Translation - Equivalence

 

            Levy, a Czech translator, considers contracting and omitting in translation as an immoral activity.  Translation is problematic and translation should find a solution not only in meaning but also in style and form.  Albrecht Newbert gives the example of Shakespeare’s sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”.  Translating this line is tough for a person if his country experiences a different climatic condition.  Similarly translating the phrase “God, the father” is also equally difficult because most cultures may have a woman as their deity or God.  The problems raised while translating idioms and metaphors are called as equivalence.

            When we take an idiom like “beating the bush”, translation is not possible based on the function of the idiom.  Idioms are unique and they do not have counterparts.  Popovic identifies four types of equivalences.  They are as follows:

1.      Linguistic equivalence, where there is homogeneity on the linguistic level of both SL and TL texts, that is word for word translation.

2.      Paradigmatic equivalence, where there is equivalence of the elements of paradigmatic expressive axis, that is elements of grammar.

3.      Stylistic equivalence, where there is functional equivalence of elements in both original and translation aiming at an expressive identity with an invariant of identical meaning.

4.      Textual equivalence, where there is equivalence of the syntagmatic structuring of a text.

            Eugene Nida focuses on two types of equivalence – formal or gloss translation and dynamic equivalence.  In formal translation the focus is on the message in form and content.  Poetry is translated into poetry, sentence to sentence and concept to concept.  This allows the reader to understand the SL context.  Dynamic translation is based on the principal of ‘equivalent effect’, that is the relation between the receiver and the message should be same on the original receiver and the SL message.

            When a poem is given a set of translators to translate you will have ‘invariant core’.  They are stable, basic and constant semantic elements in the text.  Variants or transformations on the other hand changes that do not modify the core meaning but influence the expressive form.

            Neubert considers translation equivalence as a semiotic category, comprising syntactic, semantic and pragmatic component.  These components are arranged in an order that semantic is given more importance.