1 Literary translation universals: a psycholinguistic study of the novice translators’ common choices , Serhii Zasiekin
The paper outlines the study of translation S-universals and is based both on the psycholinguistic model of literary translation, which combines two approaches to language organization in today’s neuroscience – cognitivism and connectionism, and on the experimental data that demonstrate its validity. A free word association test was used to identify a translator’s cognitive style as a universal tendency determining his linguistic choice. This psycholinguistic tool helped explore the ways how the meaning of the original text was reconstructed in the target text by the selected group of novice translators. A quantitative content analysis and psycholinguistic text analysis were applied for the purpose of studying the correlation between specific textual features of authors and those of the translators. As the empirical study showed, the S-universals maintain the status of common strategies depending on translator’s cognitive style. A ‘think aloud protocol’ (TAP) analysis was used to explore the ways in which the meaning of the original text was reconstructed in the target text by the novice translators. A content analysis and psycholinguistic text analysis were applied for the purpose of studying the correlation between specific textual features of authors and those of translators. The results of the empirical study showed that the observed S-universals, while maintaining the status of common strategies, clearly depend on translator’s cognitive style (analytical or synthetic), and his dominant channel (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) of source text perception. Key words: translation, psycholinguistic model, translation universal, translator’s cognitive style, dominant channel of perception.
2 Culture effects on language and cognition in psycholinguistic experiment, Larysa Zasiekina
The study is based on two main scientific paradigms – cognitive and discursive. The process of social categorization by American and Ukrainian students has been focused on in a psycholinguistic experiment. Social schemes (personal schemes, action schemes, self-schemes, role schemes, function schemes) in word meanings for words denoting social objects suggested by Ukrainian (n=25, 12 female and 13 male, mean age 21,7±3,0 years, Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National Universities, Lutsk) and American (n=25, 15 female and 10 male, mean age 22,4±3,0 years, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, USA) students were analyzed. The results of comparative analysis of word meanings based on social categories (schemes) of Ukrainian and American students show that the most frequent social categories among American students are self- schemes, which are connected with individualism of national character of western-culture people. The most frequent social categories among Ukrainian students are action schemes which express pragmatic character of Ukrainian culture. Despite of the various distributions of social schemes in Ukrainian and American students’ answers, the indifferent to culture criteria for social categorization are revealed. The results of psycholinguistic experiment show the dual cognitive and discursive character of social categorization which demonstrates the degree of culture impact on human cognition and language. Keywords: cognition, culture, language, social categorization, social schemes, word meaning.
3 Syntactic performance in online written discourse by an english/swedish bilingual with asperger’s syndrome: a case study , Oleksandr Kapranov
The present article described syntactic performance by an English/Swedish bilingual participant with Asperger syndrome. The participant’s syntactic performance was investigated by means of observing the participant’s status updates onFacebook, a social networking platform. Two observation sessions involved one week each, with the interval of six months between the sessions.It was theorised that the bilingual participant’s syntactic performance would be exacerbated by code-switching. The participant’s data were tagged in computer software CLAN. Results of the data analysis indicated that the hypothesis was not supported: the participant’s syntactic performance exhibited no presence of code-switching. Data analysis indicated that there was no significant difference in the participant’s syntactic performance in the period of six months. Keywords: Asperger syndrome, code-switching, English, early balanced bilingual, syntactic performance, Swedish
4 Does ‘language’ form our ‘thought’?, Rieko Matsuoka
As early as 1799, Humboldt initiated to wonder the gravity of ‘language’. Indeed, there exists much diversity in linguistic forms in human societies and, translation is necessary in order to share literary works, among different language users. During the process of translating culturally-colored discourse, some important features of a given society may well be revealed. As an empirical example, a script of rakugo, which is the traditional Japanese performance art of telling comic stories, is used as the data for analysis because rakugo can be regarded as a genre of natural, spoken Japanese discourse. In fact, Katz (as cited in Wardy, 2006) suggests that linguistic relativity threatens universal inter-translatability. In this study, focusing on zero personal pronouns, the notion of linguistic relativity is examined, related to the Japanese sense of self and the Japanese worldview that includes seken (life-world). This seems to reveal linguistic relativity (e.g., Humboldt 1999; Sapir 1921/2004) that different perspectives on reality often manifest themselves as specific features of language use in speech communities, as some empirical studies have been conducted, starting with Humboldt’s original research (1999) on the Kawi language. Keywords: linguistic relativity, zero personal pronouns, low-context society, high-context society, seken (life-world), Japanese sense of self