Some Basic Concepts Related to Translation

Sugeng Hariyanto
sugenghari@gmail.com
Translation
The word translation may refer to three things (Munday, 2001: 4-5). It can
refer to the general subject field, the process and the product. The first, translation can be
seen as a field of study. As a general subject field, translation is a discipline which
concerns itself with problems raised by production and description of translations
(Lafevere in Shuttleworth, 1997: 183). As a process, translation is the process of the
changing of original written text (the source text or ST) in the original verbal language
(the source language or SL) into a written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal
language (the target language or TL) (Munday, 2001: 4-5). As a product, translation is a
written or spoken expression of the meaning of a word, speech, book, etc. in another
language.
Many translation experts propose their definitions of translation based on their
ideas whether translation is seen as a process or a product.
According to Brislin (1976: 1), who sees translation as a process, translation is a
general term referring to the transfer of thoughts and ideas from one language to another,
whether the language is in written or oral form, whether the languages have established
orthographies or not; or whether one or both languages is based on signs, as with signs of
the deaf. Similarly, according to Wills (1982: 3), translation is a transfer process which
aims at the transformation of a written source language text (SLT) into an optimally
equivalent target language text (TLT), and which requires the syntactic, the semantic and
the pragmatic understanding and analytical processing of the source text. While
according to Hartmann and Stork (in Bell, 1991: 6), translation is the replacement of a
representation of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a
second language
Seeing it as a product, Dubois (in Bell, 1991: 5) sees translation as the
expression in another language (or target language) of what has been expressed in other,
source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences.

Kinds of translation
Roman Jakobson differentiates three kinds of verbal sign translation. This
categorization are very often quoted or reprinted in textbooks on translation (Venuti,
2000: 113-118, Munday, 2001: 5, Hatim and Munday, 2004: 124-125). The three kinds of
translation are as follows:
1)

Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means

of other verbal signs of the same language;

2)

Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by

means of some other language;

3)

Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by

means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.
Generally, the term translation is used in the second sense. In this

categorization Jakobson uses the word verbal signs, which can be written or spoken.
Thus, it covers also the translation of spoken text. In textbooks on translation, the
translation of spoken text is usually called interpreting (Hatim and Munday, 2004: 4).
The types of translation can also be based on the purpose of translating the text.
There are two types here: inbound and outbound translation
(www.languagepartners.com). Inbound translation is done to understand the content of
the text. For such documents, poor translation will do. For outbound translation, which
is done to communicate, the quality standard is higher so as to prevent misunderstanding.
Theories on Translation Equivalence
Equivalence is the mainstay of translation theory as translating is basically producing the
target text that is equivalent with the source text. The discussion on the concept of
equivalence is as old as the translation study itself. Catford (1965) makes distinction
between formal correspondence and textual equivalent. Formal correspondence is
any TL category, which may be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the same place in
the system hierarchy of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL (1965: 32).
TL category here is unit, class, structure, element of structure, etc. Thus, this is syntactic

or semantic equivalence with no context being considered. In speech act terminology, it is

the locutionary correspondence.
Textual equivalence is, according to him, any TL form (text/portion of text)
which is observed to be equivalent of a given SL form (text/portion of text). In speech
act terminology, it can be called illocutionary correspondence. The equivalence is
discovered by competent bilingual informant or translator (1965: 27). This is the
illocutionary equivalence. However, Catford also states that in some cases there is no
target language equivalent of a certain source language item.
Nida (1964) states that it is not the identity of situationally relevant features that is
the main criterion for equivalence, but rather the identity of the receivers reaction. He
proposes two main types of equivalence: formal equivalence and dynamic
equivalence. Formal equivalence is achieved if the translator attributes priority to the SL
text, and tries to render the SL text as faithfully as possible, not only in its content but
also in its form including (1) grammatical units, (2) consistency in word usage, and (3)
meanings in terms of the source context. In contrast, dynamic equivalence is achieved
when the translator can achieve the closest natural equivalent of the SL text.
A quite recent theory on equivalence is presented by Baker (1992) in her book In
Other Words. She proposes a typology of equivalence. She identifies five levels of
equivalence in translation: (a) at word level equivalence, (b) above-word level
equivalence, (c) grammatical equivalence, (d) textual equivalence (thematic and
information structure; cohesion), and (e) pragmatic equivalence. The inclusion of textual
and pragmatic equivalence (which are not done explicitly by previous theorists) indicates
that she puts together the linguistic and the communicative or functional approach in
seeing translation phenomena.
Baker is sensible in ordering these equivalence levels, ranging from the smallest
unit up to the biggest unit. However, it should be noted from the beginning that this is a
course book so that the discussion is aimed at providing material for translation course.
As any teaching material, it simplifies few things to make them teachable. The concept of
at-word level of equivalence, for example, can be readily questioned when we are
confronted with real translation work as usually translators do not work based on wordfor-word equivalence.

Within at-word level equivalence, Bakers discuses the equivalence of lexical

meaning, semantic field and lexical sets. She argues that, in a bottom-up approach to
translation, equivalence at word level is the first element to be taken into consideration by
the translator. Translators should pay attention to several factors when considering to
translate single words, such as number, gender and tense (Baker, 1992:11-12).
Next, she discusses the equivalence of collocation and idioms and fixed
expressions as the above-word level of equivalence. Here collocation and idioms that
have the same or similar meaning and similar form in the target language should be used
to gain equivalence. If similar collocation is not available in the target language, new
collocation can be created (Baker, 1992:52). If such idioms are not available, look for the
ones with similar meaning and different form. Finally, when the later are not available,
paraphrase can be used (Baker, 1992:72-77).
In grammatical equivalence, she reminds that grammatical rules may vary
across languages and this may create problems for translators. This may urge translator to
omit or add certain information in the target text to compensate the difference in
grammatical rules. She focuses on number, tense and aspects, voice, person and gender as
grammatical aspects that may create problems.
Within textual equivalence area, she discusses thematic information structures,
given-new information, and word orders and communicative function. Textual
equivalence here refers to the equivalence between a SL text and a TL text in terms of
information and cohesion. Translators have to decide whether they will maintain the
cohesive ties as well as the coherence of the SL text or not. The decision is guided by
three main factors: target audience, purpose of the translation and text type.
For the pragmatic equivalence, she points out the need for equivalence in
terms of coherence, presupposition, and implicature. A translator needs to put across the
implied meaning in the target text as the role of the translator is to recreate the authors
intention in another culture that would be well understood by the target audience.
Finally, Klaudy (2003 in Kroly, 20061) proposes the conditions of
communicative equivalence. According to this writer, three types of equivalence relations
characterise a communicatively equivalent translation, namely referential, contextual and
1

Kroly, Kriztina, 2006. Translation Studies. Powerpoint presentaion. Retrieved from

seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/KarolyKrisztina/TS-lecture5.ppt on 3 April 2007

functional equivalence. Referential equivalence condition states that the TL text should
refer to the same segment of reality, to the same facts, events and phenomena as the SL
text. The contextual equivalence requires that individual sentences should occupy the
same position in the whole of the TL text as their correspondents in the whole of the SL
text. Finally, functional equivalence demands that the TL text play the same role in the
community of TL readers as the SL text in the community of SL readers (this role may
involve transfer of information, provoking certain emotions, appeal, etc.)
The discussion on the nature of equivalence offers an impression that later and
later theme of translation equivalence discussion shifts from meaning vs form
equivalence dichotomy to sentential vs textual or functional equivalence dichotomy. This
functional orientation is to be discussed further in the subsequent sections (skopos
theory). This might be related with the fact that later theorists do not only talk about
literary translation from linguistic point of view but also about non-literary translation
from various point of views in an increasing volume and depth.