The Problem of Equivalence in Two Translations of Manto’s Short Story Toba Tek Singh

Abstract

There is dynamic relationship between linguistics and translation which leads to the development of the discipline of translation studies. While linguistics as a discipline studies the structures and functions of language, and since translations exist in and through language, the field of translation studies also falls within the domain of linguistics. It is for a similar reason that Catford (1965) had emphasized that any theory of translation must base itself on a theory of language, i.e. on a theory of linguistics. The activity of translating source language (SL) texts into texts in the target language (TL) offers challenges and lays down not only the foundation for translation studies but also falls back on linguistic theory in order to make it more structurally and functionally viable. The principle of equivalence operating between the structures and functions of SL text and TL text are fundamentally of the greatest importance. Nida (1964 & 1969) had identified two poles of translation equivalence, which are ‘free’ versus ‘literal’, and ‘dynamic equivalence’ versus ‘formal equivalence’. Newmark (1987) views these poles in terms of ‘communicative’ versus ‘semantic’ factors, and the act of translation, for him, involves appropriate choices. The choices made by a translator are generally conditioned by his/her ideology or world-view, nonetheless, the translator’s visibility is minimized, and Venuti (1995) has used the term ‘invisibility’ to describe the translator’s situation and activity. He points out that the illusion of a ‘transparent’ translation is only an effect of fluent discourse, which “conceals the numerous conditions under which the translation is made, starting with the translator’s crucial intervention in the foreign text” (Venuti 1995:1). However, it must be mentioned that a translator’s choices, in addition to his/her world view, also depend on his/her perception of the recipient audience. In order to describe and explain different ways of solving the riddle of effective translation, the scope of translation studies has been much widened by various linguistic explorations, such as by Baker (1992; 2009), Hatim and Mason (1997), Hermans (1999), Malmkjaer & Windle (2011), Munday (2012), Toury (2012), Saldanha & O’Brien (2013), and Pym (2014). Because of lack of space, it may suffice to mention here that all the above-mentioned scholars have highlighted communication-based models which perceive linguistic units of an SL text as functional signs which need to be translated as equivalent linguistic signs in the TL text. The present analysis is also in line with such an approach.