Spaces of Meanings and Translators’ Identities

Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk

doi:10.17951/lsmll.2020.44.1.11-26

Abstract

<p>The focus of the paper is the analysis of translators’ identities as expressed in Polish-to-English and English-to-Polish translations understood in terms of informed choices from spaces of meanings. The first part of the paper deals with the relation of approximate correspondences between thought and reality on the one hand, and between thought, image, linguistic system and cultural emotional type on the other. The concept of semantic approximation in communication, introduced in Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (2010, 2012) is shown to be conditioned by cognitive categorization problems of the language user, as well as a conscious choice of the syntactic structure and meanings in discourse. The conscious choices from meaning spaces are motivated by the translator’s subjective intentions, as well as constraints imposed by the Target Language systems (displaced equivalence patterns), limitation on the translator’s linguistic repertory and by Source Culture and Target Culture models and conventions. In the second part the study an interpretation is proposed of semantic and cultural SL and TL similarities, meaning displacement and reconceptualization in monolingual and intercultural communication and translation to account for the translator’s linguistic and cultural identity dynamics, with a varying emotional message. It is illustrated by examples of Polish-to-English and English-to-Polish translations.</p>

Highlights

In order to analyse translators’ contributions to language and culture and identify properties which define translation as informed choices from spaces of meanings one needs to examine primarily a relation between the surrounding world, human approximate perception and thoughts about external and self-reflected phenomena as well as the position and function of language understood in terms of its meanings and structures
Przyjaźni 1, 62-510 Konin, barbara.lewandowska-tomaszczyk@konin. edu.pl, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6836-3321. This wTohrkis iwsolrickeisnlsiceednsuendduenrdCerCCBCYBY4.40.0 This journal is financed by the Polish Ministerial Programme „Support for Scientific Journals”
In the language of literature on the other hand, a fuller portrayal of the translator’s personality, sensitivity and preferences can be demonstrated, and the section of the present paper focuses on a few of such selected choices

Summary

Introduction

In order to analyse translators’ contributions to language and culture and identify properties which define translation as informed choices from spaces of meanings one needs to examine primarily a relation between the surrounding world, human approximate perception and thoughts about external and self-reflected phenomena as well as the position and function of language understood in terms of its meanings and structures. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk predominantly by their neurophysiology, while language portrays the outside world in terms of this partial perception and meaning approximation (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 2017a). This perceptual and – as a consequence – conceptual approximation – is rooted in ontological and epistemological vagueness, either underdetermined by their very character, for which no exact definition exists (Sossinsky, 1986) or else such meanings are either inaccessible, for various reasons, or volitionally disregarded. The translated text is a blended outcome of the original SL forms and meanings and fully native TL forms and their semantics

Comparing emotions

Translators’ choices

Conclusion