Translation Equivalence.

Translation equivalence is the key idea of translation. According to Hornby equivalent means equal in value, amount, volume, etc. What does it mean if applied to translation? Equivalence means that if a word or word combination of one language (A) corresponds to certain concept (C) and a word or word combination of another language (B) corresponds to the same concept (C) these words or word combinations are considered equivalent (connected by the equivalence relations). In other words, in translation equivalent means indirectly equal, that is equal by the similarity of meanings. Translation equivalents in a dictionary are just the prompts for the translator. One may find a proper equivalent only in speech due to the context, situation and background knowledge.

Let’s take an example. The English word “picture” is generally considered equivalent to the Ukrainian word “картина”. However, already in the context “to take pictures (фотографувати)” this equivalent is no longer correct as the word „picture” seems to have here no equivalent (zero equivalent); in another context “English in pictures” because of the situation (pictures in the book are small) equivalent “картина” acquires a diminutive suffix “англійська в картинках”; in a different situation, that of a painter’s studio or gallery it is “полотно” that becomes the Ukrainian equivalent of the English word “picture” and this equivalent, as well as others, disappears again in the context “put me in the picture” (введіть мене в курс справ).

The idea of translation equivalence is strongly related to that of the unit of translation, i.e. the text length required to obtain proper equivalent.

From our previous discussion we already know that one word is hardly a common unit of translation. It is especially true for so called analytical languages like English in which the words are usually polysemantic and their meaning strongly depends on the environment.

One is more likely to find a universal equivalent for a word combination, in particular for a cliché d one (hands up, ready made, good riddance), because a word combination is already a small context and the cliché d expressions are commonly used in similar situations. The general rule of translation reads: the longer is the source text, the bigger is a chance to find proper and correct translation equivalent. (This makes so hard the task of a simultaneous interpreter who deals with small speech fragments).

Traditionally and from practical viewpoint the optimal length of text for translation is a sentence. Being a self-sustained syntactic entity a sentence usually contains enough syntactic and semantic information for translation. However, there are cases when a broader stretch of the ST, called discourse (a discourse is a text fragment united by common topic, author and style) is required. It supplies additional information necessary for translation.

Let’s consider the sentence: Partisans do not always play to type. One can obtain its proper Ukrainian equivalent Члени партії не завжди діють відповідно до типового уявлення про цю партію only having considered the information supplied by the discourse (that George W. Bush after the election might not behave as a typical Republican).

Thus, put with certain degree of simplification, equivalence is a similarity of meaning observed in the units of different languages and used for translation. The units of the TL with meanings similar to the relevant units of the SL are called translation equivalents. Modern translation theory (Miram) suggests two basic grades of translation equivalents.