Topic 9: lexical aspects of interpretation

9.1. The Notion of the “Focus of Meaning”

Many approaches to identifying “ translation units ” exist. They are called “chunks of speech” subject to interpreting/translating, however most authors (L. Barkhudarov, R. Jones, Y. Retsker, Y. Stepanov, J.P. Viney, J. Darbelnet) believe that any unit of speech (i.e. phonemes, morphemes, words, word combinations, sentences, paragraphs and texts) may be subject to interpretation and translation. V. Koptilov even suggests a special term for the translation unit – the so–called “ translateme ”, which is defined ‘as an “atom of sense” that cannot be split up without ruining the sense’. Selection of translation units is determined by the conditions in which interpretation/translation is performed, by the subject field of the SL text and by the level of professional skills of the interpreter/translator. However, whatever units of translation are chosen, it is obvious that interpreters, while interpreting, memorise the SL text by the so–called “focuses of meaning”. Experiments show that human brain is capable of keeping in memory 7 +/– 2 focuses of meaning, therefore, interpreter's note–taking is a useful tool which enables interpreters to “ reconstruct ” oral messages for their subsequent interpreting.

As a rule focuses of meaning are formed around the “ keywords ” of oral discourse, which include, first of all, specific subject field words, i.e. terms belonging to the subject field of interpreting. Among other focus–forming elements of oral discourse there are set phrases (clichés) and idioms; numerals, proper names, abbreviations, acronyms (the so–called “precision lexicon”); non–equivalent lexical items and “misleading words”.