Foreign Language Student Linguistic Personality as a Vector for the Professional Bilingualism

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Introduction

In the realm of foreign language acquisition, the concept of student speech individuality plays a pivotal role in shaping the path toward achieving professional bilingualism. It is deeply related to the concepts of “personal code” [3] and “linguistic personality” [13]. Professional bilingualism goes beyond mere language proficiency; it embodies the nuanced and culturally embedded ability to effectively communicate and interact in both the native and target languages within various professional contexts. Professional bilinguals, or, in another term, “emergent bilinguals” [8] – are individuals whose level of foreign language proficiency allows them to take jobs similar to those of native speakers and do those jobs efficiently and competently. The journey towards professional bilingualism is undoubtedly enriched and accelerated by the unique linguistic and personal characteristics that students bring to their language learning process [2].

To begin with, student speech individuality encompasses the distinct linguistic patterns, strategies, and idiosyncrasies that learners exhibit as they navigate the complexities of a foreign language [6]. This individuality is shaped by various factors such as the learner's linguistic background, cognitive abilities, personality traits, and cultural experiences. Understanding and harnessing this individuality are fundamental to fostering authentic and proficient language use.

A bright example of professional bilingualism is seen in the speech personality of a translator or interpreter. A translator is a professional bilingual whose language competence and intercultural awareness allow the transformation of the original message into another language in such a way that the speaker of that other language would perceive not only directly stated information, but also all implications and inferences existing in the original message when getting it. It is called “harmonious translation”, i.e. interpreting the initial text so that it was understood and appreciated by a reader whose language is different from the original in the way that a speaker of the original language would. It certainly requires wide background knowledge in both cultures, deep awareness of the language norms of both languages, and a high level of empathy on the part of the translator who should see the possible difficulties with understanding of the message by a non-native speaker reading it in the translated version and prevent them. This process of reading a message with the intent to interpret it for speakers of another language is different from simply reading a text to comprehend it for oneself if this is what makes a translator not just a bilingual person, but a professional bilingual [16; p. 73].

The idea of the translator's speech personality is related to the concept of the translator's linguistic personality. Even though the term “language personality”, or “linguistic personality” has become established in scientific and pedagogical discourse, thanks to the comprehensive concepts of Yu.N. Karaulov [13], other nominations are gaining closer attention of researchers. In our view, they received justification in the work of V.V. Krasnykh [15], who makes the terms “a speaker”, “a language personality”, “a speech personality”, “a communicative personality” distinct from each other. The author proves quite convincingly that the concept of “speech personality” most accurately describes the inner cognitive processes that take place in language usage for communicative purposes [15].

According to V.V. Krasnykh the concept of “speaking person” or “person speaking” involves both sides of communication with the help of language means, i.e. the listener as well as the speaker, as language production cannot be separated from its perception in the process of communication. While “linguistic personality” is a result of a whole person's life experiences, education, and cultural background expressed by language means for certain communication purposes. And the “communicative personality” becomes explicit in a concrete communicative situation. Thus, the concept of “a speech personality” can be defined as “a sum of personal choices made in the process of communication involving strategic, linguistic, and extralinguistic range of means.” [15, p. 51]. We can state that V.V. Krasnykh presents us with a system of personal phenomena that is not related to translation as a human activity. However, we see it logical to correlate the activity of translation to the term of speech personality, as the translator makes their choices of strategies, linguistic forms, and extralinguistic means when interpreting a message for speakers of another language, adding to these their own intercultural and cross-cultural skills. It drives us to the emergence of the term “translator’s speech personality”.

It is necessary to note that cross-cultural awareness is the personal quality [15] that helps a foreign language learner striving to build skills of both soft and hard character on their path to professional bilingualism. Furthermore, student speech individuality catalyzes intercultural competence – the ability to navigate and appreciate cultural differences while communicating effectively in diverse settings. As learners embrace their linguistic individuality, they become more adept at transcending cultural boundaries and adapting their communication style to suit professional contexts.

Experimental part

It is our goal to analyze the translator’s speech personality from three perspectives, namely cognitive domain, cultural sphere, and synergistic competence paradigm. The methodology of this research is based on the concept of translation space, expressed in our earlier works and further developed by a cohort of students and followers. It seems worthwhile mentioning just two publications led by one of the authors of the present research: “Introduction to the Synergetics of Translation” [20] and “Theory of Translation in the Classical and Modern Research Paradigm: Ontology, Methodology, Axiology” [19].

Studying the linguistic personality of a student-translator, we rely on personal, activity and competence approaches presented in the studies of domestic scientists (I.A. Zimnyaya, T.S. Serova, E.R. Porshneva, N.N. Gavrilenko, K.E. Bezukladnikov, Yu.O .Shvetsova et al.). A review of these approaches is contained in a monographic study by E.V. Alikina, [11], which emphasizes that “the personality-activity approach sets the orientation to the personality of the translator as a subject of translation pedagogy. The Federal State Educational Standard defines a competence approach as a methodological tool for modern pedagogical theory and practice” [11, p. 67]. Particular attention in the works is paid in the works to the personal external and internal resources of the translator, which is consistent with the speech personality of the translator we are studying. Importantly, the recognition and validation of student speech individuality within the language learning environment can significantly enhance motivation and engagement. When learners feel empowered to express themselves authentically in the target language, they are more likely to develop a strong sense of ownership over their linguistic development. This sense of ownership fosters resilience and perseverance, crucial attributes for achieving professional bilingualism.

Thus, as experts in the field of pedagogy and didactics of translation emphasize, the success of translation activities is determined by the level of formation of translation competence. Within the framework of translation competence, we focus on personal competencies, including erudition, intuition, non-triviality of translation decisions, creativity, thoughtfulness, and cultural sensitivity, which determine the generation of harmonious translation. Language education presumes high levels of motivation that are nowadays often developed and sustained thanks to innovations in the methodology of foreign language teaching. “Educational motivation can be developed utilizing communicative technologies to provide the intensification of speech-thinking activity, which supports students’ constant motivational readiness to express their attitude to the reality phenomena”, which is an integral part of the linguistic personality formation process [4].

Now we would like to bring into focus the problem of future professional bilingual’s speech personality. As is widely known, the theory of translation and our concept of translation space within it presents two distinct directions: subject centrism and text centrism. We believe it is essential to take both into account when developing future professional bilinguals’ skills even though a lot of current research focuses either on the peculiarities of the text to be translated or on the subject to be communicated. However, we insist on the balancing of the text and the subject and on bringing a third dimension into the scheme where we consider three sides to the translation communication: the author of the original text with their communicative intentions and unique linguistic personality, the recipient of the message – speaker of another language and bearer of another culture, and the translator, who is placed between these two sides of communication, and as a professional bilingual is proficient in both languages and aware of both cultures. Here we speak of the translation space in which the translator has to move between the two cultural fields and bearing in mind the specifics of the message they are interpreting for the speakers of another language, looking for appropriate language forms, patterns, and means to express the author’s idea in a most comprehensible way for the recipient. Each text in its cultural field has its specific meaning, and the translator should identify them, assess their proportionality and correlation in another culture, and choose appropriate means to create a harmonic translation that would be appreciated by the recipient in a way, similar to the native speaker of the original message. Such harmonization of meanings can happen only thanks to the synergy of meanings brought together by the translator. This is especially true for unique aspects of the translated text that are specific to the original culture and language and do not easily correspond to conventional dictionary translations, often due to their emotional or culturally determined value which can be perceived by the speech personality of the translator as a professional bilingual [20; 17].

In the digital era translation is often considered as an activity perfectly carried out by AI which is universally recognized. We do not intend to confront this idea which is widely discussed in several research papers, such as the article by N.K. Garbovsky and O.I. Kostikova “Intelligence for translation: art or artificial?” [12]. We believe the concept of digital translation should be accepted as such: “Digital translation is a system of network interaction between the cognitive and communicative activities of a human translator and digital information and communication means” [12, p. 10]. However, we believe that human translation will stay relevant in the years to come thanks to the speech personality of the translator which makes the subtle meanings and nuances of the original text perceivable for the recipient – a speaker of another language utilizing the personal skills inaccessible for a machine. At the same time, digitalization and AI assistance are inevitably changing the translation process and influencing the cognitive processes existing in the translator’s speech personality.

Discussion of the results

The topic of foreign language student speech individuality as a vector for the formation of professional bilingualism holds particular relevance when considering the training of future English teachers, translators, and interpreters. Future English teachers benefit significantly from understanding and appreciating student speech individuality in the context of language learning. As aspiring educators, they must recognize and accommodate diverse learner backgrounds, linguistic styles, and learning strategies within their teaching methodologies. By acknowledging student speech individuality, language instructors get the perspective of a range of methods and techniques that meet the needs of their students and their personal learning styles that brings the process of foreign language acquisition to a more efficient level and ensures rapport in a language classroom, enhancing the whole educational result.

Additionally, incorporating the concept of linguistic personality into teacher training programs encourages prospective educators to develop empathy and cultural sensitivity toward their students. This awareness is crucial for creating inclusive classrooms where linguistic diversity is celebrated and leveraged as a valuable resource for language learning.

In the realm of translation and interpreting, student linguistic personality assumes a pivotal role in shaping the professional development of future practitioners. Translators and interpreters must possess a deep understanding of both the source and target languages, including the nuances of expression and cultural context embedded within speech individuality. By training aspiring professional bilinguals – translators and teachers likewise – in recognizing and interpreting a variety of linguistic patterns and speech peculiarities in their further professional activities, instructors provide them with opportunities to develop skills that will help the young professional bilinguals to successfully navigate the complexities of both their own and foreign languages and yield high-quality and contextually relevant output. Additionally, exposure to student speech individuality during training equips future translators and teachers with the versatility and adaptability needed to excel in various professional settings. They develop the capacity to adjust their language usage and communication style to suit the requirements of different clients, industries, and cultural contexts, thereby enhancing their overall competence as language professionals.

Taking the term concept of the speech personality of the translator, we concretize it with the relation to those situations in which the translation is performed by both the human translator and the machine translator in their interaction. We are talking about new functions of the translator, including preparation of the text for AI translation by editing it and adapting some cultural issues for the machine to understand the meaning and find the adequate equivalent that would be appropriate for the potential reader, bearer of another culture and speaker of another language. So, we approach the concept of the linguistic personality of the translator by analogy with the speech individuality of the writer, scientist, etc. We mean by this term the creative speech individuality of the translator, which is not characteristic of artificial intelligence.

The problem of a scientist's linguistic personality, their individual style of thinking and speech is discussed in a monograph conducted under the direction of M.P. Kotyurova “Idiostylistics of Scientific Speech” [14]. The authors of the monograph argue that.... “the individual creative energy of a scientist cannot but manifest itself in recitation....” [14, p. 164]. Mathematical texts are cited as arguments, which, despite the use of stereotypical language units, artificial language, abstract terms, and symbols, include reasoning that is characterized by “vivid speech individuality.”

Analyzing translation activities, we have repeatedly emphasized that the translator strives to become an elite language personality with a rich palette of speech personality [5]. For a long time, these qualities of the translator, like the personality itself, remained “in the shadows.” Nowadays, researchers are increasingly paying attention not only to studying the identity of the translator, but to creating portraits of translators (Delisle, Konstantinescu, etc.).

We believe that in the process of translation, the intention of the author of the text becomes a “trigger” for the formation of his intention in the mind of the translator, in which the author's intention is exploited and the appropriate speech means are selected to recreate it as fully as possible for the recipient. It is necessary to take into account the fact that the translator is in a different communicative situation, which may have nothing to do with the original situation. At the same time, he relies not on the situation itself, but on its understanding by the author. In other words, this process is completely cognitive, and highly abstracted. In the process of creative interpretation of the text, the individual speech competence of the translator is manifested, especially at the stage of generating the translation text.

In the translation space, we isolate the translator field, in which an individual-shaped meaning is formed. We proceed from the idea that there cannot be two identical translations from different translators. Each translator has his own unique meaning, his own cognitive base, his own individual translation picture of the world.

In the process of teaching student translators, we orient them to the fact that their translation has the right to individuality and uniqueness, to creativity and ambiguous interpretation. Suffice it to say that in different periods of translation activity, when re-translating, the same translator will create different texts, since each person experiences, consciously or unconsciously, the impact of internal and external factors on the results of activity. The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds immense potential for revolutionizing education; especially, in contexts where multimodal learning experiences are designed [1].

In the process of literary activity, an individual translation picture of the world is formed, which determines the individual creative trajectory of the student. We correlate this process with the mental space of the personality, which further determines the formation of appropriate translation competence. In modern research, the notion of cognitive load is introduced, that seems deeply related to the process we are describing: “Cognitive load theory is an instructional theory based on our knowledge of evolutionary psychology leading to human cognitive architecture. That architecture specifies individual differences due to either biological or environmental factors. Information held in long-term memory provides the major source of environmentally mediated individual differences” [7]. Thus, one key aspect of student speech individuality is the notion of linguistic transfer–the influence of one's native language on the acquisition and production of a foreign language. While linguistic transfer can sometimes pose challenges, it also serves as a vehicle for creative expression and unique language usage. For instance, a student may creatively blend idiomatic expressions from their native language with the target language, resulting in a hybrid linguistic style that reflects their individuality.

Let's try to trace this process, relying on the interpretations of the concept of the linguistic consciousness of the translator.

According to T.G. Pshenkina, who studies the mental activity of the translator, in difficult situations for translation... “the meaning as a form of fixing a stable cognitive structure is recognized, but not understood by the translator... as a result, the next stage of immersion in the meaning necessary for the mental activity of the translator cannot be realized - interpretation, i.e. reflection over the understood...” [17, p. 170]. We are talking about culturally specific information, the transmission of which requires the translator to make qualitative changes in mental abilities, use optimal cognitive models, and appropriate translation strategies that ensure intercultural transformation, i.e. improvement of cognitive, emotional, behavioral abilities, and development of creative capabilities. “In-depth education enables learners to acquire systematic knowledge, critical spirit, creative thinking, etc. This kind of learning fully taps individual potential to cultivate a complete personality.” [10]. Moreover, student speech individuality is closely intertwined with the development of linguistic competence and communicative skills. As learners progress toward professional bilingualism, their unique speech patterns evolve into a sophisticated linguistic repertoire characterized by flexibility, accuracy, and appropriateness. This evolution is not merely a mechanical process of language acquisition but a dynamic interplay between the learner's individual voice and the linguistic norms of the target language community.

According to N.K. Ryabtseva, people can mentally move from the problem statement to the potential ways of its solution by applying conscious effort and methodical thinking that involves analysis of any associations related to the problem and summarizing all possible ways that could help in resolving the existing situation in the best way. This is how human translators find genuine ways to express the idea of the original message in another language keeping its core meaning for the recipient – speaker of another language [18]. The author presents five principles that lie in the basis of creative thinking and finding unconventional solutions to a problem, including the principle of reformulating the problem, the principle of step-by-step (enumeration of ideas), the principle of preparing a solution (critical analysis of possible solutions), the principle of formulating a generalized solution idea, the principle of operational meaning (transition from an intuitive solution to its retrospective conscious explanation) [18]. As the author states, these principles form the basis of professional translation competence. This algorithm can be perfectly well applied to AI translation, with the only exception that its results, being fast and efficient as they are, are rarely if ever creative and unpredictable.

Let's give an example. In the text of the instructions for using the medical product “Fluditec” (Fluditec), the translator makes a replacement when indicating the dose. So, if in French we read: une cuillière à café, which literally means ‘coffee spoon’, then in Russian, we read ‘teaspoon’. The fact is that the volume of a coffee spoon in the understanding of the French coincides with the volume of a teaspoon in the understanding of the Russians and is 5 ml. Therefore, this translation is harmonious, and it could only be performed by a person who thinks, knows, and is competent.

Conclusion

In conclusion, foreign language student speech individuality constitutes a dynamic vector that propels learners towards the attainment of professional bilingualism. By acknowledging and harnessing the unique linguistic and personal characteristics of each learner, educators can cultivate a learning environment that nurtures authentic language use, intercultural competence, and ultimately, the realization of professional bilingualism. As educators and researchers, it is imperative to recognize the transformative potential of student speech individuality in shaping the trajectory of language acquisition and proficiency.

In essence, integrating the concept of student linguistic personality into the training of future English teachers, translators, and interpreters fosters a holistic approach to language education and professional practice. It empowers educators and practitioners to embrace linguistic diversity, cultivate cultural competence, and ultimately, contribute to the development of proficient and culturally aware language professionals equipped to navigate the complexities of multilingual communication in diverse professional settings. This approach not only enhances the quality of language instruction and translation services but also promotes inclusivity and intercultural understanding within the broader language learning and professional communities.

We believe that the formation of personal translation competence takes place in the process of the versatile development of the translator's speech personality, which requires a certain didactic effort on the part of the teacher while training future translators.

It is important that in the era of the formation of digital translation science and the introduction of artificial intelligence into translation activities, it is the formation of the translator's linguistic personality that turns out to be a significant factor in the generation of a harmonious translation text, which leads both to the improvement of the translator's speech personality and to mutual understanding between the author and the recipient, no matter what era and culture they belong to.

About the authors

Marina I. Kudritskaya

Akhmet Baitursynuly Regional University

Author for correspondence.
Email: marinakudr@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3465-3344

Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Аssociate Professor, Pedagogical Institute after Umyrzak Sultangazin

Kazakhstan, Kostanay

Lyudmila V. Kushnina

Perm National Research Plytechnic University

Email: lkushnina@yandex.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4360-7243

Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor

Russian Federation, Perm

Assel A. Bermukhambetova

Akhmet Baitursynuly Regional University

Email: kurman85@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0009-0000-2748-8470

Pedagogical Institute after Umyrzak Sultangazin

Kazakhstan, Kostanay

References

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