TRANSLATION STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING EQUIVALENCE

Abstract

Translation is ultimately a human activity which enables human beings to exchange ideas and thoughts regardless of the different tongues used. Newmark views the phenomenon of translation as a legitimate offspring of the phenomenon of language,
since originally, when humans spread over the earth, their languages differed and they needed a means through which people speaking a certain language would interact with others who spoke a different language. Therefore, translation is a science, an art, and a skill [3, 20]. It is a science in the sense that it necessitates complete knowledge of the structure and make-up of the two languages concerned. It is an art since it requires artistic talent to reconstruct the original text in the form of a product that is presentable to the reader who is not supposed to be familiar with the original. It is also a skill because it entails the ability to smooth over any difficulty in the translation, and the ability to provide the translation of something that has no equal in the target language.There are many different translation strategies, most of which are based on equivalence. The concept of equivalence is a central and controversial issue in translation. It has been studied by various theorists (cf. Jakobson 1959, Catford 1965,House 1977, Nida and Taber 1982, Newmark 1988, Vinay and Darbelnet 1995 and Baker 1992). Since the introduction of semantic and communicative translation theories by Newmark (1988; 1991), there have been various studies on them. Some studies compare them; others analyze them in some specific literature texts or in the translation of news reports.