develop an 
insight into the refinements of the other culture and there-
fore keenly perceive the differences that separate nations. In 
a sense, these translators hold the keys to certain secrets in 
the other culture that they know cannot be adequately trans-
planted into the receptor language. As translators, deeply 
rooted in the language from which they translate, they rec-
ognize the refined differences of seeing the world in the other 
language, and they are clearly aware of what cannot be car-
ried into the new language. It is also a recognition that causes 
us, the translators, and many moments of keen frustration. 
Yet, because the translators are tuned in to these differences, 
they can often illuminate, through the possibilities of critical 
language, the foreignness of the other language. One might 
even say that translators hold certain secrets that they discov-
ered in the source — language environment, and that they 
alone and not the critic or the scholar can provide entrances 
into these secrets for people who were not brought up in that 
language. In our multicultural context, the translator there-
fore must become the most indispensable mediator, if indeed 
true communication between people of different languages 
were to happen. Translation fosters the understanding of a 
foreign culture, and through the juxtaposition of our cultural 
habits with those of the other culture, we begin to clarify how 
we think and feel, how we interpret the world often in entirely 
different ways from the people in other cultures.
By its very nature, translators are always in between two 
places: the reality of the source — language and the possi-
bilities of the receptor language. Through the act of transla-
tion the translator opens the door for “dialogue”. That must 
be the translator’s greatest mission in today’s world in which 
nations and countries fall back into building walls among 
themselves rather than opening themselves to the foreign-
ness of other cultures. [5].
The parameters of concept considered by us “translation” 
concerned mainly its descriptions as process, but during its 
studying as process became obvious that the same term we 
designate also result of this process. Thus, as working con-
cept definition of “translation” we can accept the following:
“Translation is an activity which consists in variative ex-
pression, code conversion of the text generated in one lan-
guage, in the text in other language, carried out by the trans-
lator who creatively chooses a variant depending on language 
variative resources, a kind of translation, translation prob-
lems, a text type and under the influence of own individu-
ality; translation is as well result described above activity” [5].
Hence, to translators, as well as writers, the multilat-
eral life experience, indefatigably filled up impressions stock 
which studying of culture, history, country study and so on 
consists in constant studying not only language features of 
other language [5].
Language of the writer-translator, as well as language of 
the writer original, develops of supervision over language of 
the native people and from supervision over a native literary 
language in its historical development. Only those transla-
tors can count on success that starts to work with conscious-
ness that language will win any difficulties that barriers to it 
aren’t present.
National color is reached by exact rewriting on of its por-
trait painting, all set of household features, way of life, in-
ternal furniture, labor conditions, customs, a reconstruction 
of a landscape of the given country or edge in all its distinct-
ness, revival of national popular beliefs and ceremonies.
At any writer, if only it the original artist, the vision of the 
world is own, and, hence, and the means of the image too. 
Individuality of the translator is shown and what authors and 
what writings for a reconstruction in a native language he 
chooses. After all very often happens that while translating 
this or that work of art the translator doesn’t arise deeply per-
ceptions of the given writing, in such cases original transla-
tion turns out “dry” and, We will not be afraid of this word, 
“soulless”.
For the translator the ideal is, some kind of, merge to the 
author, uniform thinking and understanding of that they want 

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Современная филология
to transfer to the reader. But merge demands searches, an 
invention, resource, infusion, empathy, visual acuities. Con-
stant necessity is to open creative individuality but so that it 
doesn’t cover an originality of the author. Nothing personal, 
only ability to think as the author feels and speaks as the au-
thor.