Towards A Textual Approach To Translation Equivalence

The concept of translation equivalence has long been a controversial problem in translation theories. Different opinions have arisen and no agreement has been reached yet. By taking an interdisciplinary approach, the paper aims to seek the objective definition of translation equivalence and then apply it to translation practice.The first part of the paper reviews translation equivalence proposed previously and makes an analysis on the existing problems involved in the issue, from which the objective definition has been derived. The question of defining translation equivalence has been mainly pursued by two approaches. Linguistic approach, represented by Catford, is known for his "textual equivalence". The theory plays a very important part in building a more scientific and systematic translation theory. Communicative approach, put forward by Nida, has opened up a new perspective in the sense of "readers' response" to achieve "dynamic equivalence". Their theories, no doubt, have made great contributions to the study of translation equivalence, but owning to various defects, their theories fail to offer a satisfactory and persuasive solution to the question, only to cause more confusion. The paper makes a claim that translation equivalence shouldn't be viewed as absolute. The nature of the concept lies in its relativity. It is the goal a translator sets his mind to achieve. But the most important thing is how people should understand the nature of the concept in order to put it into practice. A new approach is called for.Being a new discipline, translation needs to draw on the findings of other related fields to develop its own methodology and broaden its horizon, which has been already accepted as a fact in translation studies. The second part of the paper makes a brief introduction to text linguistics and discusses the relationship between text linguistics and the study of translation equivalence. Translation involves the transference betweentwo languages, so that it has a close relationship with linguistics. It is of great help for the development of translation if the achievements of linguistics are applied to translation studies appropriately. But traditional linguistics, which restricted itself to the study of linguistic structure, is of little value to translation. Text linguistics, which extends itself to the study of language beyond sentence level and language in use, has offered a much broader view for translation studies. Taking a textual approach, translators are guided by the principle of text analysis and text production in order to achieve equivalence in translation to its maximum.Translation theories are based on translation practice, and translation theories in turn serve as the guidance to translation practice. Part three of the paper centers on the achievements of translation equivalence from the perspective of text linguistics. As a text is termed as a linguistic unit serving certain function in certain context, in the process of translating, translators should embark to make a comprehensive analysis of the intention and the features of language use in the source text, and then attempt to present them in the target text in the hope of achieving functional equivalence. The paper claims that in translation practice, the functional equivalence mainly covers three aspects: pragmatic equivalence, stylistic equivalence and rhetorical equivalence. The overall functional equivalence will be achieved on the basis of the above three types of equivalence. It is universally agreed that translation should convey the meanings of the source text. Semantics and pragmatics, which are both concerned with the study of meaning, should have certain relationship with translation studies. In the light of text linguistics, one may say pragmatics is of more help to translation, for a translator always gives utmost prominence to the meaning in use, so that pragmatic equivalence can be achieved. Stylistic equivalence is of great significance in translation. A translator has to analyze the features of language...