Equivalence at Word Level

1. Presupposed meaning

1.1. Presupposed meaning arises from co-occurrence restriction. This restrictions are of two types: -Sectional Restrictions - and - Collocational Restriction. The first one refers to the function of the propositonal meaning of a word. On the other hand, the second one is about semantically arbitrary restrictions which do not follow logically from the propositional meaning of a word.

2. Evoked Meaning

2.1. Evoked meaning arises from dialect and register variation. A dialect is a variety of language which has currency within a specifict community or group of speakers. It is clasified on the folowing bases: 1- Geographical. 2- Temporal. 3- Social

3. The problem of non-equivalence

3.1. Non-equivalence which often pose difficulties for the translator and some attested strategies for dealing with them. First, a word of warning, the choice of a suitable equivalent in a given context. Second factor may be extra-linguistic, It is virtually impossible to offer absolute guide-lines for dealing with the various types of non-equivalence which exist among languages.

4. Semantic fields and lexical sets - The segmentation of experience

4.1. Fields are abstract concepts. An example of a semantic field would be the field of SPEECH, or PLANTS or VEHICLES. A large number of semantic fields are common to all or most languages. Most, if not all, languages will have fields of DISTANCE, SIZE, SHAPE, TIME, EMOTION, BELIEFS, ACADEMIC SUBJECTS and NATURAL PHENOMENA. The actual words and expressions under each field are sometimes called lexical sets. Each semantic field will normally have several sub-divisions or lexical sets under it, and each sub-division will have further sub-divisions and lexical sets. So, the field of SPEECH in English has a sub-division of VERBS OF SPEECH which includes general verbs such as speak and say and more specific ones such as mumble, murmur, mutter and whisper.

5. Non-equivalence at word level and some common strategies for dealing with it

5.1. Non-equivalence at word level means that the target language has no direct equivalent for a word which occurs in the source text. The type and level of difficulty posed can vary tremendously depending on the nature of non-equivalence.

6. The word in different languages

6.1. What is a word? The word is the smallest unit of the LANGUAGE.

6.2. Other people consider the word as the basic meaningful element in a languages.

7. Is there a one-to-one relationship between word and meaning?

7.1. TENNIS PLAYER is written with as one word in Turkish: Tenisçi; if is cheap as one word in Japanese: Yasukattara; but the verb type is Rendered by three words in spanish: Pasar a Maquina. This suggests that there is no one-to-one correspondence between orthographic words and elements of meaning within or across languges.

8. Morphemes

8.1. They are in charge to describe minimal formal elements of meaning in language, as a distinct from words which may or may not contain several elements

9. Lexical Meaning

9.1. The lexical meaning of a word or lexical unit may be thought of as the specific value it has in particular linguistic system and the "personality"it acquires through usage within that system.

10. Propisitional vs Expressive meaning

10.1. The prepositional Meaning of a word or an utterance arises from the relation between it and what it refers to or describes in a real or imaginary world as conceived by the speakers of the particular language to which the word or utterance belong.

10.2. The Expressive Meaning cannot be judged as true or false. This is because Expressive meaning relates to the speaker's feelings or attitude rather than to what words and utterance refer to.

11. Common problems of non-equivalence

11.1. The following are some common types of non-equivalence at word level, with examples from various languages:

11.2. Culture-specific concepts: The source-language word may express a concept which is totally unknown in the target culture. The concept in question may be abstract or concrete; it may relate to a religious belief, a social custorn or even a type of food.

11.3. The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target language: The source-language word may express a concept which is known in the target culture but simply not lexicalized, that is not 'allocated' a target-language word to express it.

11.4. The source-language word is semantically complex: The source-language word may be semantically complex. This is a fairly common problem in translation. Words do not have to be morphologically complex to be semantically complex. In other words, a single word which consists of a single morpheme can sometimes express a more complex set of meanings than a whole sentence.

11.5. The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning: The target language may make more or fewer distinctions in meaning than the Source language. What one language regards as an important distinction in meaning another language may not perceive as relevant. For example, Indonesian makes a distinction between going out in the rain without the knowledge that it is raining (kehujanan) and going out in the rain with the knowledge that it is raining (hujan- hujanan).