On Translation Equivalence(3)

Thirdly, as for what translation involves, my understanding is that it concerns primarily the source text (or ST) and secondly the translator, the reader and the target text (or TT), to simplify the ten parameters exposed by Peter Newmark. And the original force that complicates translation is the pursuit of the truth of the souce text which is likely, or even inevitably, to be either distorted or partially missing during the process of translating as a result of the incompatibility of the two opposing parameters, viz. the source language and culture vs. the target language and culture. When it comes to whether an ideal target text is possible, we are going to negotiate the concept of equivalence to be discussed in the following part of this essay.

ⅢWhat Is Equivalence? 

Firstly, regarding equivalence, a lot of adjectives have been assigned to this concept to approach the nature of translation. Deprived of any adjective, “equivalence” may be in a dictionary defined as “the state or property of being equivalent ” or “a logic operator having the property that if P is a statement, Q is a statement,  R is a statement, then the equivalence of P,Q,R,…, is true if and only if all statements are true or all statements are false.” However, equivalence, when applied to the issue of translation, is an abstract concept and actually refers to the equivalence relationship between the source text and the target text, which brings about a basic philosophical question, viz. whether there are two absolutely equivalent things. The answer to this question may be unanimously negative. Thus the equivalence relationship between the ST and the TT seems to be an illusion; anyhow, equivalence can be regarded as the ideal goal when the conscientious and responsible translator is in persistent pursuit of the truth of the source text. In this sense, equivalence is just beyond the capability of the translator if it is not put in a more specific layer of translation or confined to a certain aspect of translation; to put this in another way, equivalence has to owe its significance to the adjective that precedes it. Similarly, observance, on the part of the translator, of all the three principles of translation advanced by Tytler or the three-character principle originated by Yan Fu, is out of the question; but observance of one or two of the above-mentioned three principles or characters is, in most cases, attainable. To be brief, the term “equivalence” in the discipline of translation can hardly gain its identity until it is either preceded by a modifier such as an adjective or followed by a post-modifier, or, in other words, further divided into different categories.

Secondly, different kinds of equivalences are realized by their counterparts in the process of translating, namely, equivalents. As mentioned above, “equivalence” always goes with a modifier; accordingly, so does an “equivalent”. It is precisely the different kinds of equivalents that yield different versions of translation. In another word, an absolute equivalent is as unobtainable as absolute equivalence and therefore an abstract concept or an ideal goal in the practical process of translating. This suggests that an ideal target text as an equivalent of the source text is past realization though different equivalents at different layers or aspects of translation are to be materialized to constitute the final version of the target text. In one word, just like “equivalence”, an “equivalent”, failing any modifier preceding or following it, will be taken as an unpractical concept and then dismissed in the process of translating.  

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