45
Abstract: The use of equivalents in the source and target languages were under the consideration in this article. The
main purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the idea of translation equivalence is closely linked with the translation
unit, i.e. the length of the text that is needed to get the correct translation. The methods of observation, experiments,
modeling and generalization were used in this article. This equivalence is a basis of this article.
Key words: equivalent,
source language, target language, full equivalent, partial equivalent.
Before speaking about translation equivalence I would
like to start from the word translation.There are many
definitions of the word translation. Many translators and
scholars gave their own definitions to the word translation.
One of well-known specialist who works in translation
studies sphere is V.N.Komissarov. There is a definition
about translation below.
Translation is a means of interlingual communication.
The translation makes possible an exchange of information
between the users of different languages by producing
in the target language (TL or the translating language) a
text which has an identical communicative value with the
source (or original) text (ST). This target text (TT, that is
the translation) is not fully identical with ST as to its form
or content due to the limitations imposed by the formal and
semantic differences between the source language (SL)
and TL. Nevertheless the users of TT identify it, to all
intents and purposes, with ST – functionally, structurally
and semantically. [1]
When we say about
translation equivalence
V.N.Komissarov reminds at once. According to
V.N.Komissarov, there are five types of equivalents. They
are: the first type, the second type, the third type, the
fourth type, the fifth type. The first type.It refers to aim
of communication. For example: That’s a pretty thing to
say. – Постыдился бы! The aim of this type is to express
the emotion of the speaker. The second type. It refers to
description of situation. For example: He answered the
phone. – Он снял трубку. The third type. It refers to the
communication. For example: Scrubbing makes me bad-
tempered. – От мытья полов у меня настроение портит-
ся. The fourth type. It refers to the structure of express. For
example: I told him what I thought of her. – Я сказал ему
свое мнение о ней. The fifth type. It refers to language
signs. For example: The house was sold for 10 thousand
dollars. – Дом был продан за 10 тысяч долларов. [2]
Other theorists’ work about equivalence. Nida and Tiber:
Formal correspondence and dynamic equivalence. Nida
argued that there are two different types of equivalence,
namely formal equivalence – which in the second
edition by Nida and Tiber 1982 is referred to as formal
correspondence – and dynamic equivalence. Formal
correspondence “focuses attention on the message itself,
in both form and content”,
unlike dynamic equivalence
which is based upon “the principle of equivalent effect”.
In the second edition or their work, the two theorists
provide a more detailed explanation of each type of
equivalence. Formal correspondence consists of a TL
item which represents the closest equivalent of a SL word
or phrase. Nida and Tiber make it clear that there are not
always formal equivalents between language pairs. They
therefore suggest that these formal equivalence should be
used wherever possible if the translation aims at achieving
form rather than dynamic equivalence. The use of formal
equivalence might at times have serious implications in the
TT since the translation will not be easily understood by the
target audience (Fawcett,1997). Nida and Tiber themselves
assert that “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”. Dynamic
equivalence is defined as a translation principle according
to which a translator seeks to translate the meaning of the
original in such a way that the TL wording will trigger the
same impact on the TC audience as the original wording
did upon the ST audience. They are argue that “Frequently,
the form of the original text is changed; but as the change
follows the rules of back transformation in the sorce
language, of contextual consistency in the transfer, and
of transformation
in the receptor language, the message
is preserved and the translation is faithful.” On can easily
see that Nida is in favour of the application of dynamic
equivalence, as a more effective translation procedure.
This is perfectly understandable I we take into account the
context of the situation in which Nida was dealing with
the translation phenomenon, that is to say, his translation
of the Bible. Thus, the product of the translation process,
that is text in the TL, must have the same impact of the
different readers it was addressing.
Translation equivalence is the key idea of translation.
According to A.S. Hornby equivalent means equal in
value, amount, etc. As 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
relation).In other words, in translation equivalent means
indirectly equal, that is equal by the similarity of meanings.
For example, words table and стол are equivalent through
the similarity of the meanings of the Russian word стол
and one! Of the meaning of the English word table. In
general sense and in general case words table and стол are
not equal or equivalent – they are equivalent only under
specific translation conditions.
This simple idea is very
important for the understanding of translation: the words
that you find in a dictionary as translations of the given
foreign language word are not the universal substitutes
of this word in your language. These translations
(equivalents) are worth for specific cases which are yet
to be determined by the translator. The general rule of
translation reads: the longer is the source text, the bigger is
a chance to find proper and correct translation equivalent.
Being a self-sustained syntactic entity a sentence usually
contains enough syntactic and semantic information for
translation. However, there are cases (and not so rare ones)
when a broader stretch of the source text (called discourse)
is require. It supplies additional information necessary
for translation. Full Translation Equivalents. From the
previous discussion (bearing in mind differences in mental
images standing for the equivalent words in different
languages and context dependence of equivalents) it may
be righteously presumed that one can hardly find truly full
46
and universal equivalents for a word. However, as you all
know practical translation dates back to ancient times and
since then translations are commonly regarded and used
as full-pledged substitutes of the relevant source texts.
That is why despite contradicting
theoretical evidence
full equivalence is commonly accepted as a convenient
makeshift. For practical purpose full equivalence is
presumed when there is complete coincidence of pragmatic
meanings of the source and target language units.Partial
Translation Equivalents. To understand the partiality
and incompleteness of translation equivalence let us
consider the syntactic , semantic and pragmatic aspects
of equivalence, because the partiality of equivalence is ,
as a matter of fact , the absence of one or more of these
aspects. Let us start from examples. Книга as an equivalent
of the English word book is full in all equivalence aspects
because it has similar syntactic functions (those of a
Noun), its lexical meaning is also generally similar, and
the pragmatic aspect of this equivalent (the message
intent and target audience reaction) coincides with that of
the English word. Thus, книга is conventionally regarded
as a full equivalent of the word book. To take another
example of partial equivalence
consider the English
saying Carry coal to Newcastle. If one translates it as
возить уголь в Ньюкасл it would lack the pragmatic
aspect of equivalence (The intent of this message Bring
something that is readily available locally would be lost,)
because the Russian audience could be unaware of the
fact that Newcastle is the center of a coal-mining area. If
, however , one translates it Ехать в Тулу со своим са-
моваром it would be lose the semantic similarity, but
preserve the pragmatic intent of the message, which, in
our opinion, is the first priority of translation. Anyway,
both suggested translation equivalents of this saying are
considered partial. Partial equivalence is, as a matter of
fact, the absence of one or more of equivalence aspects,
i.e. of syntactic, semantic or pragmatic aspect. It should
be born in mind, however, that syntactic equivalence of
translation units longer than several words, is a rare case,
indeed, if one deals with two languages having different
systems and structures (English and Russian are a good
example). Moreover, it is hardly a translator’s
target to
preserve the structure of the source texts and in many
instances this means violation of syntactic and stylistic
rules of the target language. Semantic similarity between
the source and target texts desirable, but again it is not an
ultimate goal of a translator. More often than not slight
differences in meaning help to adapt the idea of the original
message to the target audience. What is really important
for translation adequacy is the pragmatic equivalence.
When the original message is lost for the target audience it
is a failure of the translation and translator and no semantic
or syntactic similarity will redress the damage. [3]
Source text: « Білем, сен қазір жұмыстасың. Мен
сияқты кімнің нешеге келгенін есептеп, бос қиялға
беріліп жатқан жоқсың. Бүгін сен жұмыстан шыққан
бойда тура балалар бақшасына барасың, Қайратты
әкелесің. Оған дейін мектептен Мұхит та кеп қалады.
» [13].
Translation: « I know, sweetheart, you are working now.
You have no time for vargat thoughts. In the evening as
usual, you’ll pick Kairat up from the kindergarten. Muhit,
too will return from his school. » [20]
Source text: «Кешегі
өзің көргендей мәре-сәре
емеспін. Бүгін көңілім су сепкендей баслып қалған
сияқты. Неге дейсің ғой?» [13]
Translation: « Today I’m no longer the piteous wreck
that I was yesterday. Today I’m like a flower full of drew.
You may wonder why. Well, listen to this! » [20]
Thus, one may suggest that translation equivalence
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: