La traduction, confrontation de deux expériences cognitives

Translation, the confrontation of two cognitive experiences Abstract: Two factors operate in translation : linguistic systems and extralinguistic knowledge. Researchers in compared stylistics have compared translations to originals and listed linguistic differences (grammar, vocabulary, phraseology) between the original and translation. The issue of extralinguistic differences has been acknowledged but remained untreated. Seleskovitch developed an interpretive theory of translation suggesting that the binary model (source language / target language) falls short of a comprehensive account of translation because it neglects the essential part of the "cognitive complement".

The theory set forward in this paper posits that translation is not only the confrontation of two languages against universally shared knowledge, it is also the confrontation of two non identical collective knowledges of the word : the knowledge peculiar to the source culture (SC) and the knowledge peculiar to the target culture (TC). The transition from SC to TC is a necessary stage in translation. The typology of translation emerges from the acknowledgment of differences between SC and TC : a verbatim translation maintains the specificity of SC whereas an interpretative translation blurs this specificity and underscores the specificity of TC. In a subsidiary remark, it is shown that the novels by Milan Kundera as well as his writing are in part also a confrontation of two cognitive experiences, the Czech and the French ones.