Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Source-Orientated Approaches to Translation 
Equivalence 
The idea of equivalence forms the basis of many theories of translation and 
by implication, definitions of translation quality. But the term “equiva-
lence”, however, is fraught with difficulties. Indeed Newmark (1993:75) 
she continues, can only be attained “if the translator has a set of criteria 
claims that “the cerebration and the brain racking about translation equivalence

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26 Technical Translation 
be defined and as such, there are only 
degrees 
of equivalence 
(ibid).
While there are numerous definitions and types of equivalence, they all 
rely on one thing: a link or bond of some sort between the source text and 
the target text. As Catford (1965:49) explains “the TL text must be relatable 
to at least some of the situational features to which the SL text is relatable”. 
According to Catford, a translation does not necessarily have to consist of 
target language elements with the same meaning as the source language ele-
ments but ones which have the greatest possible amount of overlap across 
the different levels of equivalence. 
This is echoed by Halverson (1997:207) who provides a slightly broader 
definition of equivalence and says it is a relationship which exists between 
two entities and it is described as one of likeness / sameness / similarity / 
equality in terms of any number of potential qualities. Equivalence theories 
regard translation as an attempt to reproduce the source text as closely as 
possible. But because there are numerous reasons why they can never be 
perfectly equivalent on all levels, numerous of types equivalence have been 
defined such as formal and dynamic equivalence (Nida 1964), denotative, 
connotative, pragmatic, textual and formal aesthetic equivalence (Koller 
1979).