Actualizing the Research Tasks of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

1. Introduction

In Ukraine, the theoretical and practical problems of military translation/interpreting have been investigated in dissertations by V. Balabin, P. Matiusha, M. Bilan, S. Yanchuk, B. Dzis, O. Yundina, L. Honcharuk, and O. Nikiforova, as well as in numerous academic publications, a comprehensive list of which is provided in a recent monograph [1] (pp. 373–413). Concurrently, a systematic academic description of the theoretical and conceptual foundations of military-technical translation/interpreting—one of the three primary functional-pragmatic sub-types of military translation/interpreting—has yet to be conducted. The core conceptual provisions of military-technical translation/interpreting remain insufficiently developed and lack definitive formalization as systematized theoretical constructs structured through the academic, linguistic, translation studies, and specialized categories, concepts, terms, and definitions of military translation/interpreting theory. This deficit necessitates rigorous research into this significant functional-pragmatic sub-type of military translation/interpreting. It is expedient to conduct such research by taking into account the long-term (1993–2026) experience of training military translators/interpreters for the Armed Forces and other formations of the national security and defense sector of Ukraine at the Military Institute of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

2. Materials and Methods

Research into military-technical translation/interpreting must be planned and conducted within the framework of military translation/interpreting theory—a specialized branch of translation studies encompassing a systematized (generalized, structured, and organized) body of methodological approaches, theoretical principles, scholarly and scientific facts, general hypotheses, working assumptions, abstract ideas, and logical judgments. This framework reveals the specificity of translation/interpreting within the armed forces utilizing terminologically defined and ordered units of its own conceptual framework [1] (pp. 106–113). In other words, it is expedient to align the “research methodology” of military-technical translation/interpreting with the duly tested and validated theoretical foundations of military translation/interpreting [2]. The purpose of this article is to actualize the scholarly research tasks regarding the conceptual foundations of military-technical translation/interpreting, an endeavor that acquires particular significance given the conditions of intensive and multi-level military-technical cooperation between Ukraine and NATO as well as EU member states. This research will also contribute to improving the quality of drafting regulatory and legal documents for the organization and conduct of educational and academic activities, while concurrently elevating the level of theoretical and practical preparedness of military translators/interpreters as the primary actors within the system of linguistic support for military forces.

3. Results

Let us define the primary qualifying features for future research into military-technical translation/interpreting: the purpose, object, subject matter, tasks, methods, material, connection with academic programs, and conceptual framework.

3.1. Research Purpose of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

The purpose is to develop the theoretical and conceptual foundations of military-technical translation/interpreting as the subsequent stage in the systematic evolution of military translation/interpreting theory.

3.2. Research Object of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

The problem of defining the object and subject matter in translation studies is significant not only in its methodological and philosophical aspects but is also inextricably linked to concepts regarding the strategy of successful translation/interpreting. This object should be military-technical translation/interpreting itself, acting as a functional-pragmatic sub-type of military translation/interpreting. When researching military-technical translation/interpreting for the purposes of translation/interpreting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and for military-terminological activity within the system of linguistic support for military forces, the research object is inherently focused on military-technical texts as a distinct variety of military texts.

3.3. Research Subject Matter of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

The subject matter of the research encompasses the academic description of the specificity of military-technical translation/interpreting via terms, concepts, and definitions, alongside the creation of a conceptual model based on the systematization of verified, analyzed, and validated facts, empirical data, practical hypotheses, working assumptions, logical judgments, and generalized conclusions.

3.4. Research Tasks of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

To achieve this purpose, it is expedient to isolate the following priority tasks:

• to analyze academic publications, educational and methodological works, regulatory and legal documents, informational and reference materials, and the practice of translation/interpreting within the armed forces regarding military-technical translation/interpreting, as well as publications related to the subject matter of military-technical translation/interpreting drawn from other domains of military, scientific-technical, and specialized translation, terminology studies, and lexicography over the 1993–2026 period;
• to determine the core scholarly-methodological parameters for researching military-technical translation/interpreting;
• to develop, concretize, and nominate the definitional features of the fundamental terms/concepts of “military-technical translation/interpreting” and “military-technical text”;
• to investigate the types of military-technical texts and propose a comprehensive classification;
• to analyze the genre-stylistic specificity of various military-technical texts;
• to systematize the typical lexico-semantic and grammatical-syntactic difficulties encountered in the translation of military-technical texts;
• to reveal the content of the military-terminological (normative-codifying) activity of a military translator/interpreter for specific operational purposes;
• to formulate new definitions and refine the existing definitions of other specific terms within military-technical translation/interpreting and military translation/interpreting theory; and
• to compile a specialized glossary of terms and concepts for military-technical translation/interpreting.

3.5. Research Methods of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

The selection of research methods remains the prerogative of researchers and their academic supervisors. The paramount requirement is that the chosen method serves as a precise tool for testing a hypothesis and obtaining a scholarly result, ensuring that it is:

• objective — yielding a result independent of the researcher’s subjectivity;
• valid — measuring precisely what it is intended to measure;
• reliable — allowing for the generation of identical or highly similar results upon repeated application by the researcher or other individuals;
• adequate — corresponding to the purpose, subject matter, tasks, and operational conditions of the research.

For investigating the conceptual foundations of military-technical translation/interpreting, it is highly advisable to familiarize oneself with the established methodology for researching the theoretical issues of military translation/interpreting [1] (pp. 71–95). This methodology has proven highly effective [3] when harmoniously combining theoretical, empirical, and specialized methods of researching military translation/interpreting, for example:

• abstraction, concretization, idealization, thought experiments, and axiomatization (for constructing abstract theoretical constructs in the format of hypotheses, assumptions, generalizations, and conclusions);
• structural, systemic, and component analysis, synthesis, comparison, and typologization (for researching the content, structure, elements, and connections of military-technical translation/interpreting within military translation/interpreting theory and linguistic support for military forces);
• modeling and formalization (for creating semiotic graphic models of the components and elements of military-technical translation/interpreting);
• definitional analysis, generalization, and concretization (for constructing semiotic verbal models, defining and refining features, and concretizing definitions of specific terms within the conceptual framework of military translation/interpreting theory, with a primary focus on the specificity of military-technical translation/interpreting);
• observation, surveys, and expert assessments (conducting linguistic experiments and utilizing questionnaires).

A vital specialized method within military translation/interpreting theory is the method of conceptualizing the practice of translation/interpreting in the armed forces. This involves the process of comprehending and subsequently transforming the unstructured ideas, phenomena, or empirical experiences of a military translator/interpreter into clear, terminologically defined theoretical and/or practical concepts, constructs, schemes, algorithms, and models. This is achieved by isolating the essential features of the object, defining its boundaries, and researching its connections and properties while strictly accounting for the specificity of linguistic support for military forces.

3.6. Material of the Research of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

Publications addressing the subject matter of military-technical translation/interpreting spanning the 1993–2026 period will serve as the research material:

• academic publications — monographs, dissertation manuscripts, author’s abstracts, scholarly articles, conference abstracts;
• educational and methodological publications — textbooks, study guides, lecture courses, academic discipline syllabi, methodological guidelines;
• reference and informational publications — standards, catalogs, reference books, manuals, encyclopedias, dictionaries, glossaries;
• regulatory and legal sources — regulations (statutes), orders, instructions;
• sources of an illustrative nature — working materials, representative samples of translated military-technical texts, results of expert translation assessments, questionnaires, and surveys.

3.7. Creation and Normalization of Specialized Concepts of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

First and foremost, it is imperative to research, concretize, and normalize the definitional features of the fundamental terms/concepts underpinning military-technical translation/interpreting: “military-technical translation/interpreting” and “military-technical text.” Furthermore, during the investigation of the genre-stylistic specificity of military-technical texts and the systematization of lexico-semantic and grammatical-syntactic difficulties, the necessity will inevitably arise for the creation and normalization of additional metalinguistic units within military-technical translation/interpreting.

4. Discussion

4.1. Conditions of the Research of Military-Technical Translation/Interpreting

Currently, it is difficult to conceptualize scholarly research into military-technical translation/interpreting without reference to the fundamental work of Prof. V. Karaban, in which the author comprehensively addresses the “grammatical difficulties, lexical, terminological, and genre-stylistic problems of translating English scientific and technical literature” [4]. The educational and academic issues surrounding military-technical translation/interpreting have been actively researched by V. Lisovskyi since 2000 [5,6,7,8,9]. Special attention should be directed to the most comprehensive textbook currently available in Ukraine in terms of volume and subject matter concerning English-Ukrainian military-technical translation/interpreting, which spans 950 pages [5]. This textbook features a unique English-Ukrainian minimum dictionary of basic lexico-terminological units for military-technical translation/interpreting, comprising over 4,000 terms intended for mandatory active reproductive assimilation by future military translators/interpreters [5, pp. 635–946]. For the theoretical description of the conceptual foundations of military-technical translation/interpreting, it is highly advisable to utilize the results of the dissertation research by Ya. Yaremko [10] regarding Ukrainian military terminology, alongside the work of D. Vasylenko [11], who analyzed the development of English military vocabulary throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. Ultimately, the researcher will be required to analyze numerous academic publications that directly or indirectly address the translation studies and linguistic aspects of the theoretical issues in military-technical translation/interpreting (L. Kompantseva [12], Ye. Dolynskyi [13], Ye. Hrynevych [14], A. Kopytina, I. Mezi, K. Tiurina [15], Z. Korzhak [16], L. Malimon, K. Shcherban [17], O. Push, N. Hasiuk [18], O. Rohach, A. Tyvodar [19], among others).

4.2. Further Development of the Conceptual Framework of Military Translation/Interpreting Theory

During research into military-technical translation/interpreting, further development will be afforded to the methodological concepts of military translation/interpreting theory initially formulated by V. Balabin and presented in works [1,2,20,21]. From the standpoint of military-technical translation/interpreting, it is worthwhile to refine the definitions of specific units within the conceptual framework of military translation/interpreting theory, such as the “teleological objective”, “adequacy”, “informational-factual accuracy”, “invariant information”, “subject-logical equivalence”, and “communicative-functional identity”. A mandatory prerequisite for research focusing on the theoretical issues of military translation/interpreting theory is the compilation of a glossary of specialized terms and concepts. Therefore, a glossary of specific terms and definitions pertaining to military-technical translation/interpreting will constitute a robust contribution to the methodological concepts and theoretical framework of military translation/interpreting theory.

5. Conclusions

Despite numerous academic publications addressing the theoretical issues of military-technical translation/interpreting, its foundational conceptual provisions remain insufficiently developed and lack definitive formalization as ordered theoretical constructs structured through the scholarly, linguistic, translation studies, and specialized categories, concepts, constructs, terms, and definitions of military translation/interpreting theory. The purpose of this article is to actualize the scholarly research tasks of military-technical translation/interpreting as one of the three primary functional-pragmatic sub-types of military translation/interpreting. This endeavor acquires particular significance given the conditions of intensive and multi-level military-technical cooperation between Ukraine and NATO as well as EU member states. Research into military-technical translation/interpreting must be meticulously planned and conducted within the framework of military translation/interpreting theory in accordance with defined qualifying features. The priority tasks of this research should include: investigating the genre-stylistic specificity of military-technical texts; providing an academic description of various types of military-technical texts and developing their typology; systematizing the lexico-semantic and grammatical-syntactic difficulties of military-technical translation/interpreting; determining the precise content of the military-terminological (normative-codifying) activity of a military translator/interpreter; and refining the features and definitions of specialized terms in tandem with the compilation of an appropriate glossary.