Imam Reza (PBUH) Int. Uni. Spring 2013

Imam Reza(PBUH) Int. Uni.Spring 2013 EQUIVALENCE Translation Theories Dr. Yousefi • F. Amirpoor • G. Lavasani • M. Hosseini

Introduction • Equivalence = Equal + Value • “A relationship of equal value is possible on some levels, the theory never talks about the whole TT and ST with the same value, it states that there are some level of this relationship of equal value.” This value could be the form, length, aesthetic qualities, and etc, all entering the paradigm of equivalence. Pym • ‘Unity in difference’ • ‘Sameness in diference’ Jakobson

Preview • Introduction • History • Equivalence In TR Theory • The Equative View (Jerome, Erasmus, …) • The Taxonomic View (Mounin, Jakobson, Nida, Catford, Koller, & Newmark) • The Relativist View (Snell-hornby, Reiss, Vinay And Darbelnet) • Baker & House (Scholars Standing In The Middle) • Pym

History • Equivalence: A term used by many writers to describe the nature and the extent of the relationships which exist between SL and TL texts or smaller linguistic units. • Equivalence is the term roughly assumes that a source text and a translation can share the same value (equi-valence) on some level, and that this assumed sameness is what distinguishes translations from all other kinds of texts. • Equivalence was a key word in the linguistics-based translation theories and 1970s of the 1960s. • Equivalence, we have seen, says that the translation will have the same value as (some aspect of) the source text. Sometimes the value is on the level of form; sometimes it is reference; sometimes it is function. • According to Halverson (1997, p.207-210) equivalence is defined as" a relationship existing between two entities, and the relationship is described as one of likeness/ sameness/ similarity/ equality in terms of any of a number of potential qualities.

History • Proponents of equivalence based theories of translation usually define equivalence as the relationship between a source text (ST) and a target text (TT) that allows the TL to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place. • Thus equivalence is variously regarded as a necessary condition for translation, an obstacle to progress in translation studies, or a useful category for describing translations. • Some theorists define translation in terms of equivalence relations (Catford 1965; Nida and Taber 1969; Toury 1980a; Pym 1992a, 1995a, 2004; Koller 1995) while others reject the theoretical notion of equivalence, claiming it is either irrelevant (SnellHornby 1988) or damaging (Gentzler 1993/2001) to translation studies. Yet other theorists steer a middle course: Baker “equivalence is used 'for the sake of convenience — because most translators are used to it rather than because it has any theoretical status.”

Equivalence In TR Theory • The Equative View • The Taxonomic View • The Relativist View

Equivalence In TR Theory1. The Equative View • Classical view, Jerome, Erasmus; the Holy Script; (Kelly 1979, Renner 1989). • A = A’ • A A + A’ • A = A, A’ , A’’, A’’’ • A A, A’ , A’’, A’’’

Equivalence In TR Theory2. The Taxonomic View • Jerome: non-sacred texts should be translated more freely that sacred ones • G. Mounin (1958) • Jakobson (1959): denotative eq. is always possible (denied by other theorists) • Nida (1964) – formal equivalence & dynamic equivalence • Catford (1965) formal correspondence between SL & TL categories when they occupy, as nearly as possible, the ‘same’ place in the economies of the two languages – maximal closeness, not true identity. • Koller (1979, 1992) Denotative, connotative, text-normative, pragmatic, formal/aesthetic eq. • Ivir (1981) formal correspondence and translation equivalence • Newmark (1985) semantic vs communicative eq. • Snell-Hornby (1986)TE practically irrelevant issue (cf. 58 types of Aequivalenz in German studies)

Georges Mounin • Georges Mounin (following the rediscovery of Saussure and the rise of relativist structuralism): • “If the current theses on lexical, morphological, and syntactic structures are accepted, one must conclude that translation is impossible. • And yet translators exist, they produce, and their products are found to be useful” (1963: 5). • Since translators and translations exist, translation must be possible and equivalence must therefore exist as well.

Roman Jakobson • Jacobson points out that “there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code units.” In his description “interlingual translation involves “subtitling messages in one language not for separate code-units but for entire messages in some other language.” In Jacobson discussion the problem of equivalence focuses’ on differences in the structure and terminology of languages rather than on any inability of one language to render a message that has been written or uttered in another verbal language. • Roman Jakobson's study of equivalence gave new impetus to the theoretical analysis of translation since he introduced the notion of 'equivalence in difference‘. He suggests three kinds of translation: • Intralingual (within one language, i.e. rewording or paraphrase) • Interlingual (between two languages) • Intersemiotic (between sign systems)

Eugene Nida • The old terms such as literal, free, and faithful translation, are discarded by Nida in favor of two basic orientations or types of equivalence: • Formal equivalence: formal equivalence focuses’ attention on the message itself, in both form and content, one is concerned that the message in the receptor language should match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language. • Dynamic equivalence: (functional equivalence) dynamic equivalence is based on what Nida calls the principle of equivalent effect where the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message.

Catford • Catford’s view of equivalence as something essentially quantifiable-and of translation as simply a matter of replacing each SL item with the most suitable TL equivalent has been described as an allegory of the limitations of linguistics at that time. According to Snell-Hornby such a view “presupposes a degree of symmetry between languages” and “distorts the basic problem of translation”. • Introduced formal and textual correspondence: based on the distinction among these two translation shifts occurred. • Formal Correspondence: between SL & TL categories when they occupy, as nearly as possible, the ‘same’ place in the economies of the two languages – maximal closeness, not true identity. • Textual Equivalence: occurs when any TL text or portion of text is 'observed on a particular occasion ... to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text'.

Koller • Koller points out that while knowledge of correspondence is indicative of competence in the foreign language, it is knowledge and ability in equivalences that are indicative of competence in translation . The equivalences are hierarchically ordered according to the needs of the communicative situation. (Appropriate to the dominant function of the source text) • Koller differentiates five types of equivalence: • Denotative equivalence related to equivalence of the extralinguistic content of a text. • Connotative equivalence, related to lexical choices especially between near –synonyms. • Text normative equivalence, related to text type .with different kinds of texts behaving in different ways. • Pragmatic equivalence oriented towards the receiver of the text or message. • Formal equivalence related to the form and aesthetic of the text, includes wordplays and the individual stylistic features of the ST.

Peter Newmark • Newmark feels that the success of equivalent effect is “illusory” and “the conflict of loyalities, the gap between emphasis on source and target language will always remain as the overriding problem in translation theory and practice. He suggests narrowing the gap by replacing the old terms with those of “semantic” and “communicative” translation. • Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. Semantic translation attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original

Equivalence In TR Theory3. The Relativist View • Snell-Hornby (1988): rejects identity assumption; equivalence is an illusion • Holmes / Toury (1988, 1980): three main lines of arguments:Reject samenes as a criterion for any relation betwee SLT and TLTEquivalence is to be replaced by a more relative term: similarity, matching, family resemblance (a number of resemblances)Translator’s rationality is descriptive (more than one possible solution); using norms TLR is to find the most suitable solution • Chesterman (1997): introduction of the relation norm governing professional translation behaviour • Pym (1992): eq. is fundamentally an economic term (=exchange value in a particular situation), (Eq. depends only on what is offered, negotiated and accepted in the exchange situation) • Gutt (1991): eq. depends on the utterance itself and the cognitive state of the interpreter (e.g. TR of the Bible – for two time-distant recipents) • Toury (1980, 1995) – comparative literary studies: TL culture is the starting point, not SL culture: start with existing translations and study the resemblances existing betweeen these and their SL texts; deduce what TR strategies have been used (throughout history);establish various constraints & norms impinging on the TLR’s decision-making (Lefevere 1992) • Vermeer / Reiss / Nord (1984, 1993) – skopos theory: do not seek to achieve the same skopos as the original, but what the skopos of the translation is (e.g. poetry, purpose, ets)Relativist views on TR go hand in hand with the relativist view of language, as opposed to universalist views

Snell-Hornby • Forcefully discarded equivalence as being “unsuitable as a basic concept in translation theory”. Finds that in the course of the 1970s the English term “equivalence” became “increasingly approximative and vague to the point of complete insignificance,” and its German counterpart was “increasingly static and one-dimensional”. Snell-Hornby concludes that “the term equivalence, apart from being imprecise and ill-defined (even after a heated debate of over twenty years) presents an illusion of symmetry between languages which hardly exists beyond the level of vague approximations and which distorts the basic problems of translation” . “The narrow and hence mistaken interpretation of translational equivalence in terms of linguistic correspondence is in our opinion one of the main reasons that the very concept of equivalence has fallen into disrepute among many translation scholars.”

Katharina Reiss • Katharina Reiss recognizes three basic text types (informative, expressive, and operative) and argues that each type requires that equivalence be sought on the level corresponding to it. For Reiss and Vermeer, there are no particular features of ST which automatically need to be preserved in the translation process; however they preserve the term equivalence for those instances in which ST and TT fulfill the same communicative function.

Vinay and Darbelnet • Vinay and Darbelnet used the term equivalence to refer to one of seven translation procedures. According to Vinay and Darbelnet equivalence is a procedure which “replicates the same situations in the original, whilst using completely different wording.” • They also suggest that, if this procedure is applied during the translation process, it can maintain the stylistic impact of the SL text in the TL text. According to them, equivalence is therefore the ideal method when the translator has to deal with proverbs, idioms, clichés, nominal or adjectival phrases and the onomatopoeia of animal sounds. • With regard to equivalent expressions between language pairs, Vinay and Darbelnet claim that they are acceptable as long as they are listed in a bilingual dictionary as 'full equivalents' (ibid.:255). However, later they note that glossaries and collections of idiomatic expressions 'can never be exhaustive‘. They conclude by saying that 'the need for creating equivalences arises from the situation, and it is in the situation of the SL text that translators have to look for a solution'. Indeed, they argue that even if the semantic equivalent of an expression in the SL text is quoted in a dictionary or a glossary, it is not enough, and it does not guarantee a successful translation.

Mona Baker • Mona Baker talks about different kinds of equivalence-at the level of word, phrase, grammar, text, pragmatics, Etc, but with the provison that equivalence is influenced by a variety of linguistic and cultural factors and is therefore always relative. • Baker's Approach To Translation Equivalence • She explores the notion of equivalence at different levels, in relation to the translation process, including all different aspects of translation and hence putting together the linguistic and the communicative approach • Equivalence at word level and above word level, grammatical equivalence (refering to the diversity of grammatical categories across languages), textual equivalence (refering to the equivalence between a SL text and a TL text in terms of information and cohesion), and pragmatic equivalence (referring to implicatures and strategies of avoidance during the translation process).

Julian House • House and the elaboration of overt and covert translation • House (1997 p.57) expresses point of view about translation equivalence as follows: "the notion of equivalence is the conceptual basis of translation and, to quote Catford, ‘the central problem of translation practice is that of finding TL (target language) equivalents.” • Central to House discussion is the concept of overt and covert translation. In an overt translation the TT audience is not directly addressed and there is therefore no need at all to attempt to recreate a “second original” since an overt translation “must overtly be a translation”. By covert translation, on the other hand, is meant the production of a text which is functionally equivalent to the ST. House also argues that in this type of translation the ST “is not specifically addressed to a TC audience”.

Julian House • House (1977) is in favor of semantic and pragmatic equivalence and argues that ST and TT should match one another in function. House suggests that it is possible to characterize the function of a text by determining the situational dimensions of the ST. In fact, according to her theory, every text is in itself is placed within a particular situation which has to be correctly identified and taken into account by the translator. After the ST analysis, House is in a position to evaluate a translation; if the ST and the TT differ substantially on situational features, then they are not functionally equivalent, and the translation is not of a high quality. In fact, she acknowledges that 'a translation text should not only match its source text in function, but employ equivalent situational-dimensional means to achieve that function‘

Anthony Pym • Pym suggests, “A relationship of equal value is possible on some levels, the theory never talks about the whole TT and ST with the same value, it states that there are some level of this relationship of equal value.” This value could be the form, length, aesthetic qualities, and etc, all entering the paradigm of equivalence. • “The origin of this paradigm was never about presupposing a literal matching function, on the level of the phrase or the sentence, It was for the special cases when something radically different in the two cultures, more or less had the same function.”

Anthony Pym • Pym suggests that the equivalence paradigm arose in the 1950s to explain the possibility of translation in reaction to the view that appeared to flow from structural linguistics, namely that pairs of words in different languages are simply not of equal value, and therefore, translation is impossible. • In the early days, discussion in this paradigm was limited to single words and short phrases, but natural equivalence thinking can also be seen in later discussions of equivalences between pragmatic discourse conventions or between modes of text organization. • He introduces two concepts for the equivalence paradigm as follows. He states that the two concepts of Natural vs. Directional Equivalencebelong to ways of thinking about equivalence, they can happen within the same text or in the mind of the same theorist.

Natural Equivalence • The translator sees the problem, grasps the value and looks into the target language/ culture for the item with the same value. The equivalent is presumed to exist prior to the act of translating. • Equivalents are seen as existing prior to the act of translation; they are discovered, not created, by the translator. So to translate the road sign slow into French, one asks (according to Vinay & Darbelnet) what word is used in France to make drivers slow down, and one translates with that word (not the adjective lent but rather the verb ralentir, slow down). Thus the source determines the translation. • He points out that before the Renaissance, different languages were not seen as having equal value. There was a hierarchy with several levels, languages like Hebrew and Arabic at the top and local patois at the bottom. Translation was seen as a way of enriching a language, which had no already available equivalents. Also, before printing, there were no stable texts to which the translation could be equivalent.

Natural Equivalence • He concludes with an argument that the notion of pre-existing equivalence can only arise in the historical conditions of print culture and standard vernacular languages. • Criticizing the Natural Equivalence Pym mentions that new information (that is, new to the TL-speaking society) cannot be natural; there will not be any already existing way of talking about the concepts in the source text if, for example, missionaries are introducing a new religion through translation. Another criticism, raised by Venuti, is that writing naturally in the TL promotes parochialism; readers in the TL-speaking society get the impression that the SL society is just like them.

Directional Equivalence • The translator is actively creating something (new) in the target language/ culture, which will maintain an equivalence relationship. Regardless to what existed prior to the activity of translation. The equivalence goes one way only; it does not exist prior to translation. • The idea underlying directional equivalence theories is that translators actively create equivalence (rather than finding it ready-made) by choosing an approach that is usually expressed in some version of the literal versus free dichotomy. So both a literal and a free translation of a passage can be seen as equivalent to it; the source does not determine the translation.

Directional Equivalence • Pym says that equivalence is really a belief held by people who read translations. People who are reading something that is labeled a translation will presume that it is somehow or other equivalent to some text in another language. No linguistic comparison of individual passages from source and translation is needed to establish equivalence. Rather, as Pym has written elsewhere, professional translators simply need to avoid writing anything that might call the reader's presumption of equivalence into question, on pain of having their translations rejected.

Equivalence Paradigm VS. Paradigm Of Purpose • The theories of purposes paradigm say that translations are determined by the role they will play on the target side. The purpose of the translation is seen as independent from the purpose of the source text. Translations may have the same purpose as the source, but this is seen as a special case. Where the purpose is not the same, there is no equivalence. If purpose determines the wording of the translation, then the translation can contain outright additions.

Equivalence Paradigm VS. Uncertainty Paradigm • Uncertainty theories seem to challenge equivalence by asserting that there is no way of knowing which of several incompatible translations of a source passage is correct (corresponds to what the source writer meant). All that is possible is for each translator to interpret the source from within his/her own mental frame. Another common view in this paradigm is that form and content are inextricably linked, so that content transfer (to another linguistic form) is not really possible.

Main References • Pym, A. (2013) Exploring Translation Theories • Pym’s Exploring Translation, Videos http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/translationstudies/video.asp • Pym, A. (2007) Natural And Directional Equivalence In Theories Of Translation • Leonardi, V. (2002) Equivalence in Translation: Between Myth and Reality. • Munday, J. (2001) Introducing Translation Studies. Routledge • Chesterman, A. (1998) Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam, Benjamins • Kenny, D. (1998) 'Equivalence', in the Routledge Encyclopedia ofTranslation Studies, edited by Baker, London and New York: Routledge, 77-80. • Fawcett, P. (1997) Translation and Language: Linguistic Theories Explained, St Jerome Publishing • Vinay, J.P. and Darbelnet, J. (1995) Comparative Stylistics of French and English: a Methodology for Translation, translated by J. C. Sager and M. J. Hamel, Amsterdam, John Benjamins. • Baker, M. (1992) In Other Words: a Coursebook on Translation, London: Routledge. • House, J. (1977) A Model for Translation Quality Assessment, Tübingen: Gunter Narr. • Nida, Eugene A. and Taber, C.R. (1969 / 1982) The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden: E. J. Brill. • Catford, J.C. (1965) A Linguistic Theory of Translation: an Essay on Applied Linguistics, Oxford Uni. Press. • Nida, Eugene A. (1964) Towards a Science of Translating, Leiden: E. J. Brill. • Jakobson, R. (1959) 'On Linguistic Aspects of Translation', in R. A. Brower (ed.) On Translation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 232-39.

“Life Is Not What We Expect It To Be, Life Is How We Live It.” Thank You

Imam Reza (PBUH) Int. Uni. Spring 2013