Many approaches to translation have started out from the idea that there are 'translation equivalents' which can be identified between languages. Is the notion of translation equivalent a useful one? In what ways is it problematic?

University Degree European Languages, Literature and related subjects

Many approaches to translation have started out from the idea that there are ‘translation equivalents’ which can be identified between languages. Is the notion of translation equivalent a useful one? In what ways is it problematic?

The various methodologies of translation are wide-ranging and at times controversial. As well as being controversial (different translators will, after all, inevitably choose to operate in different ways), these modi operandi are of an importance that might perhaps be surprising to the uninitiated. The annual Stephen Spender Prize for translation asks its entrants to write three hundred words on the reasons chosen for translating the selected poem, any problems encountered during translation, and, perhaps crucially, if they have chosen to retain the poem’s original form (such as constraints related to metre and rhyme). The judges obviously consider this a crucial insight into the translator’s approach to the poem, and perhaps even their approach to translation as a whole.

Anecdotal evidence certainly reinforces this. A professional translator known to me personally once reported that he received complaints of spelling mistakes in a document that he had been asked to translate into English. It later transpired that these ‘mistakes’ were the English equivalents of words that have distinctively different American spellings, such as the use of the –ise suffix where Americans would use –ize. His retort to the company that had asked for the translation was that they had asked for the document to be translated into English, not into American. Such distinctions, then, even what might be perceived like this one to be ‘small’ distinctions, therefore clearly hold some importance.

The above rather suggests that an equivalence of intent is important (i.e. both parties understanding everything involved in the translation, including purpose, intent and impetus) as well as a linguistic equivalence. However, even the aim of the translator – to produce a text that at least roughly conveys the meaning of the original text accurately – can be fraught with controversy as professional translators grapple over whether this should mean a literal translation (i.e., translating word-for-word from one language into another) or a semantic translation (whereby the translation of each word may not be exact, but the meaning is conveyed in a way that flows well in the language into which the document is being translated). The former runs the risk of sounding dry and sapping the original document of its ‘emotion’ (if it had it) and the extent to which the document sounds and reads pleasingly to the senses. The latter runs the risk of departing from the text’s original meaning and the author’s original intent for a text that flows well in the ‘new’ language by choosing words that are perhaps only roughly, rather than exactly, equivalent.

The key, perhaps, is to strike a balance between the two approaches, but the notion of the ‘translation equivalent’ still holds a lot of weight in the world of professional translation. This essay will explore whether or not this notion is helpful and useful, and dissect in detail any problems associated with it. I hope to show how the importance of different types of equivalence fluctuates according to the type of document being translated, and how a ‘mix and match’ approach might be more beneficial to a single translator rather than adopting a linear approach for all types of ...

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To an extent, the notion of a translation equivalent can be useful, as it provides translators with a framework to use as a springboard for accurate translation. It can be reassuring for translators to know if words and phrases have corresponding expressions across languages and it undeniably makes the job easier if exact translations exist. Mona Baker, in her 1992 publication Lost for Words, talks helpfully about various categories of formal equivalence, such as grammatical equivalence (equivalence across grammatical categories, even when these differ between the languages offered), equivalence at word or morpheme level, textual equivalence (equivalence in terms of information, coherence and cohesion), and pragmatic equivalence (when referring to implicatures – what is implied rather than explicitly said - and recreation of culture during the translation process). The last point – that of pragmatic equivalence – is probably the closest to my earlier remark about equivalence of intent in its hint of cultural equivalence and authorial intent.

However, while the categories offered by Baker may seem satisfactory, translation equivalence does, of course, go further than at word-level. Word-level translation is by no means the whole methodology and many translators advocate a phrase-by-phrase methodology instead of a word-by-word approach. It is pointed out in Sinclair‘s “Corpus to Corpus” that many machine-assisted methods start with a word-by-word approach [ibid., p. 177] and that this is largely accountable for many of the disappointing results that we see in research that has been carried out regarding such machine-reliant processes of translation. This ambiguity (associated with a word-by-word basis for translation) is backed up by dictionaries, where many definitions are often given under just one word.

So given this ambiguity, how useful is a notion of equivalence in the field of translation? The translator Eugene Nida was the first to articulate a distinction between dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence, which goes a long way towards clarifying the usage of equivalence and highlighting its most useful elements. The former focuses on a more natural rendering in the target language when its readability is more important than the preservation of the original wording; the latter allows readers who are familiar with the source language to see how meaning was expressed in the original text. The latter can also lead to creation of (for example) neologisms when concepts are not already represented by a word in both languages, leading to a beneficial broadening of vocabulary on both sides.

However, the extent of this usefulness can only go so far, and it is perhaps better to think of formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence as approaches to be used in conjunction with one another, rather than separately. Dynamic equivalence, for example, is going to be unhelpful on its own when given assignments such as technical documents, where use of exact terminology is important; equally, formal equivalence is unhelpful if used alone when approaching poems, for example – if the translator wishes to keep the rhyme and metre of the poem the same as in the source language, lexical variations have to be made in order for this fidelity to the author to be achieved. It is therefore clear that literal translations could be more problematic than beneficial in such areas, and only proves further that the two approaches ought to be used together for maximum benefit to the translation.

The notion of equivalence in translation also assumes, to an extent, that there is a lack of variation between the standard versions of the languages used (source language and target language). However, dialect will always exist in languages and depending on the type of document being translated, this variationist aspect could cause further problems. Standard versions of languages are not the only versions to exist, and the line between standard versions and dialectical versions can become blurred, even if this blurring only takes place in terms of individual lexical items. Related to this is another kind of lexical problem associated with translational equivalence: many lexicons of any two given languages simply do not correlate in terms of size, making exact translations more difficult as an equivalent word in a language with a smaller lexicon has less chance of even existing (one good example in the ancient languages lies in Latin and Ancient Greek, whereby the latter has a lexicon approximately three times as large as that of the former).

Another potential problem with the notion of equivalence is that it may vary depending on whether the translator views the translation as a process or as a result. If viewed as a result, the emphasis is on a static relationship between pairs of words or phrases in different languages, whereas if viewed as a process, the emphasis is on the communication between the sender of the original message and the sender of the translated message (or, the sharing of ideas). This again draws on the equivalence of intent that I mentioned earlier, whereby the translator must consider how far they wish to reflect authorial intent and how far the extent of this will do the piece of work justice. This can also depend on the sociolinguistic relationship that the translator has with their readers (whether actual or potential), as writing into different registers indeed also changes the end result of the translation.

Equivalence has a further complication in its lack of tangibility: anyone who has attempted to accurately translate a text not only does so with use of a dictionary but also with much “feeling one’s way through” – instinct for a language and for the style and aims of a text are not always things that can be written down and coded. This reliance on instinct does not necessarily reflect carelessness or a lack of accuracy; rather, it is something that comes with fluency in the language and it therefore follows that (at least to a degree) equivalence, too, is something that can come instinctively, and it is likely a mixture of literal and dynamic translation.

This mixture of approaches is perhaps the most reasonable methodology with which translators working in the modern world can or should go forward. There are pros and cons that go with each translation philosophy so we must allow for some "give-and-take" if we choose to go with one particular translation that is predominantly governed by one philosophy. Words and/or ideas expressed in the original language can never be 100% perfectly expressed in another language because that second language may not even have an equivalent word available. Translation not only reveals lexical ‘holes’ when the two languages concerned are put side by side, but also reveals semantic voids as a result of the universal (but differing) lexical selectivity of languages, and this is why the two approaches have to be used simultaneously in order to at least partly resolve these discrepancies. It is also worth bearing in mind that each translator is going to be a different ‘linguistic person’ with a different linguistic consciousness to the writer of the original source language text, and that therefore, even if we work on that basis alone, the notion of total equivalence is weakened [Ivir, ibid., 53]. The presence of correspondent formal elements in texts that express equivalent messages is a matter of likelihood, rather than certainty, leaving room for the natural instinct of translators to come into play.

Works cited

Baker, M., Lost For Words: A Coursebook On Translation, Routledge: London and New York, 1992

Dagut, M., “Semantic "Voids" as a Problem in the Translation Process”, Poetics Today, pp.61-71, 1981

Ivir, V., “Formal Correspondence vs. Translational Equivalence Revisited”, Poetics Today, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 51-9, 1981

Nida, E., Towards a Science of Translating, Leiden, 1994

Sinclair et al, “Corpus to Corpus: A Study of Translation Equivalence”, International Journal of Lexicography, vol. 9, no. 3, Oxford University Press, pp. 171-8, 1996

Works consulted

Derrida, J., (tr. Venuti, L.), “What Is A ‘Relevant’ Translation?”, Critical Inquiry, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 174-200, 2001

D’Hulst, L., “Les Variantes Textuelles des Traductions Littéraires”, Poetics Today, pp.133-141, 1981

Sinclair et al, “Corpus to Corpus: A Study of Translation Equivalence”, International Journal of Lexicography, vol. 9, no. 3, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 171-8, p. 175

Nida, E., Towards a Science of Translating, Leiden, 1994

Ivir, V., “Formal Correspondence vs. Translational Equivalence Revisited”, Poetics Today, vol. 2, no. 4, 1981, pp. 51-9, p. 52

Dagut, M., “Semantic "Voids" as a Problem in the Translation Process”, Poetics Today, pp.61-71, p. 64, 1981