Source — Panou, "Equivalence in Translation Theories: A Critical Evaluation"
- Title: Equivalence in Translation Theories: A Critical Evaluation
- Author: Despoina Panou (PhD student at the time, University of Leicester; translation studies)
- Publication: Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1–6, January 2013 (peer-reviewed academic journal; Academy Publisher; doi:10.4304/tpls.3.1.1-6)
- URL: https://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/tpls/vol03/01/01.pdf
- Type: secondary / academic survey article — neutral, synoptic stance; surveys nine equivalence theorists in sequence (Vinay & Darbelnet, Jakobson, Nida & Taber, Catford, House, Koller, Newmark, Baker, Pym) without picking a favorite, then reports the field's own critiques of each.
- Accessed: 2026-08-28
Extract
The mission names Jakobson, Catford, and Nida explicitly; this source covers all three plus the field's later reaction against equivalence-based theory generally, in one citable, dated academic article. Page numbers below are the article's own PDF page numbers (1–6), not the theorists' original-book pagination unless noted.
Jakobson (1959)
- Jakobson's tripartite division of translation: intralingual (rewording within one language), interlingual (rewording between two languages — "translation proper," the field's own focus), and intersemiotic (rewording between sign systems, e.g. verbal to non-verbal). (p. 2)
- On equivalence: Jakobson holds there is no full equivalence between two words across languages, even close synonyms. Panou reports his own example — English cheese is not identical to Russian сыр (syr), because the Russian term does not include the concept "cottage cheese." (p. 2, citing Jakobson 1959/2000, p. 114)
- Jakobson does not conclude translation is impossible from this — he is pinpointing structural/terminological differences between languages, not asserting a hard barrier. (p. 2)
Nida and Taber (1964, 1969)
- Nida's two founding books: Toward a Science of Translating (1964) and, with Charles Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation (1969) — both explicitly framed as bringing a more "scientific" method to translation, drawing on semantics, pragmatics, and Chomsky's transformational grammar (1965). (p. 2)
- Formal equivalence: target text resembles the source text closely in both form and content.
- Dynamic equivalence: the translation aims to convey the source message as naturally as possible in the target language, prioritizing the target reader's experience over formal fidelity.
- Panou reads Nida as favoring dynamic equivalence, consistent with his working context (Bible translation aimed at producing comparable impact across very different audiences); Nida and Taber (1969, p. 25) state dynamic equivalence "goes beyond correct communication of information." (p. 2–3)
- Munday (2001, p. 42, as cited by Panou) credits Nida with introducing a receptor-based (reader-response) orientation to translation theory. (p. 3)
- Criticism reported: Lefevere (1993, p. 7) — equivalence under Nida still operates at the word level. Van den Broeck (1978, p. 40) — questions how an "equivalent effect" could even be measured, since no text can produce the same response in two different cultures or eras. Edwin Gentzler (Contemporary Translation Theories, 2001) is named as the "fiercest critic," accusing Nida of using dynamic equivalence as a tool to proselytize non-Christian readers toward Protestant Christianity — Gentzler's scare-quotes around "science" signal his skepticism of the whole "scientific translation" framing. (p. 3)
- Panou's own summary judgment: despite the criticism, Nida advanced the field by producing a systematic procedure and by foregrounding the reader/receptor and their cultural expectations. (p. 3)
- Note: this source gives the 1964 book title as Toward a Science of Translating (Leiden: E.J. Brill) — earlier project sources have used similar phrasing; treat this citation as the confirmed reference form going forward.
Catford (1965)
- Catford's book: A Linguistic Theory of Translation (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).
- Three-way typology of translation types by different criteria: full vs. partial translation (extent), total vs. restricted translation (which language levels are involved), and rank-bound vs. unbounded translation (the grammatical/phonological rank at which equivalence is fixed). (p. 3)
- Translation shifts — Catford (1965, p. 73, as quoted/cited by Panou) defines shifts as "departures from formal correspondence when translating from the SL to the TL." Two main kinds:
- Level shifts: an SL item at one linguistic level (e.g. grammar) has a TL equivalent at a different level (e.g. lexis).
- Category shifts, subdivided into: structure-shifts (change in grammatical structure), unit-shifts (change in rank, e.g. clause ↔ phrase), class-shifts (change in word class), and intra-system shifts (source and target language share the same system-type, e.g. both have a singular/plural number system, but translation selects a non-corresponding term within that shared system). (p. 3, citing Catford 1965, p. 80)
- Criticism reported: Mary Snell-Hornby (1988, pp. 19–20, as cited by Panou via Leonardi 2007, p. 87) argues linguistics alone cannot account for translation — cultural, situational, and historical factors matter too — and calls Catford's definition of textual equivalence "circular," his reliance on bilingual informants "hopelessly inadequate," and his example sentences "isolated and even absurdly simplistic." Kirsten Malmkjær (2005, p. 24, as cited by Panou) offers a partial defense: Catford's definition of translation as replacement of SL textual material by TL "equivalent" textual material does not claim the two are equivalent in meaning — a distinction Snell-Hornby's critique may elide. (p. 3)
The field's broader turn away from equivalence
- Panou's conclusion (p. 5): many of the equivalence theories surveyed — Nida's formal/dynamic, Newmark's semantic/communicative, Catford's formal correspondence/textual equivalence, House's overt/covert, Pym's natural/directional — share a bipolar structure. These "bipolar views of equivalence soon faded away and more attractive translation paradigms came to the forefront."
- The field's subsequent move: target-oriented approaches, which treat the source text only as a point of departure and focus instead on the cultural, historical, and socio-political factors surrounding translation — "looking at it as a culture-bound phenomenon" — displacing the linguistic-equivalence paradigm's assumption that the source text holds a "supreme position." Panou does not name Bassnett/Lefevere/Venuti explicitly in this passage, but this is the same shift generally labeled the translation studies "cultural turn" in the wider literature (see Gaps below).
- Despite this, Panou's final judgment is not dismissive: equivalence "is still one of the pivotal definitory axes of translation" as a reminder of the central problems translators face. (p. 5)
Gaps in this source (flagged, not filled here)
- Panou's article does not use the phrase "cultural turn" and does not name Bassnett, Lefevere, or Venuti as a school; the target-oriented shift is described in general terms only. A dedicated later ingest on the "cultural turn" proper (Bassnett & Lefevere's edited volumes, Venuti's The Translator's Invisibility) would need its own primary/secondary sourcing before this project asserts specific claims about that school.
- Jakobson's essay is cited here only via Panou's secondhand quotation (through the Venuti-edited Translation Studies Reader reprint, 1959/2000, pp. 113–118); the concept of "equivalence in difference," which other tertiary summaries attribute to Jakobson, does not appear in this source's account and is not independently confirmed by this project yet.
- Nida's later relabeling of "dynamic equivalence" as "functional equivalence" (reported by other tertiary sources, e.g. Wikipedia's "Dynamic and formal equivalence" article) is not mentioned in this source at all — Panou's account stops at the 1964/1969 formal/dynamic terminology.