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Komissarov’s Vision of Equivalence

According to Komissarov, equivalence can be of 5 types, each of which having its own peculiarities. In other words, the equivalence between source text and target text may be based on the reproduction of different parts of the source text contents.

The first level of equivalence includes the translations in which the degree of semantic similarity with source text seems to be the lowest. For example: A rolling stone gathers no moss – Кому дома не сидится, тот добра не наживёт; That’s a pretty thing to say – Постыдился бы! Here we cannot discover any common semes or invariant structures in the original and translation. An absolute dissimilarity of language units is accompanied by the absence of any logical link between the two messages which could lead to the conclusion that they are “about the same thing”, that they describe one and the same situation. Moreover, it comprises the information which must be preserved by all means, even though the greater part of the contents of the original is lost in the translation. From the examples we can see that common to the original and its translation in each case is only the general intent of the message. The translation gives information only what the original text is about or what is said in it, it mainly illustrates what it is said for, that is what the source text meant, what the aim of the message is. This part of the contents which contains information about the general intent of the message, its orientation towards a certain communicative effect can be called the purport of communication. Thus, we can conclude that in the first type of equivalence it is only the purport of communication that is retained in translation.

The second group of translations can be illustrated by the following examples: You can see one bear – you have seen them all – Все медведи похожи друг на друга; He answered the phone – Он снял трубку; It was late in the day – Близился вечер. These examples are similar to the previous ones as the equivalence of translations here doesn’t involve any parallelism of lexical and structural units. Most of the words or syntactic structures of the original have no direct correspondence in the translation. At the same time, it’s obvious that there is a greater proximity of contents than in the preceding group. Beside the purport of the communication there is some additional information contained in the original, that is retained in translation. Thus, in the group of the second type the equivalence involves retention of two types of information contained in the original: the purport of communication and the indication of the situation.

In the next group of translations the part of the contents which is to be retained is still longer. This type of equivalence can be exemplified as follows: Scrubbing makes me bad-tempered – От мытья полов у меня портится настроение; London saw a cold winter last year – В прошлом году зима в Лондоне была холодной. In this case the translation retains the two preceding informative complexes as well as the method of describing the situation. In other words, it denotes the same general notions as the original. This means that the translation is a semantic paraphrase of the original preserving its basic semes and allowing their free reshuffle in the sentence. The use of identical notions in the two texts means that the basic structure of the messages they convey remains intact.

We can now say that the third type of equivalence exemplified by the translations of the third group implies retention in the translation of the three parts of the original contents which we have conventionally designated as the purport of communication, the identification of the situation and the method of its description.

The fourth group of translations can be illustrated by the following examples: He was never tired of old songs – Старые песни ему никогда не надоедали; I don’t see that I need to convince you – Не вижу надобности доказывать это вам; He was standing with his arms crossed and his bare head bent – Он стоял, сложив руки на груди и опустив непокрытую голову. In this group the semantic similarity of the previous types of equivalence is reinforced by the invariant meaning of the syntactic structures in the original and in translation. In such translations the syntactic structures can be regarded as derived from those in the original through syntactic transformations. This includes cases when the translator makes use of similar or parallel structures. An important feature of this and the subsequent type of equivalence is that they imply the retention of the linguistic meaning, that is the information fixed in the substantial or structural elements of language. Thus, the fourth level of equivalence presupposes retention in the translation of the four meaningful components of the original: the purport of communication, the identification of the situation, the method of its description and the invariant meaning of the syntactic structures.

The fifth group of translations that can be discovered when we analyze their relationships with the respective originals. Here we find the maximum possible semantic similarity between texts in different languages. These translations try to retain the meaning of all the words used in the original text. The examples cited below illustrate this considerable semantic proximity of the two correlated words in the two sentences: I saw him in the theatre – Я видел его в театре; The house was sold for ten thousand dollars – Дом был продан за 10 тысяч долларов. Here we can observe the equivalence of semes which make up the meaning of correlated words in the original text and in translation. Parallelism of syntactic structures implying the maximum invariants of their meanings; the similarity of the notional categories which determine the method of describing the situation; the identity of the situations; the identical functional aim of the utterance or the purport of communication. The relative identity of the contents of the two texts depends in this case on the extent to which various components of the word meaning can be rendered in translation.

Every translation can be regarded as belonging to a certain type of equivalence. Since each subsequent type implies a higher degree of semantic similarity, we can say that every translation is made at a certain level of equivalence. A translation can be good at any level of equivalence.