PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TOWARDS TRANSLATION Phenomenology

PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TOWARDS TRANSLATION

• Phenomenology has three meanings in philosophical history: • G. W. F. Hegel (1807), phenomenology begins with an exploration of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as a means to finally grasp the absolute Spirit behind phenomena. “dialectical phenomenology". • E. Husserl (1920), phenomenology takes the intuitive experience of phenomena as its starting point and tries to extract from it the essential features of experiences and the essense of what we experience. "transcendental phenomenology". • M. Heidegger (1929), the phenomenological vision of objects must lead to the understanding of the Being behind all beings, "existential phenomenology".

Phenomenological trends in Tr. S • The analysis of translation process • Translation multiplicity, translator’s strategies • The reception of translation • Key phenomena: the translator’s mind, the reader, the text.

Intentionality as the main feature of consciousness. Every mental phenomenon (noesis; e. g. believing, hating) is directed at sth – the intentional object (noema; the believed, the hated). Only mental phenomena unlike physical ones have intentionality. What we observe is not the object as it is in itself, but how it is given in the intentional acts.

The phenomenological insight into the translator’s mind. • Introspective and retrospective TAPs , Translog (first person perspective) • Observer’s comments (third peron perspective) • Intersubjectivity, i. e. negotiations through shared traning and shared metalanguage (second person perspective)

Phenomenological focus on the target reader’s response and potential multiplicity • R. Ingarden, the founder of phenomenological aesthetics, used phenomenology for the analysis of literary texts (The Literary Word of Art) • literary work is a “purely intentional formation, ” derived from the sentence-forming activities of its author(s). Without receipients the literary work is only an inert semantic code anticipating its actualization or concretization.

• Conceptualization of the literary work is limited by “ideal concepts”, all semantic capacity of the word, sentence, text. = translation invariant • Ingarden: Literary work (a bare scheme) is transformed into the aesthetic work through reception. = translation multiplicity • R. Barthes: article “From a Literary Work to the Text” • U. Eco “Experiences in Translation”: intent of the author versus intent of the text.

• • Theories of the reader. • The main imperative: each literary text contains the image of its reader, i. e. the reader is one of the characters of the literary text. • Hans Robert Jauss’ theory of reception: “aesthetic distance” – the degree of unexpectedness of the text for the reader that determines its artistic quality. horizon of expectations – the interpretation is limited by the reader’s historical position. Virtual sense – the ability of art to refresh unexpected long-forgotten vision of literature and life.

• W. Iser: theory of "aesthetic response. “ Instead of asking what the text means, Iser asks what the text does to the reader. Iser does not analyze actual readings of texts, but proceeds from an ideal "implied reader. " (= targeted , Ideal Reader of translation for whom the translation is intended, the translation can tell us a lot about us, The Reader).

• Texts leave great portions unexplained to the reader, this indeterminacy "implies" the reader and begs her participation in giving meaning to the text. Aesthetic reception implies filling in the gaps in the text, semantic decoding takes place as an agreement between the reader and the text (intersubjective parameters of reception). The significance of the text is generated not by the text but by its recipient who tries to make the text understandable and translatable.

• Iser: “literary anthropology. “ (1989), a retrospective description of the nature of readers based on the effects a text can produce on them. “If a literary text does something to its readers, it also simultaneously reveals something about them. “ • = criticism of translated text from the historical perspective, reconstructing “the implied reader” of the target text.

• Real contemporary reader: 1) real historical face reconstructed on the basis of historical documents of a certain epoch; 2) the reader whom we imagine on the basis knowledge of the social and historical epoch; 3) the reader who is determined in the text, implied reader.

• Ideal reader –an imaginary notion, a subject who is capable to actualise the potential meaning of the text, whose code is identical with the code of the author = the invisibility of the translator. Ideal reader U. Eco – each text actively creates its reader through: 1) specific lingual code; 2) literary style; 3) genre.