Psycholinguistic model of salience translation applied to paremia (on the example of Buryat-English correlations)

Abstract

The article depicts the translation process in intercultural communication within a psycholinguistic approach, namely the model of salience translation developed by P. P. Dashinimaeva (2010, 2017a). According to this model, mental and speech stages occur as separate and asymmetric activation processes. This extends the stage of the original salience decoding, which includes three receptive versions of salience: natural salience-I, artificial version of salience-1 (of the addresser), and a version of salience-2 (of the addressee). The author applies the model to the translation of paremic units, which are classified as difficult-to-translate. Buryat-English correlations are used for the analysis. At the first stage of decoding, perception of the proverb evokes involuntary associations and images in the author’s mind that come out of his personal experience. At the next stage, the author “suppresses” these images and identifies the proverb’s didactic value, analyzing Buryat traditional values. At the last stage, he makes a pragmatic adaptation of the addresser’s version to the addressee’s, predicting the communicative effect. After analyzing the English behavior in different communicative situations, the author seeks English correlates with similar didactive value. The author then compares metaphorical images and ways of describing the situation in Buryat-English correlates and finally chooses the most appropriate English variant. In conclusion, the author provides several arguments that illustrate the reasonableness of using this model for the translation of paremic units.