Translation competence and the aesthetic attitude

Abstract

Teachers whose aspiration is for their students to achieve Translation Competence need an understanding of its nature and of ways to help students attain it. The notion is related to that of Natural Translation, which proposes a series of developmental stages of the interpreting ability of a bilingual infant/child. The theory claims that links established between sets of items in a bilingual's languages as the languages are acquired are exploited during a pretranslation stage from which Natural Translation develops. This is not incompatible with recent understanding of the Universal Grammar hypothesis and recent findings in the neurolinguistics of bilingualism. However, the model cannot account for non-native bilinguals' abilities to translate, nor for translation abilities developed during formal instruction. These abilities might be based on innate Interlingual Proficiency and Transfer Proficiency Potentials. I list a number of ways in which Toury has agued that these potentials may be encouraged and add a suggestion or two of my own.

Linguistica Silesiana

“…In the work of Malmkjaer mentioned in the introduction to this article (Malmkjaer 2008a), the scholar proposes one more potential way out of the research impasse. In such a situation, Malmkjaer (2008a: 293) argues, it is advisable to dig deeper into the roots of the research area and to investigate whether this may turn up some forgotten or omitted thoughts that may be an invigorating impulse for new, both theoretical and empirical approaches.…”

Introduction: A Linguistic 'Re-Turn' in Translation Studies?

“…After all this moving and turning, it might seem as if Translation Studies is now in some way "re-turning" to linguistics, but the image is out of place since the linguistic approach has never been that far away from the evolution of TS, "simply because some level of linguistic analysis must, at the very least, form the starting point of any study of translation" (Baker 2004: 291) and because linguistics plays an important role in translation training, translation criticism and translating (Malmkjaer 2006). Moreover, the linguistic and the cultural approach are inseparable and mutually reinforcing, in much the same way as the translator"s competence is not "linguistic" or "cultural", but "linguacultural" (House 1997).…”