COGNITIVE MAPPING OF DISCOURSE AS A METHOD OF STRUCTURING TRANSLATOR EXPERTISE

In the context of growing demands for the translation of specialized texts, methods that accelerate the translator’s immersion into a new subject area and structure complex expert knowledge are becoming increasingly relevant. This article examines cognitive mapping of discourse from two perspectives: on the one hand, as a natural process inherent to human consciousness, subconsciously activated when a translator works with a text, and on the other hand, as a deliberate method for organizing a translator’s expert knowledge, forming the basis of a macrostrategy at the pre-translation stage. The authors hypothesize that a cognitive map can serve as an eff ective tool for systematization and visualization, useful for structuring new knowledge and representing existing knowledge, thereby optimizing the process of discourse analysis, reducing cognitive load, and consequently improving translation quality. To test this hypothesis, an experimental study was conducted involving 25 respondents with varying levels of expertise. As part of the experiment, a cognitive map of the engineering discourse “mining technology” was created using modern tools (NLP, LLM, IOctopus). The eff ectiveness of the map was assessed by comparing the quality of translations of control and main texts using the TQI index, as well as through surveys and sentiment analysis of respondent feedback. The article presents intermediate quantitative and qualitative results of the experimental study. It was found that the use of the cognitive map contributed to a statistically signifi cant improvement in translation quality - on average by 22.4%. Qualitative analysis revealed a positive perception of the tool by the majority of respondents (76%) and showed that the nature of interaction with the map varies depending on the translator’s level of expertise. The research demonstrates that cognitive mapping is an eff ective tool for transferring expert knowledge and developing translation competence within a specialized discourse.