Translator’s Cognitive Style as a Factor that Determines Translation Strategies in the Target Text (Based on Ukrainian Translations of “Pygmalion” by Bernard Shaw

Abstract

The article focuses on translator’s cognitive style as an important factor that determines translation strategies and techniques while rendering a source text into a target language. In particular, the study analyses and compares the cognitive styles of Oleksandr Mokrovolskyi and Mykola Pavlov, Ukrainian translators of the play ‘Pygmalion’ by George Bernard Shaw. The relevance of the paper is stipulated by the need to provide theoretical justification for the differences in cognitive styles of the interpreters. The theoretical justification can help to explain interpreters’ successful or unsuccessful translation decisions. The results of the investigation can be used while rendering English texts into Ukrainian.

The investigation is carried out using the method of contrastive analysis of the source and target texts as a main one. The comparison between O. Mokrovolskyi’s and M. Pavlov’s cognitive styles are drawn on the basis of the analysis of the translation strategies and techniques used by them while rendering cockney, a social dialect used by people from the East End of London; and interpreting associations of source precedent names and verbal poetic images in the target text.

The article proves that translator’s cognitive style manifests itself in translation strategy of keeping or changing the stylistic tone of the original text. M. Pavlov uses stylistically marked vocabulary to render cockney and stylistically neutral lines more often than O. Mokrovolskyi does. The paper notes that the translator’s creative cognitive activity can also manifest itself in using the translation technique of so-called ‘explicative asymmetry’. The mentioned technique involves using target lexical units that are not considered to be equivalents for source words in order to reveal the author’s ideas better. It should be mentioned that the ‘explicative asymmetry’ technique usually causes conceptual shift. The investigation proves that while rendering English precedent names into Ukrainian M. Pavlov tends to use transformations that cause conceptual shift whereas O. Mokrovolskyi does not use the technique of explicative asymmetry very often. The author expresses the opinion that the technique of ‘explicative asymmetry’ helps to interpret associations of source precedent names in the target text. While rendering English idioms into Ukrainian both the translators use the ‘explicative asymmetry’ technique that causes conceptual shift to reveal the author’s ideas better.