Distributional approach

Communicational approach. The notion of thesaurus.

The communicational theory of translation was suggested by O. Kade and is based on the notions of communication and thesaurus /q I ¢s:r s/.

Communication may be defined as an act of sending and receiving some information, which is called a message. In order to formulate a message, we use our system of interrelated data, which is called a thesaurus.

We distinguish between two kinds of thesauruses in verbal communication: language thesaurus and subject thesaurus. Language thesaurus is a system of our knowledge about the language which we use to formulate a message, whereas subject thesaurus is a system of our knowledge about the content of the message. Thus, in order to communicate, the message sender formulates the mental content of his or her message using subject thesaurus, encodes it using the verbal forms of language thesaurus and conveys it to the message recipient, who decodes the message also using language thesaurus and interprets the message using subject thesaurus as well. This is a simple description of monolingual communication. Thesaurus of message sender and recipient may be different to a great or lesser degree, and that is why we sometimes do not understand each other. In monolingual communication there are two actors: sender and recipient, and each of them uses two thesauruses. In bilingual communication we have three actors: sender, recipient, and intermediary (translator). The translator has two language thesauruses (source and target one) and performs two functions: decodes the source message and encodes the target one to be received by the recipient (end user of the translator).

Thus, generally speaking, O. Kade’s communicational theory of translation describes the process of translation as an act of special bilingual communication in which the translator acts as a special communication intermediary, making it possible to understand a message sent in a different language.

Thus, the communicational approach to translation, though saying little about translation as such, highlights a very important aspect of translation: translation is a message sent by a translator to a particular user and the adequacy of translation depends on similarity of their background information rather than only on linguistic correctness.

The distributional model of translation was developed by G. Miram for machine translation since it rests on such an objective modeling basis as distribution. (Мирам Г. Э. Машинная интерпретация текста. - НТИ, 2.6, 1988.).

- Linguistic distribution is an ability of language units (parts of words, words and word combination) to occur in the text together.

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- Distribution pattern reflects meaning and combinatorial potential of lexical units.

- Distribution of lexical units in the text reflects the fragmentation of the real world in human mind.

According to the distributional approach translation is a process of matching the distributional patterns of the source and target language units.

In the distributional approach to translation one should distinguish between regular and occasional distribution pattern.

Regular pattern is characteristic of linguistic units which occur together on regular basis, as members of common distribution paradigms[¢pær daim], the formation of which is determined by grammar rules and the lexico-semantic structure of a language.

The occasional distribution pattern is characteristic of linguistic units which occur together occasionally being members of different paradigms, determined by grammar rules and the lexico-semantic structure of a language.

Distributional approach to translation is the first of the translation treatment discussed that divides the process of translation into different categories (ranks).

It should be born in mind, however, that in any case, observables which one deals with in the process of translation are forms of the two languages as well as the mental content assigned to those forms by the speakers of the language, and that in any translation we observe a combination of different methods.

(See, e. g. -Бархударов Л. С. Язык и перевод - М., 1975;

- Латышев Л. К. Курс перевода. - М., 1981;

- Латышев Л. К. Текст и перевод. - М., 1989;

- Рецкер Я. И. Теория перевода и переводческая практика. - М., 1974;

- Ширяев А. Ф. Синхронный перевод. - М., 1979;

- Марчук Ю. Н. Методы моделирования перевода. - М., 1985.)

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