Translation Viewed as Service and Tool: Proposal of a New Translation Theory

The paper focuses on the essential nature of translation activity which implies that translation (as well as interpreting) manifests itself in two hypostases, so to speak – a service and a tool. Although these translation hypostases do not cause serious objections, their very existence being confirmed by objective reality, it is appropriate to apply a scientific approach to describing the specificity of their manifestation. For this purpose, the author goes beyond linguistics and turns to the research in marketing dealing with the complicated phenomenon “service” – from its definition to its distinctive characteristics. Extrapolating the results of the research on translation / interpreting, which is a separate area in the service industry, aimed at offering a particular type of help or use, has made it possible to verify the applicability of a service properties to translation. It has been found that translation / interpreting can hardly be regarded as a “pure” service and should rather be treated as those numerous services which have characteristics shared by goods, namely: tangibility, storability (for further use and distribution), contemporaneity (in case of interpreting) / non-contemporaneity (in case of translation) of production and consumption. Still, translation / interpreting has a one-hundred percent service property which is variability, or inconstancy of quality. This characteristic of translation in its first hypostasis, i.e. service, is crucial since it helps to understand the manifestation of the second hypostasis of translation – that of a tool. The variability of quality consists in the fact that a product, a text in target language created when providing a translation service, acting as a tool, can be endowed with a linguistic composition different from that of the source text, given that the need and expectation of a particular initiator and/or consumer (user) have been met by a translator / interpreter. The purpose of a different linguistic composition, which means that certain modifications are to be introduced to the textual characteristics of the product in terms of its content, or form and structure, is to ensure that the product is ergonomic enough, i.e. its usability for accomplishing the task, it is intended for, has been provided. Obviously, such a product in the true sense of the word, turns out to be peculiar not only for the initiator and/or consumer (user) due to a different linguistic composition of the text, but also for the translator / interpreter who acts as a service provider, being aware that the product he is creating and endowing with a peculiar linguistic composition is a means of meeting a peculiar need and expectation. Since it is the need that triggers the entire translation process, the need is used as a key concept to give the name to a translation theory proposed in this paper – a needs-tailored theory of translation. The needs-tailored theory of translation, viewing it as a service and a tool as its bedrock, considers the idea of differentiating between translation and other types of language mediation offered in Russian translation studies inconsistent, and insists that any text in the target language created on the basis of the source text regardless of its linguistic composition is recognized as translation. Instead of the traditional in Russian translation studies dichotomy “translation vs adaptive transcoding” the needs-tailored theory proposes a dichotomy “conventional translation vs peculiar translation”. The first category includes cases of rendering a translation / interpreting service when the resulting product repeats the source text in its linguistic composition, i.e. cases of carrying out a translation / interpreting in its traditional sense. The second category, as the term suggests, combines the cases of rendering a translation / interpreting service when the resulting product has a peculiar linguistic composition to satisfy a peculiar need in accordance with a peculiar expectation of the initiator and/ or consumer (user) of the translation.