Adeola Abdulateef Elega

Vocabulary equivalence: Words which are translated loose some qualities even if 
not all. Most times translation helps you bring the word forth but leaves the other 
qualities behind. This is faulted on translation because when colors like pink, red, 
maroon and other related colors are translated to be just red as the nearest meaning in 
another language, obviously a lot meaning is lost. Maroon shines less so that attribute 
is lost. Pink shines more and that attribute is also lost. So calling them all red is a 
major impediment. When a word loose its vocabulary equivalence, phrases, clauses 
and the even the whole sentence is disrupted. 
Idiomatic equivalence: Idiomatic expressions are ways of talking that is natural to 
the real owners of the language. This ways of talking is a way of putting words 
together with an entirely different meaning of the words but has a general accepted 
meaning across where language is spoken. When you say the principal officer of the 
institution kicked the bucket last night. A direct translation of that can never unveil 

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that the man is dead. An Idiomatic expression is a deep kind of communication in 
different languages. In Turkish for example “ateş ateşle söndürülmez” literarily 
means “fire cannot be extinguished with fire”. Idiomatically it means revenge is a 
dish that should be eaten cold. Another one is “Ava giden avlanır” literarily means 
“the hunter becomes the prey” and this commonly used when someone falls in his 
own trap. If someone who learns Turkish to study in schools tries to use his 
knowledge to translate this directly, meaning will be distorted (Yurtbasi, 1993 p.20). 
Grammatical-syntactical equivalence: This is the use of words that does not have 
the same meaning. To understand a language, one has to learn and so in the process 
there is every possibility of misplacement of words and their meanings. 
Displacement of words does not mean nullification of meaning. Phrases like “read to 
pass”, “pass to read”, “plan well” and “well planned” denotes different meaning. You 
can easily submit they mean same thing seeing changing of positions as no issue but 
you are totally wrong. Position of every letter in every word and every word in every 
sentence is very important.