Lakhasly

Translation is a controversial concept that is hotly debated. There are many
definitions
of translation that revolve around meaning, and the different notions
of equivalence. Halliday et al. (1965) describe translation as the establishment of
textual equivalents, rather than lexical or grammatical equivalents. Thus, as stated
by Halliday et al. (1965), translation is not a mere word-for-word rendition but,
rather, translation is seen as a whole text-to-text transplanting. Catford (1965,
p. 20), similar to Halliday, defines translation as ‘the replacement of textual material
in one language, i.e. the source language (SL) by equivalent textual material
in another language, i.e. target language (TL).’ House (2001) perceives translation
as a reproduction of a text in an SL in an equivalent text in a TL. Thus, Halliday
et al. (1965) see translation in terms of textual equivalence, and not word-for-word
equivalence. Widdowson (1978) sees translation from a different perspective;
he views translation from a communicative perspective. Widdowson states that
translation should neither operate at the word level, the sentence level, the lexical
level, or the grammatical level; translation should be only at the communicative
level. As for Hatim and Munday (2004), they state that there are two distinctive
senses of translation: translation as a process, and translation as a product. They
view translation, or to use their words, the ambit of translation as: (1) the process
of transferring a ST into a TT in a specific socio-cultural context; (2) a product
which is the result of the previous step; and (3) the cognitive, linguistic, visual,
cultural and ideological phenomena that are a principal component of (1) and (2).
This definition seems have greater care for the socio-cultural aspects of translation.
Other scholars and researchers (e.g. Venuti, 2004; Ahmed, 2006) see translation
as a process that not only implies conveying meaning in a TL, but that should
retain the same style and tone of a ST: the translated text should not appear to be
a translation but, rather, should appear to be an original text, wherein no translator
is visible. This definition focuses on the equivalence level between a ST and a TT;
it goes beyond lexical equivalence to include style and tone, which are difficult
to achieve. However, another perspective sees translation as reproducing a text in
one language in another TL to make it accessible to a larger audience (Ordudari,
2007). Ordudari’s definition is more concerned with the aim of translation; that
is, to reach a greater audience, which applies to many types of texts. Levý (1967)
sees translation as a process of decision making, whereby the components of this
decision are:
1. The situation: sometimes the SL expresses one lexical item using a certain item
where the TL has two equivalents for the same word. For example, a translator
has to make a decision when translating the English word ‘eclipse’ because
it has two equivalents in Arabic (i.e. one is related to the moon and the other
related to the sun).
2. Instruction I: This implies defining the class of possible alternatives.
3. Instruction II: This denotes making a selection from the available class
alternatives.
This selection is context-based. For example, to translate the word
‘eclipse’ into Arabic, a translator should refer to the context to understand
whether it is a ‘lunar eclipse’ (relating to the moon), or a ‘solar eclipse’ (relating
to the sun).
Levy’s (1976) view of translation is related to the process of the translation, which
sounds practical. Levy’s perspective of translation sounds comprehensive, as it
encompasses the notion of ‘equivalence’ without disregarding the role of a translator
in selecting the most appropriate equivalent. Another perspective of translation