The Typology of translation

The word " translation" can be considered as:

1) The type of linguistic mediation (interlingual communication), in which the information is transmitted in one language into another language,

2) The type of intellectual and creative activity,

3) The process itself, an act of recovery of information in one language by means of another language,

4) The result of this process, a new work in another language.

Translation unit can be defined as the minimum unit of the original text as a whole. According to general (linguistic) theory of translation, a translation unit is a unit of language. But it is not only a lexical unit, a single word: unit of any language level can be a unit of translation. In fact, a word or a phrase can be a translation unit in the process of translation, and a whole sentence or a paragraph, and all the text, that is translated, can also be a unit of translation. [4, p. 113]

If it comes to the literary or art translation, you should always bear in mind such category as a work-a part of work. And it primarily involves the presence of " inner form of artistic expression”, the artistic content of units, units of imagery - both in the text and the subtext, and these units are not only lingual, but even " unspeakable".

Literary or artistic translation is a kind of artistic creation, when the meaning of a source-language text is translated by means of an equivalent target-language text.

There are different classifications of translation due to the positions, the specific objectives and approaches of their authors. In Belarusian translation (as well as in many former Soviet Union republics) the classification of A.V.Fyodarau is most commonly used, and the views of Roman Jakobson and Georges Munen are also taken into account. The concept of the French theorist Zh.Munena is of the primary interest because of the fact that there are seven types of translation in it (seven groups differ in their stylistic nature of texts) six of them are connected with a material that cannot be subordinate to general criteria in (linguistic) translation theory. Meanwhile, the Soviet and post-Soviet translation theory is perceived with suspicion. Additionally, we must bear in mind that the translation can be interlingual and intralingual. Translators pay less attention on the second one. But in practice, it is quite common, especially in the following ways: a) the diachronic / historical - when a text is written in the ancient language and is translated into modern language; b) synchronic translation - when the translation is made from a dialect to a standard language, or on the contrary; c) synchronistic / adaptive - if recoding style presentation using common lexicon and a simple syntax is practiced.

Taking into consideration the Belarusian specific we should allocate intercultural translation separately. It is most often associated with the bilingualism in diachronical plan with the need to save the works belonging to the cultural heritage of particular nation, but were not created in its own language (for Belarusians, for example, " Song of the Bison" by Mikola Gusouski and a number of other works, written in Latin).

The purpose of translation in general - to convey the contents of foreign language information to those who are not able to perceive it in the original. However, the concept of " information" always has a broad meaning. And, of course, we always remember that “lots and lots of concepts dies..., new concepts appeared ". Therefore, if the translation is a literary / artistic work, especially poetry, the " accuracy" cannot be equated with the literal." In such cases, free translations and even imitation and transcriptions gain an advantage, because it is better perceived,