Cognition and the hierarchy of expertise in translation :

Abstract EN

This paper tackles the relationship between cognition and expertise in translation, its hierarchy and the involvement of seniority and maturity in translation academic and professional practices.

Expertise in fields of knowledge and in research is linked to the degree of awareness of prerequisites that make the nature of the activity.

It sheds lights on selected remarks and guidance that senior translations gave as pieces of advice to beginner translators.

It gravitates on journalistic and literary translation and suggests penetrating some shadow zones in professional translation.

Expertise in translation meets not only the way in which texts are conveyed but the degree of involvement of intensive and extended knowledge, the latter covers the translator's qualifications and the adaptability of language as well as its capacity to host the “foreigner's” structure of thought and mind as well as it “hosts” its strangeness.

The paper came to a conclusion that expertise is neither extended knowledge nor seniority, it's a mixture of both added to the reflection capacity to use adapted solution appropriately when needed.