Equivalence in

Translation
By
Rosi Triandani
 “The central problem of
translation-practice is that of
finding TL equivalents”
(Catford, 1965, p. 21).
20 Century
th

Roman Jacobson

He is the first who used this

(equilavence) term in his work
published in 1959.

Followed by such prominent

theorist; Vinay and Darbelet
Jakobson, Nida, Catford, House and
Now days (Amira D. Kashgary :
2010)
 Is equivalence a basic and necessary
condition for translatability?
 Can we translate in the absence of
equivalence?
 Why do we have to chase the illusive concept
of “equivalence” in translation knowing?
 Is it suitable to look at equivalence as a
central issue in translation?
 What is equivalence?
 Is it the issue?
 Is it the Technique?
 Is it the static term?
 Is it a challenge?
 Equivalence has been viewed as a basic and
central concept and a requirement in
translating (Catford, 1965; Nida, 1964;
Newmark, 1988).
 Snell-Hornby (1988, p. 22) criticized

equivalence as ‘‘imprecise, and as

representing an illusion of symmetry
between languages’’.
The View of Different
Specialists of
Equivalence in
Translation
Nida and Taber, 1982, p. 201
 They distinguished two types of
equivalence – formal equivalence
(correspondence ) and dynamic
equivalence.
Dynamic equivalence is based on the
equivalent effect,
Formal equivalence is focused on the
message itself.
Catford, 1965
 Catford expanded translation theory and added
new criteria, such as the extent of translation, the
grammatical rank and the levels of language
involved in the translation. According to Catford,
grammatical rank `establishes translation
equivalence.

Catford’s
theory of Snell-
translation Hornby
was
(Newmark, 1988,  p. 5)
 According to Newmark,  translation
is “rendering the meaning of a text
into another language in the way that
the author intended the text.”
 Conclusion
Equivalence is a complex term which
describes phenomena from different
spheres of human knowledge.
Despite different approaches, the
equivalence is an important notion in
the translation process and it helps to
approach the meaning and value of the
translation process in general.
Conclusion
 So, in our case we use term
equivalence In the meaning of
similarity or approximation and it
shows the level of likeness
between the source and the target
text.