SIGHT TRANSLATION IN THE TRANSLATION TAXONOMY

Abstract

This research has a twofold objective: finding some evidence of specific translation competence skills in translation tasks and comparing these data in sight translation and written translation in order to prove the sight translation. Two main assumptions are put forward: (1) the Sight Translation (henceforth, ST) is a complex process representing a three-act operation: (1) perception of the written text; (2) transformation; (3) oral reproduction. Step (2) has a restriction “retaining the content”. (2) The translator’s activity reveals another function in the specific setting, that of a “mediator” between either two parties of experts, for instance, at the negotiation, or in the court room – amid the trial party and the defendant, or betwixt the doctor and the patient in the hospital, or the architect and the construction worker, the designer and the executor at the enterprise, etc. Accordingly, ST differs from interpreting (see Dragsted, 2007:251) (consecutive and simultenous (Ivanova, 2019:27; cf: Song, 2010:120) in Step (1). It differs from the consecutive interpreting in timing the reproduction – simultaneity : sequence (Step 3). It differs from the simultаnеous interpreting in its type of the target recipient (Step 3) – it needs specification: expert or layman. We shall start considering the ST definition with the background notion of translation proposed by Lawrence Venuti as “a process by which the chain of signifiers that constitutes the source-language text is replaced by a chain of signifiers in the target language (Venuti, 2004:15). The term ST can refer to different types of activity, depending on the conditions under which the ST is performed. Firstly, one may distinguish between ST with and without preparation of the text, called “unstressful ST” and “stressful ST”, respectively. Secondly, the literature on ST also distinguishes between ST and SI (sight interpreting) (Lambert, 2004:298). The overview of the ST research and a critical analysis of current publications are by no means exhaustive, but they reveal the major trends of the ST development.