Epistemological Aspects of Interaction between Languages and Cultures through the Prism of Translation

The cognitive and discursive paradigm that has acquired significant importance in linguistic science in recent decades, provides for efficacious instruments for the building up of a theoretical frame for translation researches concerning human cognition and linguistic processing of information. This article offers fundamental comparative-situational models of dynamic interaction of conceptual systems of the author, translator and the addressee within mediated cross-cultural cross-linguistic communication that ascertain the interrelationship of linguistic, cognitive, and cultural factors relevant to scientific communication with due regard for circumstances and situational conditions of a given act of communication. The aim of this article is to examine and describe ranking features of the general structure of the models referred to above through establishing variations and differentiations that reflect varying parameters of circumstances, situations, and presuppositions within the given context of scientific communication arranged for comparison of two or more national cultures of different languages especially regarding influences of one upon the other. The methods of translation and comparative analysis are used in the research, along with the native speakers questionary method. Ph.D. students of People’s Friendship University of Russia (156) from different countries with different mother-tongue backgrounds learning academic writing and translation in different areas of scientific research where the English, the Spanish, and the Russian languages are used as a second foreign language are involved in this study. We conclude that epistemological grounds of information processing within mediated scientific communication especially in what regards inquiry into the multifaceted nature of translators’ activity, along with limits, and validity of strategy of translation become relevant to the reconstruction of communication presuppositions and the referential situation in target language via modelling cognitive space in order to neutralize communications gap along with the differential in knowledge, viewpoints and extralinguistic experience ensuring succession and continuity in the process of cognition. The practical value of the article can be of significant relevance for language teaching, language acquisition, and translation as intercultural and interlinguistic communication research.