Lecture 7.Translation equivalence and equivalents

1. What is translation equivalence? Define it.

Translation equivalence is the key idea of translation. Equivalence means that if 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

2. What helps to find proper translation equivalents?

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. The longer is the source text, the bigger is a chance to find proper and correct translation equivalent.

Equivalence is a similarity of meaning observed in the units of different languages and used for translation. The units of the target language with meanings similar to the relevant units of the source language are called translation equivalents.

3. What is a unit of translation? What are the optimal units for practical translation?

The unit of translation is the text length required to obtain proper equivalent.

4. What is full and partial translation equivalence? Give definitions.

For practical purpose full equivalence is presumed when there is complete coincidence of pragmatic meanings of the source and target language units. Particular equivalence is the absence of one or more of equivalence aspects i.e. of syntactic, semantic or pragmatic aspect.

5. What are syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects of translation equivalence? Which of them is the most important for adequate translation?

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.

Semantic similarity between the source and target texts is desirable, but again it is not an ultimate goal of translator.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 3935