The notion of “gaps” in perception of oral discourse

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 539.

Main points

UNIT 7

Discussion point

1. Speak on laser applications both in surgery and in treatment.

2. What are the reasons of laser success in medicine?

“GAPS” IN PERCEPTION OF ORAL DISCOURSE AND WAYS OF “FILLING THEM IN” IN INTERPRETING

7.1 The notion of “gaps” in perception of oral discourse

7.2 Types of “gaps” in perception of oral discourse

7.3 Ways of filling in the “gaps” in interpreting

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“Gaps” or lacunas (lacunae; лакуни; пропуски)[1] are blank spaces or missing parts in perception of oral and written discourse by the addressee, which may occur both in monolingual and bilingual (multilingual) communication. Potential gaps in perception of fictional texts caused by psychological, national and behavioural specificity of a particular “culture”, may be serious challenges (“cognitive constraints”) for translators of prose, drama and poetry [see Марковина 1985]. However, this Unit focuses on “gaps” in the SL oral discourse, i.e. on the fragments of discourse, which interpreters do not perceive for some reason and, therefore, are not able to render them into the TL [Селіванова 2006: 274-276, Ширяев 1979: 91]. Interpreting practice shows that there may be two major groups of factors, which result in failure to perceive[2] oral messages by the interpreter:

1. Subjective factors: lack of interpreter's cultural, linguistic or subject field competence;

2. Objective factors: various acoustic noises in the SL channel, “translator unfriendly”

behaviour of the SL speaker, who may have a heavy accent, speak indistinctly or too

fast, use slang, jargon, highly specific items of national lexicon, incoherent syntax or

simply have some speech defects.

There seems to be only one way to minimise “gaps” caused by subjective factors – constant development of interpreter's professional skills which requires improvement of both SL and TL cultural competence, in-depth insight into the subject field of interpretation, keeping personal records, glossaries, vocabularies, training memory, etc.

Gaps caused by objective factors are often beyond interpreter's control, except cases, when the interpreter, working in a consecutive mode, has an opportunity to ask the speaker to kindly repeat what has been said (which often annoys the speaker). However, some recommendations on how to “fill in” the gaps are suggested below.