Albayrak 1

Chapter 3: Equivalence and Equivalent Effect (pp. 35-54)

More systematic analyses of translation began to emerge in the 1950s and 1960s. The new
debate revolved around certain linguistic key issues. The most prominent of these issues were
those of meaning and equivalence, discussed in Roman Jakobson’s 1959 paper.
Roman Jakobson: The Nature of Linguistic Meaning and Equivalence
In his paper “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959), Jakobson describes three kinds
of translation: intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic.
Jakobson follows the relation set out by Saussure between the signifier and the signified.
The former is the spoken and written signal. The latter is the concept signified. Together, the
signifier and signified form the linguistic sign, but that sign is arbitrary. Thus, the English
word “cheese” is the acoustic signifier which denotes food while the Turkish/Persian word
“peynir” denotes the same food.
Jakobson considers the problem of equivalence in meaning between words in different
languages. There is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units. Interlingual translation
involves substituting messages in one language not for separate code-units but for entire
messages in some other language. The translator recodes and transmits a message received
from another source. Thus translation involves two equivalent messages in two different
codes.
For the message to be equivalent in ST and TT, the codes will be different since they belong
to two different sign systems (languages) which partition reality differently. For instance,
Arabic has over 100 words for camel. In Jacobson’s discussion, the problem of meaning and
equivalence focuses on differences in the structure of languages.
For Jakobson, cross-linguistic differences centre on obligatory grammatical and lexical
forms. Languages differ at
-the level of gender: “house” is feminine in Romance languages, neuter in English and
German; “honey” is masculine in French, Italian, and German, but feminine in Spanish.
Turkish is gender-neutral.
-the level of aspect: in Russian, the verb morphology varies according to whether the action
has been completed or not. “–mişli geçmiş zaman” in Turkish. Aspect: the category for which
the verb is inflected in some languages to indicate the duration, repetition, completion, or
quality of the action or state denoted by the word.
-the level of semantic fields: the Turkish “kardeş” is translated as “sibling” in English, while
the gender-specific English word “brother” is translated as “erkek kardeş” in Turkish. The
Turkish word “kardeş” sometime implies a younger sibling.
These are differences between languages, but they are still concepts that can be rendered
interlingually. However, poetry is untranslatable for Jakobson. In poetry, form expresses
sense (the sense of the sound), phonemic similarity is sensed as semantic relationship. “Thou
art” and “art” in Shakespeare’s Tempest. Therefore, poetry requires “creative transposition”
according to Jakobson.
Albayrak 2

Nida and the Science of Translating

Eugene Nida tackles the questions of meaning, equivalence and translatability in the 1970s.
His theory of translation developed as he was translating the Bible. He attempts to move
translation into a more scientific era by incorporating recent work in linguistics.
The nature of meaning: advances in semantics and pragmatics
Nida describes various “scientific approaches to meaning” in semantics and pragmatics. He
moves away from the old idea that an orthographic word has a fixed meaning. He moves
towards a functional definition of meaning in which a word acquires meaning through its
context and can produce varying responses according to culture. (The words “Allah” and
“Tanrı” in The Tempest). (The Turkish word “oğul” as originally gender neutral). The
difference between “kaynana” and “kayın valide” in Turkish: sociolinguistics)
Meaning is broken down into linguistic meaning, referential meaning (the denotative
‘dictionary’ meaning) and emotive (or connotative) meaning.
Techniques to determine referential and emotive meaning focus on analysing the structure
of words and differentiating similar words in related lexical fields.
The technique of hierarchical structuring differentiates series of words according to their
level: the superordinate level animal and its hyponyms goat, dog, etc.).
The technique of componential analysis identifies and discriminates specific features of a
range of related words. For instance, relationship terms can be plotted (mapped-charted)
(grandmother, mother and cousin) according to the values of sex (male and female),
generation (the same, one or two generation apart), and lineality (direct descendant/ancestor
or not). This is useful for a translator working with languages that have different kinship
terms. For instance, the English kinship term “aunt” may be translated into Turkish as “hala”
– the father’s sister, “teyze” – the mother’s sister, and “yenge” – the paternal uncle’s wife or
the maternal uncle’s wife.
The technique of semantic structure analysis separates visually the different meanings of
“spirit” (demon, angel, god, ghost, alcohol, etc.) according to their characteristics (human vs.
nonhuman). The sense of a complex semantic term such as “spirit” varies and is particularly
conditioned by its context. The associations attached to the word are its connotative value,
and these are considered to belong to the realm of pragmatics or “language in use.” Think
about “soyka” in Turkish!
Nida stresses the importance of context when dealing with metaphorical meaning and with
complex cultural idioms, where the sense of the phrase often diverges from the sum of the
individual elements.
Albayrak 3

The influence of Chomsky

Chomsky’s generative-transformational model analyses sentences into a series of related
levels governed by rules. The key features of this model can be summarised as follows:
(1) Phrase-structure rules generate an underlying or deep structure which is (2)
transformed by transformational rules relating one underlying structure to another (e.g.
active to passive), to produce (3) a final surface structure, which itself is subject to
phonological and morphemic rules.
Chomsky argues that the structure relations described in this model are a universal feature of
human language. The most basic of such structures are kernel sentences, which are simple,
active, declarative sentences that require the minimum of transformation.
Nida incorporates key features of Chomsky’s model into his science of translation. This
model provides the translator with a technique for decoding the ST and a procedure for
encoding the TT. Thus, the surface structure of the ST is analysed into the basic elements
of the deep structure. These are transferred in the translation process and then
restructured semantically and stylistically into the surface structure of the TT.
This process of analysis, transfer and restructuring uses generative-transformational
grammar’s four types of functional class:
-events (often but not always performed by verbs)
-objects (often but not always performed by nouns)
-abstracts (quantities and qualities, including adjectives)
-relationals (including gender, prepositions and conjunctions)
Nida claims that all languages have between six and a dozen basic kernel structures and
agree far more on the level of kernels than on the level of more elaborate structures.
Formal and Dynamic Equivalence
Formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content. Thus,
it is keenly oriented towards the ST structure, which exerts strong influence in determining
accuracy and correctness. Most typical of this kind of translation are “gloss translations”
often with scholarly footnotes. It is often used in an academic environment.
Dynamic equivalence is based on the principle of the equivalent effect. The relationship
between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between
the original receptor and the message. The message has to be tailored to the receptor’s
linguistic needs and cultural expectation and aims at complete naturalness of expression. This
receptor-oriented approach considers adaptations of grammar, of lexicon and of cultural
references to be essential to achieve naturalness. The foreignness of the ST setting is
minimized.
For Nida, the success of the translation depends on achieving equivalent response. Nida
also stresses that correspondence in meaning should be prioritised over correspondence in
style.
Albayrak 4

His receptor-based approach and the principle of the equivalent effect have been criticised.
How is the effect measured and on whom? How can a text possibly have the same effect and
elicit the same response in two different cultures and times? The question of equivalence
inevitably entails subjective judgement from the translator.
Nida is aware of what he terms “the artistic sensitivity which is an indispensable ingredient
in any first-rate translation of a literary work.”

Peter Newmark: 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.
His approach resembles Nida’s approach, yet he believes that the principle of the equivalent
effect is illusory.
Semantic translation differs from literal translation in that it respects context.