Equivalence and equivalent effect:

 Roman Jacobson: the nature of linguistic meaning and equivalence

Structuralist Roman Jacobson describes three kinds of translation: intralingual,
interlingual and intersemiotic, with interlingual referring to translation between two
different written sign systems.
Jacobson follows the theory of language proposed by the famous Swiss linguist
Saussure. Saussure distinguished between the linguistic system (langue) and specific
individual utterances (parole). Central to his theory of langue, he differentiated between
the ‘signifier’ (the spoken and written signal) and the ‘signified’ (the concept), which
together create the linguistic ‘sign’.
The sign is arbitrary or unmotivated.
Jacobson also stresses that it is possible to understand what is signified by a word even
if we have never seen or experienced the concept or thing in real life. Examples he gives
are ambrosia and nectar, words which modern readers will have read in Greek myths
even if they have never come across the substances in real life; this contrasts with
cheese, which they almost certainly have encountered first-hand in some form.
Jacobson then moves on to consider the thorny problem of equivalence in meaning
between words in different languages, part of Saussure’s parole. He points out that
‘there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units’. Thus, the Russian syr is not
identical to the English cheese. Since the Russian ‘code-unit’ does not include the
concept of soft white curd cheese known in English as cottage cheese. In Russian, that
would be tvarog and not syr. This general principle of interlinguistic difference between
terms and semantic fields importantly also has to do with a basic issue of language and
translation.
Full linguistic relativity would mean that translation was impossible, but of course
translation does occur in all sorts of different contexts and language pairs. In Jakobson’s
description, interlingual translation involves ‘substitut[ing] messages in one language
not for separate code-units but for entire messages in some other language’. Thus, a
translation of cottage cheese would not be the TT unit for cottage plus the unit for
cheese; the message cottage cheese would be considered and translated as a whole. For
the message to be ‘equivalent’ in ST and TT, the code-units will necessarily be different
since they belong to two different sign systems (languages) which partition reality
differently.
In Jacobson’s discussion, the problem of meaning and equivalence focuses on
differences in the structure and terminology of languages rather than on any inability of
one language to render a message that has been written or uttered in another verbal
language. Thus, Russian can still express the full semantic meaning of cheese even if it
breaks it down into two separate concepts.1 The question of translatability then
becomes one of degree and adequacy.
For Jacobson, cross-linguistic differences, which underlie the concept of equivalence,
center around obligatory grammatical and lexical forms: ‘Languages differ essentially in
what they must convey and not in what they may convey’. Examples of differences are
easy to find. They occur at:
 the level of gender: e.g. house is feminine in Romance languages, neuter in
German and English; honey is masculine in French, German and Italian, feminine
in Spanish, neuter in English, etc.;
 the level of aspect: in Russian, the verb morphology varies according to whether
the action has been completed or not;
 the level of semantic fields, such as kinship terms: e.g. the German Geschwister is
normally explicated in English as brothers and sisters, since siblings is rather
formal. Similarly, in Chinese it would be 兄弟姐妹 (‘xio¯ ng dì jieˇ mèi’, literally
meaning ‘elder brother, younger brother, elder sister, younger sister’).
These examples illustrate differences between languages, but they are still concepts
that can be rendered interlingually. As Jacobson puts it, ‘[a]ll is conveyable in any
existing language’. For him, only poetry, with its unity of form and sense and where
‘phonemic similarity is sensed as semantic relationship’, is considered ‘untranslatable’
and requires ‘creative transposition’.
 Nida and ‘the science of translating’
Eugene Nida’s theory of translation developed from his own practical work from the
1940s onwards when he was translating and organizing the translation of the Bible,
training often inexperienced translators who worked in the field.2 Nida’s theory took
concrete form in two major works in the 1960s: Toward a Science of Translating and the
co-authored The Theory and Practice of Translation. The title of the first book is
significant; Nida attempts to move Bible translation into a more scientific era by
incorporating recent work in linguistics. His more systematic approach borrows
theoretical concepts and terminology both from semantics and pragmatics and from
Noam Chomsky’s work on syntactic structure which formed the theory of a universal
generative–transformational grammar.
Chomsky’s generative–transformational model analyses sentences into a series of
related levels governed by rules. In very simplified form, the key features of this model
can be summarized as follows:
(1) Phrase-structure rules generate an underlying or deep structure which is (2)
transformed by transformational rules relating one underlying structure to another (e.g.
active to passive), to produce (3) a final surface structure, which itself is subject to
phonological and morphemic rules.
The structural relations described in this model are held by Chomsky to be a universal
feature of human language. The most basic of such structures are kernel sentences,
which are simple, active, declarative sentences that require the minimum of
transformation (e.g. the wolf attacked the deer).
Nida incorporates key features of Chomsky’s model into his ‘science’ of translation. In
particular, Nida sees that it provides the translator with a technique for decoding the ST
and a procedure for encoding the TT. Thus, the surface structure of the ST is analyzed
into the basic elements of the deep structure; these are ‘transferred’ in the translation
process and then ‘restructured’ semantically and stylistically into the surface structure
of the TT. This three-stage system of translation (analysis, transfer and restructuring) is
presented like this:

3.2.2 The nature of meaning: advances in semantics and pragmatics

When it comes to analysing individual words, Nida describes various ‘scientific
approaches to meaning’ related to work that had been carried out by theorists in
semantics and pragmatics. Central to Nida’s work is the move away from the old idea
that a word has a fixed meaning and towards a functional definition of meaning in which
a word ‘acquires’ meaning through its context and can produce varying responses
according to culture.
Meaning is broken down into the following:
(1) Linguistic meaning: the relationship between different linguistic structures,
borrowing elements of Chomsky’s model.
(2) Referential meaning: the denotative ‘dictionary’ meaning.
(3) Emotive or connotative meaning: the associations a word produces.

3.2.3 Formal and dynamic equivalence and the principle of equivalent effect
(1) Formal equivalence: Formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in
both form and content . . . One is concerned that the message in the receptor language
should match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language.
(2) Dynamic equivalence: Dynamic, later ‘functional’, equivalence is based on what Nida
calls ‘the principle of equivalent effect’, where ‘the relationship between receptor and
message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original
receptors and the message’.
The message has to be tailored to the receptor’s linguistic needs and cultural
expectation and ‘aims at complete naturalness of expression’. ‘Naturalness’ is a key
requirement for Nida. Indeed, he defines the goal of dynamic equivalence as seeking
‘the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message’.
For Nida, the success of the translation depends above all on achieving equivalent effect
or response. It is one of the ‘four basic requirements of a translation’, which are
(1) making sense;
(2) conveying the spirit and manner of the original;
(3) having a natural and easy form of expression;
(4) producing a similar response.
The key role played by Nida is to develop the path away from strict word-for-word
equivalence. His introduction of the concepts of formal and dynamic equivalence was
crucial in introducing a receptor-based (or reader-based) orientation to translation
theory.
 Newmark: semantic and communicative translation
Newmark departs from Nida’s receptororiented line. He feels that the success of
equivalent effect is ‘illusory’ and that ‘the conflict of loyalties, the gap between
emphasis on source and target language, will always remain as the overriding problem
in translation theory and practice’. Newmark suggests narrowing the gap by replacing
the old terms with those of ‘semantic’ and ‘communicative’ translation:
Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as
possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. Semantic translation attempts
to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language
allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original.
This description of communicative translation resembles Nida’s dynamic equivalence in
the effect it is trying to create on the TT reader, while semantic translation has
similarities to Nida’s formal equivalence. However, Newmark distances himself from the
full principle of equivalent effect, since that effect ‘is inoperant if the text is out of TL
space and time’. An example would be a modern British English translation of Homer.
No modern translator, irrespective of the TL, can possibly hope or expect to produce the
same effect on the reader of the written TT as the oral ST had on its listeners in ancient
Greece. Newmark also raises further questions concerning the readers to whom Nida
directs his dynamic equivalence, asking if they are ‘to be handed everything on a plate’,
with everything explained for them.
Newmark indicates that semantic translation differs from literal translation in that it
‘respects context’, interprets and even explains (metaphors, for instance). On the other
hand, literal translation means word-for-word in its extreme version and, even in its
weaker form, sticks very closely to ST lexis and syntax. Importantly, as long as equivalent
effect is achieved, Newmark holds literal translation to be the best approach:
In communicative as in semantic translation, provided that equivalent effect is secured,
the literal word-for-word translation is not only the best, it is the only valid method of
translation.