EQUIVALENCE: DOUBLE LINKAGE

Within the equivalence model to be outlined in this section, the scope of what constitutes an equivalence relation is limited in a number of important ways. Koller (1995) views equivalence as a process constrained on the one hand by the influence of a variety of potentially conflicting SL/TL linguistic textual and extra-textual factors and circumstances and on the other by the role of the historical–cultural conditions under which texts and their translations are produced and received.

Equivalence relations are differentiated in the light of this ‘double-linkage’, first to the ST and, second, to the communicative conditions on the receiver’s side. A number of what Koller specifically calls ‘frameworks of equivalence’ (1989:100–4) emerge. Linguistic-textual units are regarded as TL equivalents if they correspond to SL elements according to some or all of the following relational frameworks of equivalence. These ‘frames of reference’ are ‘hierarchical’ in that each type of equivalence (and the level of language at which translation equivalence is achieved) tends to subsume (i.e. retain and add to) features of the preceding level.

From Nida:

dynamic equivalence:quality of a translation in which the message of the original text has been so transported into the receptor language that the response of the receptor is essentially like that of the original receptors. Frequently, the form of the original text is changed; but as long as the change follows the rules of back transformation in the source language, of contextual consistency in the trans­fer, and of transformation in the receptor language, the message is preserved and the translation is faithful. The opposite principal is formal correspondence.

formal correspondence: quality of a translation in which the features of the form of the source text have been mechanically reproduced in the receptor language Typically, formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylistic patterns of the receptor language, and hence distorts the message, so as to cause the receptor to misunderstand or to labor unduly hard; opposed to dynamic equivalence: see also literalness.