What is a difference between equivalence and correspondence in terminology? Thread poster: kjobkova
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Hello,
I would like someone to explain the difference between equivalence and correspondence in terminology.
Thank you very much.
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 15:40
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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klarajobkova wrote:
I would like someone to explain the difference between equivalence and correspondence in terminology.
Can you tell us where you heard these two terms? Is this from a specific book?
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 15:40
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| Off the top of my head. | Jun 16, 2020 |
Equivalence is when there’s an exact equivalent target term in the full sense, while corresponding term is not an exact equivalent, but the next best thing - an example would be when an exact concept doesn’t exist in the target country but something similar or resembling it does (ie. corresponding term).
Unless your question referred to something else.
[Edited at 2020-06-16 12:24 GMT]
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No, it is not from a book. It is a question from my thesis' supervisor.
[Edited at 2020-06-16 12:54 GMT]
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| thank you very much :) | Jun 16, 2020 |
Lingua 5B wrote:
Equivalence is when there’s an exact equivalent target term in the full sense, while corresponding term is not an exact equivalent, but the next best thing - an example would be when an exact concept doesn’t exist in the target country but something similar or resembling it does (ie. corresponding term).
Unless your question referred to something else.
[Edited at 2020-06-16 12:24 GMT]
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 15:40
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
klarajobkova wrote:
I would like someone to explain the difference between equivalence and correspondence in terminology.
These two terms are very often used in translation studies, linguistic studies and related fields, and they mean whatever each book's author wants them to mean. They do not always mean the same thing. An author will generally define the terms early in his book (or somewhere in this book), or alternatively it will become clear to an educated reader what the author is trying to mean. This makes such books very difficult for beginners, because you never know when the author is using the terms in a general sense, specialized sense, or special sense.
A paragraph in Teubert's "Text Corpora and Multilingual Lexicography" (2007), page 54, shows an example of this:
He's referencing Recker (a book) and Koptjevskaja-Tamm (a journal article), but I could not find them online, so I'll just trust what Teubert is saying here.
[Edited at 2020-06-16 19:37 GMT]
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 16:40
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
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| Its all correspondence IMO | Jun 17, 2020 |
Except for very basic expression there is no equivalence between languages, so the translator always must find a corresponding phrase in the target language. Otherwise back translation would deliver the original source text, which it hardly ever does.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 15:40
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Heinrich Pesch wrote:
Except for very basic expression, there is no equivalence between languages. Otherwise back translation would deliver the original source text, which it hardly ever does.
The reason why back-translation does not deliver the original text has to do with syntax, grammar, and social cues. The individual target words (or multiword defined terms) may well get back-translated into the original source words, and this applies in particular to "terminology".
Klara says that the source of these terms for her is her lecturer at college, so either he must tell her what he believes these terms mean, or he must tell which books to read in order to figure out what he wants her to believe these terms mean, or he must tell her which school of terminology he is trying to convince her to become a fan of.
Or, perhaps he wants her to come up with her own definitions, based solely on what these words normally mean. If it is the latter, then I would think that "equivalence" refers to when a target language term has the same meaning and the same applicability (e.g. register, social cues) as the source term according to the definition of the source term, whereas "correspondence" is imperfect equivalence, i.e. if a target term would have been equivalent to the source term except that it has a different register, or except that it means more than what the source term's definition means, or except that it does not cover the entire definition of the source term, or except that it can cover more than one source term.
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