Victoria Plata
Spring 2012

Equivalence in Translation

Formal correspondence, or dynamic equivalence, that is the question. Whenever translation is discussed, the concept of equivalence is most likely to come forth. However, more than one definition has been given for this central concept. Two of the most relevant theories about equivalence would be Eugene Nida’s and J. C. Catford’s. I will comment on those and on the possibility of finding a point of balance between the two seemingly antagonistic alternatives for translation. First of all, a rudimentary notion of translation begins with a text in a source language (SL) which aims to be transferred into a target language (TL). Such text might be seen as the carrier of a message conformed by two kinds of factors: linguistic factors, pertaining to the concrete form and the abstract meaning of a text; and cultural factors, which are not evident at the level of form or meaning, but pertain to the mental background of the speakers and writers of the SL. Both factors considered, different approaches are possible. One the one hand, the translating process could be either source oriented or target oriented. On the other hand, the focus might be either linguistic or functional. According to Nida (1964), translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly I terms of style. He proposed two different types of equivalence, i.e., formal and dynamic. Formal equivalence, later renamed as formal correspondence, focuses on the message’s form and content and refers to elements in the TL that represent the closest equivalent of a SL unit. Nida acknowledged that such equivalents do not always exist between language pairs; and even when they do, the resulting text might not be easily understood by the target