Exploring Translation Theories PDF

Exploring Translation Theories Exploring Translation Theories presents a comprehensive analysis of the core contempo- rary paradigms of Western translation theory. The book covers theories of equivalence, purpose, description, uncertainty, localiza- tion, and cultural translation. This secon...

Exploring Translation Theories Exploring Translation Theories presents a comprehensive analysis of the core contempo- rary paradigms of Western translation theory. The book covers theories of equivalence, purpose, description, uncertainty, localiza- tion, and cultural translation. This second edition adds coverage on new translation techno- logies, volunteer translators, non-lineal logic, mediation, Asian languages, and research on translators’ cognitive processes. Readers are encouraged to explore the various theories and consider their strengths, weaknesses, and implications for translation practice. The book concludes with a survey of the way translation is used as a model in postmodern cultural studies and sociologies, extending its scope beyond traditional Western notions. Features in each chapter include: An introduction outlining the main points, key concepts, and illustrative examples. Examples drawn from a range of languages, although knowledge of no language other than English is assumed. Discussion points and suggested classroom activities. A chapter summary. This comprehensive and engaging book is ideal both for self-study and as a textbook for translation theory courses within Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, and Applied Linguistics. Anthony Pym is Professor of Translation and Intercultural Studies at the Rovira i Virgili University, Spain. He is also President of the European Society for Translation Studies, a fellow of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, and Visiting Researcher at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. His publications include The Status of the Translation Profession in the European Union (2013) and On Translator Ethics (2012). This page intentionally left blank Exploring Translation Theories Second edition ANTHONY PYM Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2010, this edition published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2010, 2014 Anthony Pym The right of Anthony Pym to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Pym, Anthony, 1956– Exploring translation theories / Anthony Pym. – Second Edition. pages cm 1. Translating and interpreting. I. Title. P306.P95 2014 418ʹ.02 – dc23 2013022987 ISBN: 978-0-415-83789-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-83791-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-85763-3 (ebk) Typeset in Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Contents List of illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi Preface xiii Chapter 1 What is a translation theory? 1 1.1 From theorizing to theories 1 1.2 From theories to paradigms 3 1.3 How this book is organized 3 1.4 Why study translation theories? 4 1.5 How should translation theories be studied? 5 Chapter 2 Natural equivalence 6 2.1 Natural equivalence as a concept 7 2.2 Equivalence vs. structuralism 9 2.3 Procedures for maintaining natural equivalence 11 2.4 Text-based equivalence 16 2.5 Reference to a tertium comparationis and the “theory of sense” 17 2.6 The virtues of natural equivalence 18 2.7 Frequently had arguments 19 2.8 Natural equivalence as a historical sub-paradigm 20 Chapter 3 Directional equivalence 24 3.1 Two kinds of similarity 26 3.2 Directionality in definitions of equivalence 27 3.3 Back-translation as a test 29 3.4 Polarities of directional equivalence 30 3.5 Only two categories? 33 3.6 Relevance theory 34 3.7 Equivalence as an illusion 37 3.8 The virtues of directional equivalence 37 3.9 Frequently had arguments 38 vi CONTENTS Chapter 4 Purposes 43 4.1 Skopos as the key to a new paradigm 44 4.2 Reiss, Vermeer, and the origins of the Skopos approach 46 4.3 Holz-Mänttäri and the translator’s expertise 49 4.4 Purpose-based “good enough” theory 51 4.5 Who really decides? 52 4.6 The virtues of the purpose paradigm 54 4.7 Frequently had arguments 55 4.8 An extension into project analysis 58 Chapter 5 Descriptions 62 5.1 What happened to equivalence? 63 5.2 Theoretical concepts within the descriptive paradigm 63 5.3 Norms 70 5.4 “Assumed” translations 73 5.5 Target-side priority 74 5.6 Universals of translation 75 5.7 Laws 78 5.8 Process studies 79 5.9 Frequently had arguments 80 5.10 The future of the descriptive paradigm 82 Chapter 6 Uncertainty 86 6.1 Why uncertainty? 86 6.2 The uncertainty principle 88 6.3 Determinist views of language with indeterminist theories of translation 91 6.4 Theories of how to live with uncertainty 96 6.5 Deconstruction 105 6.6 So how should we translate? 107 6.7 Frequently had arguments 109 Chapter 7 Localization 117 7.1 Localization as a paradigm 118 7.2 What is localization? 118 7.3 What is internationalization? 120 7.4 Is localization new? 122 7.5 The role of technologies 123 7.6 Translation within localization? 131 7.7 Frequently had arguments 132 7.8 The future of localization 134 Chapter 8 Cultural translation 138 8.1 A new paradigm? 139 8.2 Homi Bhabha and “non-substantive” translation 139  CONTENTS vii 8.3 Translation without translations: calls for a wider discipline 144 8.4 Ethnography as translation 148 8.5 Translation sociology 149 8.6 Spivak and the psychoanalytics of translation 151 8.7 “Generalized translation” 153 8.8 Frequently had arguments 154 Postscript—What if they were all wrong? 159 References 161 Index 175 This page intentionally left blank Illustrations FIGURES 4.1 Translatorial action as a form of mediated cross-cultural communication 50 7.1a A very simple model of traditional translation 120 7.1b A simple model of translation plus internationalization 121 7.1c A model of localization 121 7.2 Catalan calendar from Microsoft Windows XP 137 TABLES 2.1 Vinay and Darbelnet’s general table of translation solutions 13 2.2 Comparison of translation solution types 15 4.1 Reiss’s correlations of text types and translation methods 47 4.2 Material and information in a job description for translators 58 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements I am grateful to the following publishers and authors for permission to adapt material of various kinds: John Benjamins Publishing Company for passages from my article “Natural and direc- tional equivalence in theories of translation,” published in Target 19/2 (2007) 271–94, which forms the basis for Chapters 2 and 3; Ricardo Muñoz Martín for Table 2.2; Christiane Nord, for Table 4.1 and Figure 4.1; Daniel Gouadec, for Table 4.2. My sincere thanks to my colleagues Esther Torres Simón and Alberto Fuertes Puerta, who have revised the text, and to those who have helped revise parts of the text: Gideon Toury, Itamar Even-Zohar, Tal Golfajn, Christiane Nord, José Ramón Biau Gil, Christina Schäffner, John Milton, Serafima Khalzanova, Yukiko Muranaga, and Chie Okada. A good number of valuable points have been made by the translators of the book into Japanese (Kayoko Takeda), Portuguese (Fernando Ferreira Alves and Victor Ferreira), and Spanish (Esther Torres Simón, Humberto Burcet Rojas, and Ana Guerberof). Translators and their revisers are the closest readers. Special thanks go to the many students and colleagues who have participated in the seminars that have comprised this course since it was first offered in 2003: at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; in the PhD program in Translation and Intercultural Studies at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain; and especially at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in the United States. Further thanks are due to the reviewers of the first edition of this book: Dirk Delabastita, Brian Mossop, Hsin-hisn Tu, Shuhuai Wang, Peng Wang, Shaoshuang Wang, Ernst Wendland, Jonathan Downie, Arzu Eker Rodikakis, and Debbie Folaron. Useful comments have also been received from Ghodrat Hassani. This second edition responds to many of their observations and criticisms, although not all—I have not been allowed to make the book longer. I am also extremely grateful for the editorial guidance provided by Louisa Semlyen and Eloise Cook, who are responsible for the book’s title. This page intentionally left blank Preface This is a course on the main paradigms of Western translation theories since the 1960s. It adopts a view of translation that includes interpreting (spoken translation) but does not give any special attention to its problems. The book is not primarily designed to make anyone a better translator; it is mainly for academic work, although it should be accessible to anyone interested in arguments about translation—and most translators are. The basic story is that all the theories respond in different ways to one central problem: translation can be defined by equivalence, but there are many reasons why equivalence is not a stable concept. So how can we think about translation beyond equivalence? The answers to that question have been more numerous than many suspect, and often creative and surprising. The general view taken here is that theory is a field of struggle for or against particular ways of seeing translation. There is no neutral description in this. My mission will have been accomplished whenever anyone finds importance and perhaps pleasure in the contest of ideas, or better, whenever the issues of translation are debated, ideally as part of a pluralist learning project. Since the first edition of this book, I have become acutely aware that these particular theories are focused on what I call the Western “translation form.” They concern the kind of translation that a client might pay a translator to do in any Western country, underpinned by a set of unspoken assumptions about equivalence (see 5.4 below). However, there are many other cultures and situations in which notions of translation are not functionally sepa- rate from what we would call “adaptation” or “rewriting,” and thus do not struggle with and against equivalence. So there are many other possible ways of theorizing translation, and many alternative narratives. I am only telling one of many possible stories. That said, the Western translation form has spread out over the world, as a peculiar traveling companion of modernity, and readers in all countries will nowadays be familiar with it, even as we strive to go beyond it. This revised edition has added a few aspects to the original survey, particularly with respect to translation technologies, volunteer translators, non-lineal logic, mediation, Asian languages, and process research. But those are not major changes—just some small treats along the way. This book accompanies some of the best introductory works in the field. Jeremy Munday’s Introducing Translation Studies (third edition 2012) and Franz Pöchhacker’s Introducing Interpreting Studies (2004) are indispensable guides. My aim here is to focus more squarely on the main theories that the other books cover, to leave aside much of the research and applications, and to make the theories engage with each other as directly as possible. This means presenting more criticisms than the introductory guides do. It also xiv PREFACE means that many fields of research, particularly those that have not made strong original contributions to translation theory, have been sidelined here. Some readers will be surprised to find no substantial treatment of empirical research on adaptation, multimedia, or the ways translation has been dealt with from the perspective of gender studies, for example. Those areas are very much part of Translation Studies; they have adopted many of the concepts and methods of neighboring disciplines, but they have not played key roles in debates over the translation form as such. I thus leave them to the companion volumes. Similarly absent is analysis of the possible social forces behind the various paradigms, and why they have developed historically. That kind of inquiry is also left for other places (for example, Pym 2011). This book also accompanies The Translation Studies Reader (third edition 2012) edited by Lawrence Venuti, along with The Interpreting Studies Reader (2001) edited by Franz Pöchhacker and Miriam Shlesinger. Both those volumes are superb collections of key texts. My aim has not been to replace those texts: anyone who wants to know about translation theory must read the theorists, in context and in all their complexity. Only with first-hand engagement with the fundamental texts can you really follow the adventures of critical thought. CHAPTER 1 What is a translation theory? This chapter explains what I mean by the terms “theory” and “paradigm,” and how theoriza- tion can be related to translation practice. I also detail the overall chapter plan of this book, some reasons for studying translation theory, and the ways the book can be used as part of a learning process. 1.1 FROM THEORIZING TO THEORIES Translators are theorizing all the time. Once they have identified a translation problem, they usually have to decide between several possible solutions. Let’s say you have to translate the English term “Tory,” employed to designate the Conservative Party in Britain. According to the situation, you might consider things like using the English term and inserting infor- mation to explain it, or adding a footnote, or just giving a word-for-word equivalent of “Conservative Party,” or naming the corresponding part of the political spectrum in the target culture, or just leaving out the problematic name altogether. All those options could be legitimate, given the appropriate text, purpose, and client. Formulating them ( gener- ating possible translations) and then choosing between them (selecting a definitive trans- lation) can be a difficult and complex operation. Yet translators are doing precisely that all the time, in split seconds. Whenever they do it, whenever they decide to opt for one rendi- tion rather than others, they bring into play a series of ideas about what translation is and how it should be carried out. They are theorizing. The word “theory” probably comes from the Greek theā, view + -horan, to see—to theorize is to look at a view (the word theater has the same origins). A theory sets the scene where the generation and selection process takes place. Translators are thus not only constantly theorizing, but they are doing it in various kinds of conceptual scenes. This private, internal theorizing becomes public when translators discuss what they do. They occasionally theorize out loud when talking with other translators or with clients, and sometimes with students or instructors. This out-loud theorizing might involve no more than a few shared terms for the things we are dealing with. For example, here I shall refer to the “start text” as the one we translate from, and to the “target text” as the translation produced. By extension, we can talk about the “start language” and the “target language,” or the “start culture” and the “target culture.” “Translating” would then be a set of pro- cesses leading from one side to the other. Do these words mean that I am already using a theory? Such interrelated names-for- things do tend to form models of translation, and those models are never neutral—they 2 WHAT IS A TRANSLATION THEORY? often conceal some very powerful guiding ideas, which may form a scene coherent enough to be called a “theory.” For instance, here I am saying “start text” where others say “source text,” not just because it agrees with the possibilities of a few European languages (Ausgangstext, texte de départ, texto de partida, testo di partenza) but more importantly because it says something about other views of translation: How can we blithely assume that the text we translate from is not itself made up of translations, reworked fragments of previous texts, all tied up in never-ending translational networks? Why assume some kind of pristine or natural “source,” somehow like a river bubbling up from the earth? Hence “start,” as a word that can say something on the level of theory. But then, why stop there? Why, for example, should our terms reduce translation to an affair of just two sides (“start” and “target”)? Surely each target is only a link toward further actions and aims, in further cultures and languages? For that matter, texts usually contain traces of more than one language and culture. In all these aspects, there are usually more than just two sides involved. And then, when we put the “start” and “target” ideas next to the “trans-” part of “translation,” we see that the terms build a very spatial scene where our actions go from one side to the other. The words suggest that translators affect the target culture but not the source, thanks to a transitivity that happens in space. Is that not a strange assumption? The words are certainly starting to look like a theory. Compare that scene with “anuvad,” a Sanskrit and Hindi term for written translation that basically means, I am told, “repeating” or “saying later” (cf. Chesterman 2006; Spivak 2007: 274). According to this alternative term, the main difference between one text and the other could be not in space, but in time. Translation can then be seen as a constant process of updating and elaborating, rather than as some kind of physical movement across cultures. Our interrelated names-for-things form scenes, and those scenes become theories about what a translation could be or should be. This does not mean that all our inner theorizing is constantly turned into public theo- ries. When translators talk with each other, they mostly accept the common terms without too much argument. Straight mistakes are usually fixed up quickly, through reference to usage, to linguistic knowledge, or to common sense. For instance, we might correct a trans- lator who identifies the term “Tory” with extreme left-wing politics. Any ensuing discussion could be interesting but it will have no great need of translation theory. Only when there are disagreements over different ways of translating does private theorization tend to become public theory. If different translators have come up with different renditions of the term “Tory,” one of them might argue that “translation should explain the source culture” (so they will use the English term and add a long footnote); another could say “translation should make things understandable to the target culture” (so they will just put “the main right-wing party”); a third might consider that “the translation should re-situate everything in the target culture” (so they would give the name of a conservative target-culture party); and a fourth will perhaps insist that since the start text was not primarily about politics, there is no need to waste time on an ornamental detail (so they might calmly eliminate the term). When those kinds of arguments are happening, practical theorizing is turning into explicit theories. The arguments turn out to be between different theoretical positions. Sometimes the initially opposed positions will find they are compatible within a larger theory. Often, though, people remain with their fixed positions; they keep arguing. Or worse, they decide that everyone else is crazy: they stop arguing.  WHAT IS A TRANSLATION THEORY? 3 1.2 FROM THEORIES TO PARADIGMS As theorizing turns into theory, some theories develop names and explanations for multiple aspects of translation, including names for the presumed blindness of other theories. When that stage is reached, it makes sense to talk about different “paradigms,” here understood as sets of principles that underlie different groups of theories (cf. Kuhn 1962). This particu- larly occurs when we find general ideas, relations, and principles for which there is internal coherence and a shared point of departure. For example, one set of theories uses the terms “source,” “target,” and “equivalence.” They agree that the term “equivalence” names a substantial relation between the “source” and the “target”; their shared point of departure is the comparison of start and target texts. People using those theories can discuss transla- tion with each other fairly well; they share the same vague concepts and general ideas about the aims of a translation; they can even reach consensus about various kinds of equivalence. They are theorizing within the one paradigm. On the other hand, we sometimes find people arguing about translation problems and reaching nothing but constant disagreement. In such cases, the terms are probably working within quite different paradigms, with different points of departure. For example, one kind of description works from comparisons between translations and non-translations (both in the same language). People engaged in that activity come up with results that could be of interest to psycholinguistics (the language used in translations is different from the language found in non-translations). But that finding seems almost totally irrelevant to anyone working within the equivalence paradigm. If the language in translations is different, the theorist of equivalence can still serenely argue that it should not be different. Each side thus continues the discussion without entertaining the other side’s perspective. The para- digms enter into conflict. The outcome may be continued tension (debate without resolu- tion), revolution (one paradigm wins out over the other), or mutual ignorance (people choose to travel along separate paths). My aim is to overcome some mutual ignorance. 1.3 HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED This book is structured in terms of paradigms rather than individual theories, theorists, or schools. I will be talking about paradigms based on equivalence, purposes, descriptions, uncertainty, localization, and cultural translation. Equivalence is broken down into two sub- paradigms, corresponding to “natural” and “directional” flavors. I do this in order to under- score the complexity of equivalence, since some current theorists tend to dismiss it as naïve and outdated. The order of the paradigms is very roughly chronological, starting around the 1960s and reaching the present day, except for the “uncertainty” paradigm, which was present all the way through. The fundamental conflict between uncertainty and equivalence would be the basic problem to which all the paradigms respond, each as a partial resolution. This order does not mean the newer theories have replaced the older ones. If that were true, you would only have to read the last chapter. On the contrary, I spend a lot of time on equivalence precisely to indicate its complexity and longevity—a lot of equiva- lence theory lives on within the localization paradigm and in our technologies. Theories can, of course, become more exact in their descriptions and wider in their predictions, in accordance with an accumulation of knowledge. This sometimes happens in the field of 4 WHAT IS A TRANSLATION THEORY? translation, since the newer theories occasionally try to accommodate the perspectives of the older ones. For example, German-language Skopos theory can embed the equivalence paradigm as being appropriate to a “special case” scenario. That kind of accumulation is not, however, to be found with respect to the uncertainty paradigm (here including decon- struction), which would regard both equivalence and purpose as indefensible essentialisms. In such cases, we must indeed talk about quite different paradigms, without trying to fit one inside the other. Those paradigms differ right from the very basic questions of what transla- tion is, what it can be, and how a translator should solve problems. When the paradigms clash, people are often using the word “translation” to refer to quite different things. Debate then becomes pointless, at least until someone attempts to go beyond their initial paradigm. Only then, when an attempt is made to understand a new view of translation, can there be productive public theorizing. So you might have to read more than the last chapter. 1.4 WHY STUDY TRANSLATION THEORIES? Why study these theories? Instructors and trainers sometimes assume that a translator who knows about theories will work better than one who knows nothing about them. As far as I know, there is no empirical evidence for that claim, and there are good reasons to doubt its validity. All translators theorize, not just the ones who can express their theories in technical terms. In fact, untrained translators may work faster and more efficiently because they know less about complex theories—they have fewer doubts and do not waste time reflecting on the obvious. On the other hand, awareness of different theories might be of practical benefit when confronting problems for which there are no established solu- tions, where significant creativity is required. The theories can pose productive questions, and sometimes suggest novel answers. Theories can also be significant agents of change, especially when moved from one professional culture to another, or when they are made to challenge endemic thought (think about the idea of translation as “saying later”). And public theories can help make people aware that translation is a very complex thing, hard enough to be studied seriously at university, thus enhancing the public image of translators and interpreters. Awareness of a range of theories might also help the translation profession in a more direct way. When arguments occur, theories provide translators with valuable tools not just to defend their positions but also to find out about other positions. The theories might simply name things that people had not previously thought about. If a client complains that the term “Tory” has disappeared from the translation, you could say you have achieved “compensatory correspondence” by comparing the British party with a target-culture party two pages later in your target text. The client will probably not be entirely convinced, but they might start to realize that not everyone can solve problems the way you can. In fact, that bit of theory might be of as much practical use to the client as to the translator. The more terms and ideas you have, the more you and your client can explore the possibilities of translation. Some knowledge of different theories can also be of assistance in the translation process itself. At the beginning of this chapter I presented a simple translation scene: a problem is identified, possible solutions are generated, and one solution is selected. That is a model (a set of related names-for-things), not a transcendent truth. In terms of my model,  WHAT IS A TRANSLATION THEORY? 5 a plurality of theories can widen the range of potential solutions that translators think of. On the selective side, theories can also provide a range of reasons for choosing one solution and discarding the rest, as well as defending that solution when necessary. Some theories are very good for the generative side, since they criticize the more obvious options and make you think about a wider range of factors. Descriptive, deconstructionist, and cultural- translation approaches might all fit the bill there. Other kinds of theory are needed for the selective moment of translating, when decisions have to be made between the available alternatives. That is where reflections on ethics, on the basic purposes of translation, can provide guidelines. Unfortunately that second kind of theory, which should give reasons for selective decisions, has become unfashionable in some circles. That is why I indulge in plurality, to try to redress the balance. 1.5 HOW SHOULD TRANSLATION THEORIES BE STUDIED? Since all translators are always theorizing, it would be quite wrong to separate the theory from the practice. The best uses of theory are in active discussions about different ways of solving translation problems. You can promote that kind of discussion on the basis of trans- lations that you and others have already done. You will find that, at some points, one group of translators will disagree with another. If you are an instructor, get those groups to debate the point, then you suggest appropriate terms and concepts, once the students have found that they actually need those things. In this way, students come to theories only when they want to. Classes on individual theories or paradigms can then build on that practical basis. Unfortunately our educational institutions tend to separate theory from practice, often demanding a separate course in “translation theory.” If necessary, that can be done. However, the theories and their implications should still be drawn out from a series of prac- tical tasks, structured as discovery processes. This book has been designed to allow such use. Toward the end of each chapter we list some “frequently had arguments,” most of which do not have any clear resolution, and many of which are not really as frequent as we would like them to be. Then, at the end of each chapter we suggest some “projects and activities” that can be carried out in class or given as assignments. No solutions are given to the problems, and in many cases there are no correct solutions. Discussions and further suggested activities are available on the course website. Of course, the examples should always be adapted for use in a particular class. More important, the activities should be integrated into the learning process; they should probably come at the beginning of a class, rather than be used as appendage at the end. In a sense, the challenge of this book is to work against its fixed written form. The real learning of theory, even for the self-learner, should be in dialogue and debate. If anyone needs more, the website associated with this course (http://usuaris.tinet. cat/apym/publications/ETT/index.html) presents video lectures, supplementary materials, and links to social media where you can participate. CHAPTER 2 Natural equivalence This chapter begins from the idea that what we say in one language can have the same value (the same worth or function) when translated into another language. The relation between the start text and the translation is then one of equivalence (“equal value”), where “value” can be on the level of form, function, or anything in between. Equivalence does not say that languages are the same; it just says that values can be the same. The many theo- ries that share that assumption can be fitted into a broad “equivalence paradigm,” which can be broken down into two sub-paradigms. Here I focus on the sub-paradigm where the things of equal value are presumed to exist prior to anyone translating. In principle, this means it makes no difference whether you translate from language A into language B or vice versa: you should get the same value both ways. That “natural” equivalence will be opposed to what I will call “directional” equivalence in the next chapter. Natural equivalence stands at the base of a strong and robust body of thought, closely allied with Applied Linguistics. It is also close to what many translators, clients, and end-users believe about translation. It should be appreciated in all its complexity. On the one hand, theories of natural equivalence were an intellectual response to the structuralist concept of languages as world-views. On the other, they have produced lists of equivalence-maintaining solutions that try to describe what translators do. In this chapter I cover in some detail the list of translation solutions proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/1972). Such lists were, in their day, a substantial response to an important problem within structuralist linguistics. The main points covered in this chapter are: Equivalence is a relation of “equal value” between a start-text segment and a target-text segment. Equivalence can be established on any linguistic level, from form to function. Natural equivalence is presumed to exist between languages or cultures prior to the act of translating. Natural equivalence should not be affected by directionality: it should be the same whether translated from language A into language B or the other way round. Structuralist linguistics, especially of the kind that sees languages as world- views, would consider natural equivalence to be theoretically impossible.  NATURAL EQUIVALENCE 7 The equivalence paradigm solves this problem by working at levels lower than language systems. This can be done by focusing on contextual signi- fication rather than systemic meaning, by undertaking componential anal- ysis, by assuming reference to a tertium comparationis, by assuming that deverbalization is possible, or by considering value to be markedness. Following Vinay and Darbelnet, there are several categorizations of the solutions by which equivalence can be maintained. The sub-paradigm of natural equivalence is historical, since it assumes the production of stable texts in languages that allow equal expressive capacity. The term “equivalence,” in various European languages, became a feature of Western translation theories in the second half of the twentieth century. Its heyday was in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly within the frame of structuralist linguistics. The term roughly assumes that, on some level, a start text and a translation can share the same value (“equi- valence” means “equal value”), and that this assumed sameness is what distinguishes translations from all other kinds of texts. Within the paradigm, to talk about translations is to consider different kinds of equivalence. In the course of the 1980s, however, the equiva- lence paradigm came to be regarded as naïve or limited in scope. Mary Snell-Hornby, for example, jettisoned equivalence as presenting “an illusion of symmetry between languages which hardly exists beyond the level of vague approximations and which distorts the basic problems of translation” (1988: 22). Here I take the unpopular view that the equivalence paradigm is richer than such quick dismissals would suggest. It merits a place alongside and within the more recent para- digms. This is because, if you look closely, the theorizing of equivalence has involved two competing conceptualizations, which here I call “natural” as opposed to “directional” equiva- lence. The intertwining duality of those notions allows for considerable subtlety in some past and present theories. It also creates confusion, not only in some of the theories of equivalence themselves but also in the many current arguments against equivalence. 2.1 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE AS A CONCEPT Most discussions of equivalence concern typical misunderstandings. For instance, Friday the 13th is an unlucky day in English-language cultures but not in most other cultures. In Spanish, the unlucky day is Tuesday the 13th. So when you translate the name of that day, you have to know exactly what kind of information is required. If you are just referring to the calendar, then Friday will do; if you are talking about bad luck, then a better translation would probably be “Tuesday 13th” (actually “martes 13,” or “martes y 13” in some varieties). The world is full of such examples. The color of death is mostly black in the West, mostly white in the East. A nodding head means agreement in western Europe, disagreement in Turkey. That is all textbook stuff. The concept of equivalence underlies all these cases: they all presuppose that a translation will have the same value as (some aspect of) its corresponding start text. Sometimes the value is on the level of form (two words translated by two words); some- times it is reference (Friday is always the day before Saturday); sometimes it is function 8 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE (the function “bad luck on 13” corresponds to Friday in English, to Tuesday in Spanish). Equivalence need not say exactly which kind of value is supposed to be the same; it just says that equal value can be achieved on one level or another. Equivalence is a very simple idea. Unfortunately it becomes quite complex, both as a term and as a theory. As for the term, it seems that the first uses of “equivalence” in technical translation theory described the kind of relation that allows us to equate, more or less, the English “Friday the 13th” with the Spanish “martes 13.” When Friday becomes Tuesday, the two terms are equivalent because they are considered to activate approximately the same cultural function. This is the sense in which Vinay and Darbelnet used the term équiva- lence in 1958, and Vázquez-Ayora referred to equivalencia in 1977. That is, for the initial period of equivalence theories, the term referred to only one kind of translation option (I shall soon look at the many alternative relations described by Vinay and Darbelnet). Equivalence was determined by function (the value “bad-luck day” in our example), which is precisely the opposite to what Snell-Hornby supposes when she talks about a “symmetry between languages.” In this initial period, equivalence referred to what could be done at points where there was no symmetry between linguistic forms. Hence confusion. Other theorists, particularly the American Bible scholar Eugene Nida, were soon formulating other kinds of equivalence. Nida might look at the Spanish “martes 13” and agree that there are two ways of rendering it: either as “Tuesday the 13th” or as “Friday the 13th.” The first option would be “formal equivalence” (or “formal correspondence,” since it corresponds to the form of what is said in Spanish), the second would be what Nida calls “dynamic equivalence” (or “functional equivalence,” since it activates the same or similar cultural function). As soon as theorists started talking about different kinds of equivalence, the meaning of the term “equivalence” became much broader, referring to a relation of value on any level. On the level of practice, things are scarcely simpler. Consider for a moment the televi- sion game shows that are popular all over the world. English audiences usually know a show called The Price is Right. In French this becomes Le juste prix, and in Spanish El precio justo. Equivalence between the names is not on the level of form (four words become three, and the rhyme has been lost), but it might operate on the level of function. In German the show became Der Preis ist heiss, which changes the semantics (it back-translates as “The price is hot,” as in the children’s game of rising temperatures when you approach an object). The German cleverly retains the rhyme, which could be what counts. It could be getting very warm in its approach to equivalence. If you start picking up examples like this and try to say what stays the same and what has changed, you soon find that a translation can be equivalent to many different things. For example, in the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? the contestants have a series of “lifelines” in English, “jokers” in French and German, and a “comodín” (wild-card) in Spanish. Although those are all very different images or metaphors, they do have some- thing in common. More intriguing is the fact that the reference to “millionaire” is retained even though different local currencies make the amount quite different. Given that the show format came from the United Kingdom, the American version should perhaps trans- late the pounds into dollars. This might give Who Wants to Win $1,516,590?—the title is decidedly less catchy. Equivalence was never really about exact values. This is the point where it makes some sense to talk about what is “natural” in equivalence. Why does no one calculate the exact sum of money to be won? Because we  NATURAL EQUIVALENCE 9 need what is usually said in the target culture. If there is common agreement that the term “millionaire” functions only to say “more money than most of us can imagine possessing legally,” then all you need is a common term corresponding to that very vague notion. The normal expression on one side should correspond to the normal expression on the other. Of course, the theory becomes a little more sophisticated when we realize that not everything we find in texts is always “natural” or “common.” If everything were common, the texts would be so boring there would be little reason to translate them. We might suppose that whatever is uncommon (or better, “marked”) on one side can be rendered as something similarly rare (“marked”) on the other. The notion of markedness says that some things are natural and others are less natural. It remains a theory of natural equivalence. 2.2 EQUIVALENCE VS. STRUCTURALISM In the second half of the twentieth century, translation theorists dealt with this kind of problem against the background of structuralist linguistics. A strong line of thought leading from Wilhelm von Humboldt to Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf argued that different languages express different views of the world. This connected with the views of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who in the early years of the twentieth century explained how languages form systems that are meaningful only in terms of the differ- ences between the items. The word sheep, for example, has a value in English because it does not designate a cow (or any other animal) and it does not refer to mutton, which is the meat, not the animal (Saussure 1916/1974: 115). In French, on the other hand, the word mouton designates both the animal and the meat, both sheep and mutton. Such relations between terms were seen as different “structures.” Languages were considered to be systems comprising such structures. Structuralism said we should study those relations rather than try to analyze the things themselves. Do not look at actual sheep; do not ask what we want to do with those sheep. Just look at the relations, the structures. One should conclude, according to structuralist linguistics, that the words sheep and mouton have very different values. They thus cannot translate each other with any degree of certainty. In fact, since different languages cut the world up in very different ways, no words should be completely translatable out of their language system. Equivalence should not be possible. That kind of linguistics is of little help to anyone trying to translate television game shows. It is not of greater help to anyone trying to understand how translations are actually carried out. So something must be wrong in the linguistics. As the French theorist Georges Mounin argued in the early 1960s, “if the current theses on lexical, morphological, and syntactic structures are accepted, one must conclude that translation is impossible. And yet translators exist, they produce, and their products are found to be useful” (1963: 5; my translation). Either translation did not really exist, or the dominant linguistic theories were inadequate. That is the point at which the main theories of equivalence developed. They tried to explain something that the linguistics of the day did not want to explain. Think for a moment about the kinds of arguments that could be used here. What should we say, for example, to someone who claims that the whole system of Spanish culture (not just its language) gives meaning to “martes 13” (Tuesday the 13th) in a way 10 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE that no English system could ever reproduce? Martes y 13 was the stage name, for example, of a popular pair of television comedians. Or what do we say to a Pole who argues that, since the milk they bought had to be boiled before it could be drunk, their name for milk could never be translated by the normal English term milk (cf. Hoffman 1989)? In fact, if the structuralist approach is pushed, we can never be sure of understanding anything beyond our own linguistic and cultural system, let alone translating the little that we do understand. Theories of equivalence then got to work. Here are some of the arguments used: Signification: Within linguistic approaches, close attention was paid to what is meant by “meaning.” Saussure had actually distinguished between a word’s “value” (which it has in relation to the language system) and its “signification” (which it has in actual use). To cite a famous example from chess, the value of the knight is the sum of all the moves it is allowed to make, whereas the signification of an actual knight depends on the position it occupies at any stage of a particular game. “Value” would thus depend on the language system (which Saussure called langue), while “signification” depends on the actual use of language (which Saussure termed parole). For theorists like Coseriu, those terms could be mapped onto the German distinction between Sinn (stable meaning) and Bedeutung (momentary signification). If translation could not reproduce the former, it might still convey the latter. French, for example, has no word for shallow (as in “shallow water”), but the signification can be conveyed by the two words peu profound (“not very deep”) (cf. Coseriu 1978). The language structures could be different, but equivalence was still possible. Language use: Some theorists then took a closer look at the level of language use (parole) rather than at the language system (langue). Saussure had actually claimed there could be no systematic scientific study of parole, but theorists like the Swiss- German Werner Koller (1979/1992) were quite prepared to disregard the warning. If something like equivalence could be demonstrated and analyzed, then there were meaningful structures smaller than a langue. Text levels: Others stressed that translation operates not on isolated words but on whole texts, and texts have many linguistic layers. The Scottish linguist John Catford (1965) pointed out that equivalence need not be on all these layers at once, but could be “rank-bound.” We might thus strive for equivalence to the phonetics of a text, to the lexis, to the phrase, to the sentence, to the semantic function, and so on. Catford saw that most translating operates on one or several of these levels, so that “in the course of a text, equivalence may shift up and down the rank scale” (1965: 76). This was a comprehensive and dynamic theory of equivalence. Componential analysis: A related approach, more within lexical semantics, was to list the values associated with a text item, and then see how many of them are found in the target-side equivalent. This kind of componential analysis might analyze mouton as “+ animal + meat – young meat (agneau),” mutton as “+ meat – young meat (lamb),” and sheep as “+ animal.” You would make your translation selections in accordance with the components active in the particular text. We could go further: lifeline could be turned into something like “+amusing metaphor + way of solving a problem with luck rather than intelligence + no guarantee of success + need for human external support + nautical.” The translations joker and wild-card reproduce at least three of the five components, and would thus be equivalent to no more than that degree. There is no  NATURAL EQUIVALENCE 11 guarantee, however, that different people recognize exactly the same components, since values are constructed through interpretations. All of those ideas are problematic. Yet all of them defended the existence of translation in the face of structuralist linguistics. An example of comparative componential analysis Comparative linguistics can provide ways of isolating semantic components. Bascom (2007) gives the following analysis of the potential equivalents key and the Spanish llave: Wrench Llave (inglesa) Faucet Llave (grifo) Key Llave (de casa) Piano key Tecla de piano Computer key Tecla de ordenador Key of a code Clave de un código Key of music Clave de música According to this analysis, the Spanish llave would only correspond to the compo- nent “instrument for turning,” tecla corresponds to the component “thing to press down,” and clave is only an equivalent of key when an abstract or metaphorical sense is involved. This distinction between these components seems not to be made in English. 2.3 PROCEDURES FOR MAINTAINING NATURAL EQUIVALENCE Another way to defend translation was to record and analyze the equivalents that can actu- ally be found in the world. One of the most entertaining texts in translation theory is the introduction to Vinay and Darbelnet’s Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais, first published in 1958. The two French linguists are driving from New York to Montreal, noting down the street signs along the way: We soon reach the Canadian border, where the language of our forefathers is music to our ears. The Canadian highway is built on the same principles as the American one, except that its signs are bilingual. After SLOW, written on the road in enormous letters, comes LENTEMENT, which takes up the entire width of the highway. What an unwieldy adverb! A pity French never made an adverb just using the adjective LENT... But come to think of it, is LENTEMENT really the equivalent of SLOW? We begin to have doubts, as one always does when moving from one language to another, when our SLIPPERY WHEN WET reappears around a bend, followed by the French 12 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE GLISSANT SI HUMIDE. Whoa!, as the Lone Ranger would say, let’s pause a while on this SOFT SHOULDER, thankfully caressed by no translation, and meditate on this SI, this “if,” more slippery itself than an acre of ice. No monolingual speaker of French would ever have come straight out with the phrase, nor would they have sprayed paint over the road for the sake of a long adverb ending in—MENT. Here we reach a key point, a sort of turning lock between two languages. But of course—parbleu!—instead of LENTEMENT [adverb, as in English] it should have been RALENTIR [infinitive, as in France]! (1958/1972: 19; my translation) What kind of equivalence is being sought here? The kind the linguists actually find is exem- plified by the long French adverb “lentement,” which says virtually the same thing as the English adverb “slow.” It changes the length, but apparently there is room on the road. What worries the linguists is that the sign “Lentement” is not what the signs in France say. For them, the equivalent should be the verb “Ralentir,” since that is what would have been used if no one had been translating from English (and if Canada were within France). This second kind of equivalence is thus deemed “natural.” It is what different languages and cultures seem to produce from within their own systems. This natural equivalence is also ideally reciprocal, like ping-pong: “slow” should give “ralentir,” which should give “slow,” and so on. Natural equivalents do exist, but rarely in a state of untouched nature. As the German theorist Otto Kade (1968) argued, they are mostly the stuff of terminology, of artificially standardized words that are made to correspond to each other. All specialized fields of knowledge have their terminologies; they unnaturally create “natural” equivalents. Vinay and Darbelnet, however, are seeking equivalents characterized as “natural” precisely because they are supposed to have developed without interference from meddling linguists, translators, or other languages. In terms of this naturalism, the best translations are found when you are not translating. You use this mode of thought whenever you look for solutions in “parallel texts” (non-translational target-language texts on the same topic as the source text). In the late 1950s and 1960s, equivalence was often thought about in this way. The problem was not to show what the “thing” was or what you wanted to do with it (Vinay and Darbelnet probably should have asked what words were best at making drivers slow down). The problem was to describe ways equivalence could be attained in situations where there were no obvious natural solutions. Vinay and Darbelnet worked from examples to define seven general “procedures” (procédés) that could be used. Since the things they classified were actually the textual results of the problem-solving process, here I shall call them “translation solutions.” Table 2.1 is a version of the main solution types. The seven solution types each come with examples on three levels of discourse. They go from the most literal (at the top) to the most re-creative (at the bottom). Vinay and Darbelnet describe this progression as being from the easiest to the most difficult, which makes some sense if we consider that the bottom situations are the ones where the trans- lator probably has the most options to choose from. Even though the linguists had no evidence of the steps a translator might take when solving translation problems, a simple model is nevertheless implied: the translator might first try the “literal” procedure, and if that does not work, they can either go up the table  NATURAL EQUIVALENCE 13 Table 2.1 Vinay and Darbelnet’s general table of translation solutions (my translation from Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1972: 55) Lexis Collocation Message 1. Loan Fr. Bulldozer Fr. Science-fiction Fr. Five o’clock tea Eng. Fuselage Eng. À la mode Eng. Bon voyage 2. Calque Fr. Économiquement Fr. Lutétia Palace Fr. Compliments de la faible Eng. Governor General Saison Eng. Normal School Eng. Take it or leave it 3. Literal translation Fr. Encre Fr. L’encre est sur la table Fr. Quelle heure est-il? Eng. Ink Eng. The ink is on the table Eng. What time is it? 4. Transposition Fr. Expéditeur: Fr. Depuis la revalorisation Fr. Défense de fumer Eng. From: du bois Eng. No smoking Eng. As timber becomes more valuable 5. Modulation Fr. Peu profond Fr. Donnez un peu de votre Fr. Complet Eng. Shallow sang Eng. No vacancies Eng. Give a pint of your blood 6. Correspondence Fr. (milit.) La soupe Fr. Comme un chien dans Fr. Château de cartes (équivalence) Eng. (milit.) Tea un jeu de quilles Eng. Hollow triumph Eng. Like a bull in a china shop 7. Adaptation Fr. Cyclisme Fr. En un clin d’œil Fr. Bon appetit! Br.Eng. Cricket Eng. Before you could say Am.Eng. Hi! Am.Eng. Baseball Jack Robinson (closer to the start text) or down the table (closer to the target culture). This means that not all the solutions necessarily count as good ways to produce natural equivalence—in each case, translators are only required to do the best they can. For example, the use of loans and calques is only legitimate when there is not a more natural equivalent available (the examples in Table 2.1 are not meant to translate each other). “Literal translation,” which here means fairly straightforward word-for-word processes, is quite possible between cognate languages but can also frequently be deceptive, since languages abound with “false friends” (lexical, phraseological and syntactic forms that look the similar but have different functions in different languages). Literalism is what gives the French Lentement as the equivalent of Slow, and that is not what Vinay and Darbelnet consider natural. The solutions of main interest to the linguists are transposition (where there is a switching of grammatical categories) and modulation (where adjustments are made for different discursive conventions). The remaining two solutions concern cultural adjustments: corre- spondence (actually called équivalence in the French version) would use all the corre- sponding proverbs and referents (like “Friday the 13th”), and adaptation would refer to different things with loosely equivalent cultural functions: cycling is to the French what cricket is to the British, or baseball to the Americans, we are told. At this end of the table there are many very vague equivalents available, and translators can spend hours exploring the possibilities (gardening is to the English what having lovers is to the Italians, perhaps). In all, Vinay and Darbelnet’s solutions range from artificial or marked at one end to the 14 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE vague but naturalistic at the other. The linguists were able to theorize the desirability of natural equivalence, but also implicitly recognized the practical need for translators to produce other kinds of solutions as well. In addition to the list of general solutions, Vinay and Darbelnet outline a series of “prosodic effects.” This gives a list of solutions operating closer to the sentence level. In most cases, the translator can be seen as following the constraints imposed by the target language, without many alternatives to choose between: Amplification: The translation uses more words than the source text to express the same idea. Example: “the charge against him” (four words) becomes “l’accusation portée contre lui” (“the charge brought against him,” five words). When the amplifica- tion is obligatory, the effect is called dilution. Example: “le bilan” (“the balance”) becomes “the balance sheet” (1958/1972: 183). This category also covers what Vinay and Darbelnet call étoffement (perhaps “completion” or “lengthening”) (1958/1972: 109ff.), where a target-text word grammatically requires the support of another word. For example, “To the trains” becomes “Accès aux quais,” where the preposition for “to” (à) grammatically needs the support of the noun meaning “access.” Reduction (économie): The opposite of amplification (take the above examples in the opposite direction). Explicitation: The translation gives specifications that are only implicit in the start text (1958/1972: 9). Example: “students of St. Mary’s” becomes “étudiantes de l’école St. Mary,” where the French specifies that the students are women and St. Mary’s is a school (1958/1972: 117). Implicitation: The opposite of explicitation (the directionality of the above example could be reversed, if it is common knowledge in the target culture that St. Mary’s is a school for girls). Generalization: When a specific term is translated as a more general term. Example: “mutton” (the meat) becomes “mouton” (both the animal and the meat), or the American “alien” becomes “étranger” (which includes the concepts of both “foreigner” and “alien”). Particularization: The opposite of generalization (reverse the above examples). There are actually more terms than these in Vinay and Darbelnet. The above should neverthe- less suffice to illustrate several points. First, the categories seem to be saying much the same thing: the translation can give more (amplification, explicitation, generalization) or less (reduc- tion, implicitation, particularization). Second, these terms have been used throughout the equivalence paradigm, but in many different ways. Kinga Klaudy (2001), for example, uses “explicitation” to cover everything that is “more,” and “implicitation” to cover everything that is “less.” Third, the dominant factors in all these cases are the systemic differences between the start and the target languages. The individual translator does not really have a lot of choice. This is why the examples can all be read in both directions. Even when Vinay and Darbelnet claim that French is more “abstract” than English, so that there will be more gener- alization when translating into French, the difference is in order to preserve the equilibrium of the languages; it is not something that concerns the cognitive processes of the translator. To that extent, Vinay and Darbelnet consistently defend the virtues of natural equivalence. There are quite a few theories that list solution types. Vinay and Darbelnet’s work was inspired by Malblanc (1944/1963), who compared French and German. They in turn  NATURAL EQUIVALENCE 15 became one of the points of reference for Vázquez-Ayora (1977), who worked on Spanish and English. Different kinds of equivalence-maintaining procedures have been described in a Russian tradition including Fedorov (1953), Shveitser (1973/1987) and Retsker (1974), and by the American Malone (1988), all usefully summarized in Fawcett (1997). When Muñoz Martín compares several categorizations of translation solutions (Table 2.2), the most striking aspect is perhaps that there could be so many ways to cut up the same conceptual space. The terms for the solutions have clearly not been standardized. Then again, perhaps the best evidence for the existence of the sub-paradigm is the fact that these and many other linguists have agreed that this is the space where the terms and concepts are needed. The lists of solution types tend to make perfect sense when they are presented along- side carefully selected examples. On the other hand, when you analyze a translation and you try to say exactly which solution types have been used where, you often find that several categories explain the same equivalence relation, and some relations do not fit comfortably into any category. Vinay and Darbelnet recognize this problem: Table 2.2 Comparison of translation solution types, adapted from Muñoz Martín (1998) Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) Vázquez Ayora (1977) Malone (1988) Equation Loan A→E Matching ← more difficulty less → Literal translation Substitution Calque A→S Literal translation more ← translation proper → less Transposition Transposition Modulation Modulation Oblique Reordering Correspondence Equivalencia AB → BA (équivalence) Adaptation Adaptation Recrescence Amplification Amplification Amplification A → AB Secondary Reduction Degree of difficulty not specified Implicitation Omission AB → A Compensation Compensation Diffusion Repackaging Explicitation Explicitation A∩B → A|B Condensation Dilution A|B → A∩B Divergence Zigzagging Particularization A → B/C Convergence Generalization B/C → A 16 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE The translation (on a door) of PRIVATE as DÉFENSE D’ENTRER [Prohibition to Enter] is at once a transposition, a modulation, and a correspondence. It is a transposition because the adjective private is rendered by a noun phrase; it is a modulation because the statement becomes a warning [...] and it is a correspondence because the transla- tion has been produced by going back to the situation without bothering about the structure of the English-language phrase. (1958/1972: 54; my translation) If three categories explain the one phenomenon, do we really need all the categories? Or are there potentially as many categories as there are equivalents? This is a theoretical problem to which I will return in the next chapter. Even more serious questions are raised when we try to apply these categories to translation between European and Asian languages. Let us go back to Table 2.1 and consider the classical list of solution types. Since they were working between French and English, Vinay and Darbelnet could more or less assume that the general default procedure is “literal translation,” and only when that procedure does not work would the translator look for alternative solutions higher on the list (“loan” or “calque”), or harder solutions a little further down (“transposition,” “modulation,” etc.). Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, however, do not have the explicit syntactic relations of Germanic or Romance languages, so the default procedure is more usually at the level of “transposition” rather than “literal transla- tion,” and it is very difficult to make any consistent distinction between “transposition” and “modulation.” At the same time, Japanese and Chinese (perhaps to a lesser extent Korean) are very open to borrowing when dealing with new “international” subject matter, so loans and calques become far more frequent and acceptable ways to produce equivalence in some fields. One of the results is that, if you are translating from Chinese into English in an international field, the source text seems to contain so many loans from English that it is hard to describe what you are doing with them—should we perhaps add a category for “loans returning to lender”? On the other hand, if we look at the top section of Table 2.1, the one term “loan” is clearly inadequate to situations where a translator might choose between transcription (“McDonald’s” is written like that in many languages), script transfor- mation (“Макдоналдс” is the name in Russian), and phonetic imitation (マクドナルド in Japanese). The classical linguistic theories of equivalence require more work if they are to be extended beyond cognate languages. 2.4 TEXT-BASED EQUIVALENCE I have noted that John Catford (1965) saw equivalence as being mostly “rank-bound,” in the sense that it is not established on all linguistic levels at the same time. As the translator moves along the text, the level of equivalence can shift up or down, from function to phrase to term to morpheme, for example, in accordance with the various constraints ensuing from the start text. Vinay and Darbelnet’s catalogue of solution types (Table 2.1) does not contradict that view, since the solutions correspond to the same hierarchy of linguistic levels. Vinay and Darbelnet’s preference is for movements downward, in order to enhance naturalness, but another theorist could legitimately argue for movements upward. One of the most developed theories of this double-movement kind is by the Swiss- German theorist Werner Koller, whose textbook on “translation science” went through four  NATURAL EQUIVALENCE 17 editions and many reprints between 1979 and 1992. Koller proposes five frames for equiv- alence relations: denotative (based on extra-linguistic factors), connotative (based on the way the source text is expressed), text-normative (respecting or changing textual and linguistic norms), pragmatic (with respect to the receiver of the target text), and formal (the formal-aesthetic qualities of the source text). These categories suggest that the trans- lator selects the type of equivalence most appropriate to the function dominant in the start text. This commanding role of the start text places Koller’s general approach under the umbrella of “natural equivalence,” since the start text determines when “pragmatic” equiva- lence is necessary. The German theorist Katharina Reiss (1971/2000) was saying fairly similar things in the same years. Her approach recognizes three basic text types (informative, expres- sive, and operative) and she then argues that each type requires that equivalence be sought on the level corresponding to it (giving appropriate weight to content, form, or effect). Reiss’s theory is traditionally classified as “functionalist” (see 4.2 below), but its basic approach is not entirely out of place here. As in Koller, the decisive factor is held to be none other than the nature of the source text. 2.5 REFERENCE TO A TERTIUM COMPARATIONIS AND THE “THEORY OF SENSE” All these theories are rather vague about how natural equivalence works. They often assume there is a piece of reality or thought (a referent, a function, a message) that stands outside all languages and to which two languages can refer. That thing would be a third element of comparison, a tertium comparationis, available to both sides. The translator thus goes from the start text to this thing, then from the thing to the corresponding target text. Non-natural translations will result if you go straight from the source text to the target text, as when Slow is rendered as Lentement. Perhaps the best-known account of this process was formulated by the Parisian theo- rist Danica Seleskovitch. For her, a translation can only be natural if the translator succeeds in forgetting entirely about the form of the start text. She recommends “listening to the sense,” or “deverbalizing” the text so that you are only aware of the sense, which can be expressed in all languages. This is the basis of what is known as the theory of sense (théorie du sens) (Seleskovich and Lederer 1984). From our perspective, it is a process model of natural equivalence. The great difficulty of this theory is that if a “sense” is deverbalized, how can we ever know what it is? As soon as we indicate it to someone, we have given it a semiotic form of some kind. And there are no forms (not even the little pictures or diagrams sometimes used) that can be considered truly universal. So there is no real way to prove that a “deverbalized sense” exists. “Listening to the sense” undoubtedly describes a mental state that simultaneous interpreters think they attain, but can what they are hearing really be a sense without form? This theory remains a weak metaphor with strong pedagogical virtues. Note that process models like Seleskovitch’s encourage translators not to look at linguistic forms in great detail, whereas the linguistic methods espoused by Vinay and Darbelnet and the like were based on comparing forms in two languages. Seleskovitch’s ideal translator would move mentally from start form to universal sense, and then to the target form. Vinay and Darbelnet, however, implicitly model the translator as first selecting 18 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE the translation that is closest to the start form, and only moving away from that literalism when necessary. Deverbalization or literalism, which model is the most correct? This might be the central argument of the natural equivalence paradigm. Research on the actual cognitive processes of translators might be able to decide the issue, but there are many factors involved: publicity might require something like deverbalization, technical translators might start from literalism, and work between European and Asian languages (operating at the default level of transposition and modulation) might require something between the two. The sad fact is that not enough empirical research has been done to contrast and refine these very basic models. One of the reasons for this would seem to be that the “theory of sense” has been championed by the trainers of conference interpreters, while the comparative method has been developed almost exclusively by linguists, in a different academic world. The linguists would go on to compare not just isolated phrases and collo- cations, but also pragmatic discourse conventions and modes of text organization. Applied linguists like Hatim and Mason (1990, 1997) thus extend the level of comparison, but do not attempt to see what actually happens in the mind of the translator. For the most idealistic natural equivalence, the ultimate aim is to find the pre- translational solution that reproduces all aspects of the thing to be expressed. Naturalistic approaches thus spend little time on defining translation; there is not much analysis of the limits of translation; there is no real consideration of translators having different aims. Those things have somehow been decided by equivalence itself. Translation is simply translation. But that is not always so. 2.6 THE VIRTUES OF NATURAL EQUIVALENCE Natural equivalence is the basic theory in terms of which the other paradigms in this book will be defined. Its role is foundational, at least within the narrative that we are creating (soon we will see how historical the idea of natural equivalence actually is). All the following paradigms will be able to say bad things about natural equivalence. So let me quickly state a few of the good things that can be said about it: 1 In a context where structuralism seemed to make translation theoretically impossible, natural equivalence defended translation as a vital social practice. 2 In a period of abstract speculation about structures, systems, and meaning, the theo- rists of natural equivalence went out to see what could be done with actual language. If you look at virtually any of the theorists mentioned here, you find that their books are full of examples. 3 To give order to the data thus obtained, the theorists usually provided lists of solutions actually used by translators. These results have proved to be of use in the training of translators. 4 Although notions such as “same value,” “tertium comparationis,” or “deverbalization” are very idealistic, their operational functions correspond to some very widespread ideas about what a translation is. If there is a general consensus among professionals and clients that a translator should reproduce natural equivalence (no matter what the actual terms used), then a theory that expresses that expectation is serving a social function. Only when we have terms for the consensus can we start to test its viability.  NATURAL EQUIVALENCE 19 2.7 FREQUENTLY HAD ARGUMENTS Here I summarize the main debates touched on so far. You might like to decide whether you agree with these criticisms. 2.7.1 “Natural equivalence presupposes a non-existent symmetry” At the beginning of this chapter we saw Mary Snell-Hornby criticize equivalence as presenting “an illusion of symmetry between languages.” We might now like to see her criti- cism as stating the position of all the structuralist linguists that see different languages dividing up the world in different ways. Does natural equivalence deny that fact? Probably not, at least not if we look at the range of procedures formulated by Vinay and Darbelnet, or if we follow the theories of “marked” vs. “unmarked,” or if componential analysis is used to describe the differences as well as the similarities between languages. On the other hand, Snell-Hornby might be referring to supposed symmetries of functions, in which case her point appears valid: theorists of natural equivalence tend to assume that all languages have the same expressive capacity (see 2.8 below). 2.7.2 “The tests of equivalence have no psychological basis” Methods like componential analysis or the identification of solution types can to some extent explain the equivalent pairs that we find, but they cannot claim to represent the way translators actually think. As argued by Jean Delisle (1988: 72–3), they are linguistic explanations without any reference to translators’ cognitive processes. This means that their use in pedagogical situations could be misleading and even counter-productive. Similar questions should be asked about the empirical status of “deverbalization.” 2.7.3 “New information cannot be ‘natural’ ” If translations are supposed to bring in information that is new to a language or culture, then they cannot be expected to be “natural.” Since new things will eventually require new terms and expressions, the translations are going to be marked in ways that their start texts are not. This argument usually becomes a question for terminology: should the translation use loans from the start text, or should new terms be invented from resources considered “natural” in the target language? The ideology of natural equivalence would certainly prefer the latter, but the speed of technological change and imbalances between languages are pushing translators to make use of loans and the like, particularly from English. There is little evidence that languages are suffering directly because of it. Languages tend to die when they receive no translations at all. 2.7.4 “Naturalness hides imperialism” If a translation brings a culture a new way of thought, any attempt to present that thought as being “natural” is fundamentally deceptive. Can Nida really pretend that the Christian 20 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE God was already in the non-Christian cultures into whose languages the Bible is trans- lated? When the “lamb of God” becomes a “seal of God” for Inuit readers, the New Testament ceases to refer to first-century Palestine. The nature of the start text is thus concealed, the Inuit readers are deceived, and we have an ideological “illusion of symmetry” far stronger than anything Snell-Hornby was criticizing. At that point, translation has been reduced to the problem of marketing a product (for criticisms of Nida along these lines, see Meschonnic 1973, 2003 and Gutt 1991/2000). 2.7.5 “Naturalness promotes parochialism” Although equivalence could conceivably be based on the literalist level of the source text or on “functions” of some kind, the sub-paradigm of natural equivalence mostly favors translations that do not read like translations. Ernst-August Gutt (1991/2000), for instance, argues that “equivalent function” produces an illusory naturalness, which mislead- ingly presents the translation as if it were a non-translation. It is better, for him, to look for equivalents that make the reader work. One variant of the anti-domestication argument is found in the American translator and critic Lawrence Venuti (particularly 1998), who is concerned not so much with the ways minor cultures are deceived but with the effects that naturalness (“fluency”) has on the way major cultures see the rest of the world. If all cultures are made to sound like contemporary fluent English, then Anglo-American culture will believe that the whole world is like itself. For Venuti, a non-natural (“resistant”) translation should therefore use forms that are not frequent in the target language, whether or not those forms are equivalent to anything in the source text. At that point the argument prima- rily concerns how one should write, and only secondarily how one should translate. Most of these points will be developed in future chapters. 2.8 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE AS A HISTORICAL SUB-PARADIGM To close this chapter, I should insist that natural equivalence is a profoundly historical idea. Notions of “equal value” presuppose that different languages do or can express values that can be compared in some itemized way. This need not mean that all languages look and sound the same; it need not involve an “illusion of symmetry.” But it does assume that different languages are somehow on the same level. That assumption is easily made with respect to our contemporary national languages: English, French, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, or Hindi are by no means symmetrical but they have roughly the same ranking in terms of expressive capacities. No one is seriously arguing that any of these are inherently inferior to the others. However, if we did believe that a language was inferior, or perhaps systematically less developed in some area of discourse, how could we defend natural equivalence as an ideal for translation into that language? Belief in the equal values of languages was quite rare in European theorizing prior to the Renaissance. Much of medieval thinking assumed a hierarchy of languages, where some were considered intrinsically better than others. At the top were the languages of divine revelation (Biblical Hebrew, New Testament Greek, Arabic, sometimes Sanskrit), then the languages of divinely inspired translation (the Greek of the Septuagint, the Latin  NATURAL EQUIVALENCE 21 of the Vulgate), then the national vernaculars, then the patois or regional dialects. This usually meant that translation was seen as a way of enriching the target language with the values of a superior source language. Most translations went downward in the hier- archy, from Hebrew or Greek to Latin, or from Latin to the vernaculars. For as long as the hierarchy existed, claims to equivalence (certainly without the term) played little role in thought on translation. For roughly parallel historical reasons, the basic idea of equivalence was difficult to maintain prior to the age of the printing press. Before printing, the start text was not a stable entity. Texts tended to undergo constant incremental changes in the process of copying (each copyist adapted and changed things), and those small changes followed the numerous variations of regional dialects, prior to the standardization of national vernaculars. There was usually not just one “source text” waiting to be translated. There would be a range of different manuscripts, with layer upon layer of different receptions inscribed in those manuscripts. Translation could be seen as an extension of that process. Why try to be equivalent if there is nothing stable to be equivalent to? Printing and the rise of standardized vernaculars helped the conceptualization of equivalence. True, the term “equivalence” was not used. In its place you usually find talk of “fidelity,” often to an author, but also to a sense, intention, or function that could be found in a fixed text. In accordance with this same logic, the relative demise of equivalence as a concept could correspond to the electronic technologies by which contemporary texts are constantly evolving, primarily through updating (think of websites, software, and product documenta- tion). Without a fixed text, what should a translation be equivalent to? For that matter, in the age of international English and strong national vernaculars, have we not created a new hierarchy of languages (see 7.8 below)? Seen in this historical light, natural equivalence cannot really provide any guarantee of a “true” or “valid” translation. Yet its power as a concept remains strong. SUMMARY This chapter started by defending the equivalence paradigm against those who reduce it to a belief that all languages are structured the same way. The chapter nevertheless finishes with a rather negative assessment. I have indicated some of the things the sub-paradigm of natural equivalence tends to leave out; I have argued that the ideal of pre-existing equiv- alence is based on the historical conditions of print culture and national vernacular languages; we have seen that the commonsensical notion of “equal value” only had intel- lectual validity in opposition to the structuralist belief in languages as world-views; I have noted how natural equivalence can be described as illusory and deceptive. Those critical evaluations certainly do not mean that the concept of natural equivalence can simply be forgotten. Perhaps the most important things to retain from it are the solution types and modes of analysis. Terms like “modulation,” “explicitation,” “compensation,” “markedness,” and “componential analysis” form the basic metalanguage of linguistic approaches. They must be known and understood. Indeed, the debates over natural equivalence concern most of the central problems of the Western translation form, and do so in ways that are not always naïve. Once you have grasped its basic principles, all the other paradigms can be seen as responses to it. 22 NATURAL EQUIVALENCE SOURCES AND FURTHER READING The third edition of The Translation Studies Reader (Venuti 2012) has only a text by Nida to represent equivalence (Vinay and Darbelnet and Catford were in earlier editions but disap- peared), which might indicate how mainstream theory has moved away from the beliefs opera- tive in professional practice. Munday (2012) places Vinay and Darbelnet and Catford in the chapter on “product and process,” which for me belongs to the descriptive paradigm. The basic theories of natural equivalence are well summarized in Peter Fawcett’s Translation and Language: Linguistic Theories Explained (1997). The classical texts are often still available and remain very readable. A good library should have Catford (1965), Vinay and Darbelnet (1958 and subsequent editions; English translation in 1995), and something of Nida (the general theory is in Toward a Science of Translating, 1964). Critics of natural equivalence are now- adays abundant. Very few of them, however, have taken the trouble to read the foundational texts in detail, or to understand the intellectual climate in which the sub-paradigm developed. Suggested projects and activities The following are general suggestions for what can be done in the classroom, or for fun. In some cases, the activities are aimed at consolidating awareness of the theories presented in this chapter. In other cases, they raise awareness of prob- lems that will be picked up in the next few chapters. 1 Consider this definition of translation: “Translating consists in reproducingg in the receptor language the closest natural equivalentt of the source-language message” (Nida and Taber 1969: 12). What should happen when the start text contains items that are supernatural or specific to an ancient culture? Find examples in any passage from the Old Testament. 2 Consider the road signs in your language. Which of them result from natural equivalence? (Think about “Stop,” for a start.) 3 The following is a Dominican friar giving orders in recently conquered Mexico: I hereby order that all friars in this house, whether in sermons, catechisms, private talk among themselves, with secular Spaniards or with Indians, shall refrain from using the name Cabahuill or Chii, or whatever else may be the case, but shall use the name Dioss [“God” in Spanish] to explain to the natives the nature of the one true God.