Publications

Publication details [#2047]

Balacescu, Ioana and Bernd Stefanink. 2006. Cognitivism and translation creativity. Academic Monthly 51 (2) : 50–61. 12 pp.

Abstract

Findings of recent cognitive research are argued to provide a solid foundation for translators to gain awareness of the mental processes that lead to creative problem-solving and to the application of Stefanink's (1997) notions of (1) an epistemological turn in translation science and (2) intersubjective comprehensibility as a criterion for the evaluation of translations. A problem in the translation of a lively political prose text from French to German, exemplified by three excerpts of the resulting translation, is resolved by applying concepts of different branches of cognitive linguistics to create appropriate textual features at the level of phonetics, including stress patterns and rhythms; scenes and frames; thematic organization points; and figure/ground alignment. Particularly fruitful for the self-awareness of the translator is the metaphor theory of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980), which provides a basis of legitimization for creative solutions to translation problems. J. Hitchcock (LLBA, Accession Number 200614129, (c) CSA [2007]. All rights reserved.)