2.1 Formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence
Equivalence in translation, which is a linguistic-based translation theory, emphasizes the form of the two languages. Eugene A Nida is an important figure in translation history, which puts forward two kinds of equivalence, namely, formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence.
According to Eugene Nida, the famous American translation theorist, “Anything that can be said in one language can be said in another”[3] 。Each language has its own distinctive characteristic, especially its own system of symbolizing meaning and complete intelligibility. Formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence are two approaches to translation proposed by Eugene A. Nida. He also made a distinction between two types of equivalence.
Formal equivalence or correspondence “focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content”, unlike dynamic equivalence,which is based upon the principle of equivalent effect. In the second edition of their work, the two theorists provide a more detailed explanation of each type of equivalence. Formal correspondence consists of target language (TL) item, which represents the closest equivalent of a source language (SL) word or phrase. Nida and Taber make it clear that there are not always formal equivalents between language pairs. They therefore suggest that these formal equivalents should be used wherever possible if the translation aims at achieving formal rather than dynamic equivalence. The use of formal equivalents might at times have serious implications in the target text (TT) since the target audience will not easily understand the translation. Nida and Taber themselves assert that “typically formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylistic patterns of the receiver language, and hence distorts the message so as to cause the receiver to misunderstand or to labor unduly hard”.[4]
2007-06-03
21:55:35
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