B) Partial Translation Equivalents

To understand the partiality and the completeness of translation equivalence let us consider the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects of equivalence, because the partiality of equivalence is, as a matter of fact, the absence of one or more of these aspects.

Let us start from examples. Книга as an equivalent of the English word book is full in all equivalence aspects because it has similar syntactic functions (those of a Noun), its lexical meaning is also generally similar, and the pragmatic aspect of this equivalent (the message intent and target audience reaction) coincides with that of the English word. Thus, книга is conventionally regardedas a full equivalent of the word book.

Strictly saying, however, the Ukrainian word протестувати, for example, is a partial equivalent of the English word protesting (say, in the sentence Protesting is a risk – Протестувати ризиковано) because of different grammatical meanings (a Gerund and a Verb), the semantic and pragmatic aspects being similar.

To take another example of partial equivalence let us consider the English saying Carry coal to Newcastle. If one translates it as Возити вугілля до Ньюкасла it would lack the pragmatic aspect of equivalence (The intent of this message Bring something that is readily available locally would be lost, because the Ukrainian audience could be unaware of the fact that Newcastle is the center of a coal-mining area). If, however one translates it Їхати до Тули з власним самоваром it would lose the semantic similarity, but preserve the pragmatic intent of the message, which, in our opinion, is the first priority of translation. Anyway, both suggested translation equivalents of this saying are considered partial.

Partial equivalence is, as a matter of fact, the absence of one or more of equivalence aspects, i.e. of syntactic, semantic or pragmatic aspect.

It should be born in mind, however, that syntactic equivalence of translation units longer than several words is a rare case, indeed, if one deals with two languages having different systems and structures (English and Ukrainian are a good example).moreover, it is hardly a translator’s target to preserve the structure of the source text and in many instances this means violation of syntactic and stylistic rules of the target language.

Semantic similarity between the source and target texts is desirable, but it is not an ultimate goal of a translator.

What is really important for translation adequacy is the pragmatic equivalence. Let us take several examples of semantic and/or pragmatic equivalents to illustrate the idea:

Зелений – green; (недосвідчений) verdant; зелений горошок – green peace; зелений театр – open-air stage; зелений хлопчисько – greenhorn; зелена вулиця – green, go; давати зелену вулицю – to give open passage, to give the go-ahead; туга зелена – utter boredom; зелене будівництво – laying out of parks; зелений борщ – sorrel soup; потопати в зелені – to be buried in verdure.

Thus, one may suggest that translation equivalence partiality is more a translation tool than a flaw in translator’s ability to render the content of the source message in its full. This evidently does not apply to the pragmatic equivalence which is a universal prerequisite of good translation.

In order to apply theory in translation practice it should be reasonable to consider a detailed classification of translation equivalence types by V.Komissarov.