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Mohammed
Farghal (Kuwait) |
Schemata are cumulative cognitive
structures which comprise our knowledge of the universe( Rumelhart and Ortony 1977;
Rumelhart 1981; Carrel 1983). They manifest themselves in the form of content,
formal, and strateg schemata (Casanave 1988). Our meaningful interaction with
discourse, whether spoken or written, depends entirely upon our possession of
corresponding schemata or, by way of analogy, our possession of cognitive
harbors where meaning as encapsulated in ideas or, more technically,
propositions may be appropriately processed. The ease or difficulty of the
processing of information in a text is a correlate of informativity as an
important standard of texuality (Beaugrande de and Dressler 1981). This means
that the more predictable the schematic structure, the less informative and
subsequently the easier the processing, while the less predictable, it is the more
informative and subsequently the more difficult the processing.
Translation activity, essentially
being a form of communication, is ipso facto subject to appropriate schematic
interpretation. Correct text comprehension, which is based on a successful
matching and integration between the schematic structure in the text and the
schemata available in the translator’s encyclopedic repertoire, is the only
guarantor for producing a workable translation. To this is added the fact that
lexical competence may play a key role in mediating between existing schemata
and their appropriate activation, because lexis is not only a vehicle to
express thought but also a vehicle to understand thought.
The present paper establishes
empirical evidence for a schematic model of translation in which markedness
plays a pivotal role in lexically-induced schemata. An ambiguous text was
deliberately given two working titles that schematically called for different
translations. The majority of the subjects, regardless of their lexical
competence, opted for the unmarked schema in the body of the text in spite of
the fact that their translations were incongruent with the marked schema in the
title. This proves that schematic markedness is a more robust factor than
lexical competence in translation activity.
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