Page 7 - Міністерство освіти і науки України

2. Denotative Approach
According to common scientific opinion there may never be a direct link between
the sign (form) of a language unit and the fragment of the real world (denotatum).
Denotative approach supposes the translator`s formulating a message in the target
language relevant to both concept (meaning) and the fragment of the real world
(denotatum). During translation we deal with similar observed events and concepts
deduced from these observed events and the relationship between the source and target
word forms is occasional rather than regular.
To illustrate this difference let us consider the following two examples:
1. He couldn`t eat – Він не міг їсти.
2. A little pot is soon hot – Обмежену людину розсердити не важко.
In the first instance the equivalencies are regular and the concept may be divided
into its individual components (he – він; couldn`t – не міг; eat – їсти).
In the second instance, equivalence between the original sentence and its
translation is occasional and the concept cannot be divided into individual componets.
3. Communicational Approach
Communication may be defined as an act of sending and receiving some
information, which is called a message. When communicating we inform others about
something we know. That is in order to formulate a message, we use our system of data,
which is called a thesaurus.
According to communicational approach, translation is a message sent by a
translator to a particular user and the adequacy of translation depends on similarity of
their background information rather than only on linguistic correctness. The translator
has two language thesauruses (source and target one) and performs two functions:
decodes the source message and encodes the target one to be received by the user of the
translation.
Let us consider an example which, though an exaggeration, clearly illustrates the
work of the communicational approach to translation.

“Several new schools appeared in the area”

Let us assume that the message sender, being a fisherman meant the following

“В районі з`явилось кілька нових косяків риби”

Whereas the translator who presumably did not have relevant information in his
subject thesaurus translated “schools” as institutions for educating children:

“В районі з`явилось декілька нових шкіл.”

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