Mishkurov Edward N.

In the second part of the complex study of the four-stage hermeneutic-translation methodological standard, which includes pre-understanding, understanding, interpretation, and translation solution, the first two stages of the translator’s work are considered, ensuring a harmonious transdisciplinary cooperation of various social and human sciences with the theory and practice of interlingual mediation. The construction of a modern hermeneutic paradigm of translation as a system-forming synergetic construct of the theory and practice of inter-linguistic mediation allows us to find the optimal approach to the productive synthesis of numerous concepts, models and methodological projects accumulated by modern translatology both in Russia and abroad. The “hermeneutical turn” in philosophy and in all current successfully developing social and humanitarian sciences clearly testifies in favor of the development of translation studies and their modern practical applications in the “hermeneutic channel” of scientific and methodological thought.

In this article, the hermeneutic-phenomenological aspects of translatological interpretation are examined in the light of the transdisciplinary approach within the framework of the four-step Hermeneutic-translation methodological standard that includes the stages of pre-understanding, understanding, interpretation and translation decision in contrast to the philosophico-hermeneutical practice of interpreting monolingual texts in mutually intersecting and interchangeable types of reflection, namely, understanding and interpretation. It is postulated that a translator is always an interpreter, but interpretation is not yet translation. It is verified as the penultimate stage of the translator’s overcoming of the original cognitive-cultural, ethnopsycholinguistic and system-structural originality of the text and the choice of the strategy of forenization/domestication of the re-expression of the author’s text, search of variants of functionally relevant translation correspondences and ways of overcoming untranslatability. Attention is focused on the postulate of mandatory boundaries and the limits of translation interpretation and the translator’s careful attitude to the source. A translator is not a co-author, but only an interpreter of the author’s work.

This article completes the thematic cycle “On the ‘hermeneutic turn’ in the modern theory and methodology of translation” and “Hermeneutic-translational methodological standard in the mirror of transdisciplinarity,” performed within the framework of the new research field at the Higher School of Translation aimed at theoretical understanding and practical introduction of hermeneutic strategies and tactics in the modern translation process. It was found that translational reflection reduces the assimilation of a translate to the original by successively explicit or implicit implementation of four basic cognitive constants: pre-understanding, understanding, interpretation and translation decision. The last one is the essence of the conceptually optimal variant of the method and form of a discursively equivalent / adequate assimilation of the translate to the original, rationally acceptable for a given text type and its functional and stylistic genre. The plurality of translation decisions concerning the same source text objectively depends on the given interlingual situation of goal-setting and the way the translation text is linked to a certain category of recipients or the translator’s subjective intentions.

The paper deals with the study of the military-political discourse (MPD) as a state-institutional, hybrid-multivector communicative phenomenon of a functionally multi-purpose mission — military doctrinal, political-diplomatic, military-journalistic (informational and propaganda), military-commercial, military-educational, etc. It states an unprecedented use on the international arena by representatives of power structures of a number of NATO member countries in the media and oral rhetoric of discursive games of a substandard style with the goal of insulting, humiliating and ridiculing an opponent-recipient at the level of a deviant-profane usus using an invective, obscene vocabulary, offensive paralinguistic means, etc. The author analyzes the professional activities of the translator in the field of military-political communication as a civil servant in the Armed Forces sector on the scale of the pan-European standard for working languages with the index C₁ / C₂ using the example of inter-lingual mediation in the field of military journalism.

In the paper a new syncretic polyvector construct is introduced into scientific circulation — the discursive-game paradigm of translation, which is an organic combination and complementarity of the translation classical methodology of regular language correspondences and both free and quasi-translation methods and techniques of rendering into the target language of the untranslatable, as well as an adapted socially ordered translated context, meaningless speech acts, etc. The paradigm is built on the concept of complementarity (functional complementarity) and has an open character, which allows to adequately build up the explanatory and resolving power of its theoretical and methodological base.

The paper deals with the study of the problems of Russian translation studies formation as an academic science in its theoretical and applied forms. The formation and development history of the famous linguistic translation theory (LTT), which up to the present day has been an officially recognized institutional discipline for scientific and educational activities in the Russian Federation, is traced. In today’s Russian scientific community, along with LTT, new transdisciplinary scientific, theoretical and methodological types of research in the field of translation theory and practice are actively developing. At the current historical stage of development, translation studies is interpreted as a social and humanitarian transdisciplinary science at the intersection of linguistics, cultural studies, communication theory, comparative literature, semiotics, sociology, history, as well as philosophy, hermeneutics, ethnopsycholinguistics and cognitive science, information theory and other related academic sciences and phenomena like “localization” within the framework of algo-cognitive culture. Three groups of paradigms operating in modern Russian translation theory and methodology have been identified: (a) linguistic profile, (b) cognitive profile, (c) discursive profile. Groups “b” and “c” can form the basis for the academic translation paradigm. Th ree types of discourses are introduced into scientific circulation. 1. Translation studies discourse, associated with academic discourse in its theoretical and didactic varieties. 2. Translation discourse which is theoretically and practically based on the first one and serves the translator as their theoretical and practical basis for generating the third type, viz. translated discourse. The last one is a resultant product addressed to the recipients’ reflection sphere. As a result, the author’s “discursive-game cognitive-hermeneutic paradigm” has been proposed as a preliminary model of the desired “academic type translation studies paradigm”.

The paper deals with the informative and descriptive overview of the relationship between contemporary American and Western European philosophy, linguistics and translation theory and methodology from a synchronic-diachronic perspective. Numerous works in foreign philosophy have been devoted to this topic, but nowadays they have not provided a foundational basis for a monographic understanding of the relationship between philosophical methodology and linguistic and translation studies issues. This paper analyses the intersection of contemporary philosophical thought with the controversial issues of “pure language” and “pure meaning” and the aporia of “translatability/ untranslatability.” It is established that Benjamin’s concept of the connection between translation and the parent language “has no practical application in translation practice” (P. Ricoeur), but enjoys widespread popularity among philosophical theorists and some specialists in the sphere of artificial intelligence. A significant range of conflicting opinions regarding the significance of the category of “untranslatability” within logical-philosophical concepts is noted — from a complete denial of its relevance to the recognition of its existential ethical-translation value (L. Foran). The author’s research has shown that while the linguistic factor in translation has found its embodiment in scientific, theoretical and practical terms, philosophical thought has not fully mastered the creative space of linguistic-translation yet.