Linguistics and the Study of Translation with English-Igbo Illustration

Abstract

The relationship between linguistics and translation is such that there can be no translation without linguistics. This assertion provides an acceptable justification for this paper, the objective of which is to explicate how a translator can appropriate the knowledge of linguistics for unambiguous translation and be able to link two linguistic aliens in every social event. The study is anchored on three theoretical frameworks: The Contextual Theory of Meaning, The Theory of Interpretative Translation and The Theory of Dynamic Equivalence.  The first theory captures the impact of context on meaning. The second places a high premium on contextualized source message interpretation and deverbialization. The central thrust of the last is that the interpretation of a given source message in L₂ codes produces the same perlocutionary effects which it produces when rendered in L₁ codes. The sampled source and translated messages in this study rendered in the English and Igbo languages, respectively, show that translation originates from autonomous linguistics to stand as a professional sub-field of instrumental linguistics. This major finding of the study makes the knowledge of autonomous linguistics imperative for every translator.