The notion of equivalence remains the cornerstone of the translation process. Nevertheless, the definition of this term has long been a point of contention within Translation Studies. From a SL point of view, various attempts to define equivalence have been suggested by a number of scholars on the basis of the message, form and features of the respective source language. Translation equivalence is viewed according to this approach as the degree of availability of finding correspondence between the word in the SL and that of the TL.
Nida (1964), for instance, draws a distinction between two types of equivalence. The first one, formal equivalence, is associated with preserving the form and content of the SL message in the TL. The second one, dynamic equivalence, is concerned with creating the same effect of the SL word on the TL readership, which Nida refers to as the principle of equivalent effect. In Nida’s perception, formal equivalence is solely grounded on SL structure and content, which in turn determines the accuracy of the translation. Dynamic equivalence, in contrast, is meant to induce a response in the target readership by the TT message which corresponds to that produced in the SL readership by the SL message.
Newmark (1981: 38) believes that this classification of equivalence is not applicable in the translation process owing to the differing views on the importance of SL or TL and the discrepancy in the faithfulness to the respective languages. Newmark thus suggests communicative and semantic translation as alternatives to Nida’s typology of equivalence. The former is similar to Nida’s dynamic equivalence, where “translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original”; the latter resembles Nida’s formal equivalence in that “it attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original” (ibid: 39).
The source-oriented approach of equivalence is also echoed in Catford’s (1965: 27) typology of textual equivalence and formal correspondence. This distinction is actually grounded in Catford’s linguistic perception of translation in general. The
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textual equivalence in this perception is viewed as “any TL (text or portion of text) which is observed to be equivalent of a given SL form (text or portion of text). Formal correspondence, in contrast, refers to “any TL category (unite, class, structure, element of structure, etc.) which can be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the ‘same’ place in the SL”.
Another attempt to analyze the notion of equivalence is made by Koller (1989: 100), who divides equivalence into five types:
a. Denotative equivalence: this accounts for the “extralinguistic” elements related to a certain text, exceeding the linguistic components.
b. Connotative equivalence: this refers to the “stylistic equivalence” or the type of expressions chosen by the translator.
c. Text-normative equivalence: this deals with the type of a text used by the translator in accordance with the purpose of a text.
d. Pragmatic equivalence: this is concerned with the influence of the target text on the target readership.
e. Formal equivalence: this includes the ornamental elements identified in the source language such as figurative devices (ibid: 101).
Kade (1968, cited in Snell-Hornby, 1995: 20) presents a more specific model of equivalence depending on the degree of correspondence of a word between the languages concerned. This model distinguishes four types of equivalence:
a. Total equivalence: this refers to fully matching correspondences such as “standardized terminology”.
b. Facultative equivalence: this refer to a word in the TL that matches several words in the SL.
c. Approximative equivalence: this stands for a word in the TL that corresponds to a specific part of a word in the ST.
d. Null equivalence: this indicates cases where there is no TL correspondence to a SL word (such as culture-specific terms).
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In the corpus under study, we identify some cases representing a source-oriented approach. This is shown, for instance, in the metaphor BIOLOGICAL ENTITIES HAVE HUMAN EMOTIONS. Two metaphorical expressions of this conceptual mapping are rendered literally in the TT. The literal rendition thus preserves the form and content of the English metaphor in the Arabic version. Consider the following example:
ST: When the malaria parasite enters a mosquito’s body, it immediately tries to make itself at home in the insect’s gut by seeking out a specific enzyme in the digestive tissue, an
aminopeptidase. [SA 6]
TT: نع ث ويفن ههضوعبلا ءاعمأت تيت ب ههسفن ربتعي ش اروف روا ي انيف نإاا،وضولا مااسج يف ايرلاملا يليفط لخدي امدنع يمضهلا جيسنلا يف دد م ميزنإ .
[ MA 6]
BT: When the malaria parasite enters a mosquito’s body, then it immediately tries to make itself at its home in the insect’s gut by seeking out a specific enzyme in the digestive tissue, an aminopeptidase.
In summary, transmission of the form, content and response relevant to the ST to the TT is the principal tenet of this approach. It follows that a translator in this case needs to exercise his/her efforts to reproduce a lexical and textual TT corresponding to their counterparts in the ST. Moreover, the TT needs to trigger in the target readership a reaction similar to that which the ST does in the source readership. The evaluation of the translated text in this approach is thus judged in accordance with how close is the TT to the ST.