User:Margitte/Aleksander Ludskanov

Alexander Ludskanov (A.L.) (1926 - 1976) was a Bulgarian translator, Russian language teacher and semiotician. Working closely with a number of mathematicians (Bulgarian Institute of Mathematics and Informatics) and a few linguists, he carried out research on Machine Translation.

Human and Machine Translation
In segmenting and investigating the translation process for this purpose, he created a general model for the translation process, which applies to all kinds of translations. A.L. described this model in a book in Bulgarian (Prevezhdat chovekt i machinata, Human and Machine Translation, ) that he translated himself into his imperfect French, Traduction Humaine et traduction mécanique, for the Centre Linguistique quantitative de la Faculté des sciences de l'Université de Paris. The book does not have an English version. There is a German version dating back to 1972, though, and an article signed by A.L. was published in Language Science in 1975 which was in fact the adaptation of a speech held in French by A.L.

Italian version
In 2008 there appeared an Italian version of the book, edited by Bruno Osimo. This version is not a complete and unabridged translation of A.L.'s 1967 work, most technicalities related to Cybernetics and some chapters entirely devoted to machine translation having been removed. On the other hand the book contains an introductory chapter by the editor, dealing with the significance of A.L's work for today's translation science. As is remarked in the book, the value of A.L.'s model to translation science lies in the challenge it brings to the tradition of Western Europe, where the theoretical debate on translation has mainly focussed on the translation of literary texts, still largely regarded as having a higher status than the processes and strategies involved in translating other types of texts. Among Eastern European theoreticians contributing to the development of a science of translation see also Anton Popovič (text thoretician) and Peeter Torop (semiotician)