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- Approaches to Translation by Peter Newmark
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P P R R O O B B L L E E M M S S O O F F E E Q Q U U I I V V A A L L E E N N C C E E
The translation of idioms takes us a stage further in considering the question of meaning and translation, for idioms, like puns, are culture bound. The Italian idi om menare il can per l’aia provides a good example of the kind of shift that takes place in the translation process. Translated literally, the sentence: Giovanni sta menando il can per l’aia. becomes John is leading his dog around the threshing floor.
The image conjured up by this sentence is somewhat startling and, unless the context referred quite specifically to such a location, the sentence, would seem obscure and virtually meaningless. The English idiom that most closely corresponds to the Italian is to beat about the bush, also obscure unless used idiomatically, and hence the sentence correctly translated becomes John is beating about the bush.
Both English and Italian have corresponding idiomatic expressions that render the idea of prevarication, and so in the process of interlingual translation one idiom is substituted for another. That substitution is made not on the basis of the linguistic elements in the phrase, nor on the basis of a corresponding or similar image contained in the phrase, but on the function of the idiom. The SL phrase is replaced by a TL phrase that serves the same purpose in the TL culture, and the process here involves the substitution of SL sign for TL sign. Dagut’s remarks about the problems of translating metaphor are interesting when applied also to the problem of tacking idioms.
Popovie distinguishes four types of equivalence: (1) Linguistic equivalence, where there is homogeneity on the linguistic level of both SL and TL texts, i.e. word for word translation. (2) Paradigmatic equivalence, where there is equivalence of “the elements of a paradigmatic expressive axis”, i.e. elements of grammar, which Popovic sees as being a higher category than lexical equivalence. (3) Stylistic (translational) equivalence, where there is “functional equivalence of elements in both original and translation aiming at an expressive identity with an invariant of identical meaning.”
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(4) gTextual (syntagmatic) equivalence, where
there is
equivalence of form and shape.
The case of the translation of the Italian idiom, therefore, involves the determining of stylistic equivalence which results in the substitution of the SL idiom by an idiom with an equivalent function in the TL.
Equivalence in translation, then, should not be approached as a search for sameness, since sameness cannot even exist between two TL versions of the same texts, let alone between the SL and the TL version. Popovie’s four types offer a useful starting point and Neubert’s three semiotic categories point the way towards an approach that perceives equivalence as a dialectic between the signs and the structures within and surrounding the SL and TL texts.
From Approaches to Translation by Peter Newmark
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