| Abstract: |
The paper offers a short overview of the specific problems with which the translator is confronted when trying to translate (when translating) a text and questions whether existing (predominantly print) dictionaries are in fact an aid. In daily practice, the translator has to resolve many dificulties[sic!] that are a result of sociocultural distance and also of the consideration that must be given to the concrete contextual meaning of the lexical items in a given disourse[sic!] and communicative situation, and to the comunicative sense arising from the conceptual activation of presupposed encyclopaedic knowledge and the intention of the original text producer. Traditional dictionaries, even when they are oriented to foreign language learning, cannot, of course, take all these aspects into account. However, they may give useful orientation, for instance in case of polysemy and phraseology. The translator needs to choose the communicative equivalent in the target language, must improvise or paraphrase in case of zero equivalence (lack of corresponding sociocultural items/culturemes or realia) and produce a target text which conforms to the rules governing the texture and architecture of the corresponding text type. Particularly important for the translator is recourse to original (electronic) target texts in the same domain and also to the new generation of electronic dictionaries and terminological aids which, beside the tradional systemic and normative meanings of items, also represent the concrete contextual meanings (the posé) and the présupposé postulated by Ducrot. |