TEACHING MEANING, COMPREHENSION AND TRANSLATION

Abstract

Introduction
One of the main issues that translators have to cope with is the plain concept of the meaning
of words. The main difficulty lies in grasping that meaning is not an isolated concept, but a
complex entity in which the context of occurrence is crucial. Thus, it depends on the text
type, its functional role, its co-text, its user and his/her intentions, the specific situation of
communication and last but not least, the specific cultures in contact. According to
specialised literature,”the meaning of a given word or set of words is best understood as the
contribution that word or phrase can make to the meaning or function of the whole sentence
or linguistic utterance where that word or phrase occurs” (Zaky 2003: 1).
In other words, it is an important part of the translator’s competence to be able to
distinguish between the meaning of reference (also called referential/ lexical/ conceptual/
denotative meaning) which is to be found in dictionaries and glossaries, and the associated
meaning (also referred to as connotative/stylistic/ affective/ reflective or collocative).