The purpose of this paper is to provide the future translator with a functional
strategy with which he or she can obtain cognitive mastery of the micro and
macro patterns of the text before having to reckon with the variable difficulties
of the source-language itself . If instead, the translator concentrates on the
source-language words and perceives them only at the level of sign, the words
can act as a barrier, reducing access to the information load of the text itself. As
a solution, the author of this paper emphasises the importance of organising the
interpretative reding-translation of the message into a logical process
independent of the language code, in essence paraphrasing. Her proposal for a
forrnalised inralinguistic pre-translation strategy is based on the analysis of the
patterns inherent in special language texts at the various linguistic levels
(lexical, syntactic, structural and formal). Only when the trainee translators have
accomplished this first pre-translation strategy should they attempt any
interlinguistic transposition based on correspondence and/or equivalence.
