Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

particular situation in both texts. 
3. Building on the preceding levels, equivalence on this level maintains fac-
tors or elements which describe the situation established in level 2. 
4. As well as all of the information presented as a result of the preceding 
levels of equivalence, this level establishes semantic and syntactic equiva-
lence in that the majority of the source text words have corresponding 
target language lexical items and the syntax is transformationally related. 
5. This level of equivalence displays a close parallelism between the source 
and target texts on all levels of language. 
Types of Equivalence
Perhaps the most well known types of equivalence are formal and dynamic 
equivalence posited by Nida (1964). Formal equivalence is concerned with 
the message in terms of its form and content. With this type of equivalence 
the message in the target language should match the different elements in 
the source language as closely as possible, be they lexical, syntactic, stylistic, 
phonological or orthographic. According to Catford, a formal correspon-
dent (or equivalent) is any target language category (unit, class, structure, 
element of structure, etc.) which can be said to occupy, as nearly as possi-
ble, the ‘same’ place in the ‘economy’ of’ the target language as the given 
source language category occupies in the source language (Catford 
1965:27). 

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28 Technical Translation 
Dynamic equivalence on the other hand is based on the notion that the 
target text should have the same effect on its audience as the source text 
had on its own audience. With this type of equivalence the emphasis is not 
so much on finding a target language match for a source language message 
but rather on creating the same relationship between the target audience 
and the message as that which existed between the source language audi-
ence and the message (Nida 1964:159). By using this type of equivalence it 
is hoped to produce a target text which is natural and idiomatic and which 
focuses on the target language culture. According to this definition of 
equivalence, a successful translation needs to capture the sense of the source 
text and not just the words. As such it can only be regarded as a successful 
piece of communication if the message is successfully transmitted to the tar-
get audience. One example, proposed by Nida, of how this can be achieved 
in practice would be to change the sequence of sentences where they do 
not match the real-time chronology of actions. This particular strategy is 
quite useful, especially in the translation of instructions. 
On the surface, dynamic equivalence seems useful in that it emphasises 
the importance of meaning, and more specifically, of equivalent response. It 
could be argued that this is essential in the translation of instructional texts, 
training materials, tender documents etc. but the usefulness of this concept 
is limited as it is primarily concerned with cultural phenomena which, as a 
rule, do not occur in technical texts. I say 
as a rule 
because technical texts 
can, and do on occasion, contain certain items which Lee-Jahnke (1998:82) 
describes as 
socio-culturally specific
. Such items may include time and date 
conventions, units of measure, laws, government departments and authori-
ties etc. 
While legal terms, such as those that appear in product documentation or 
patents, are potentially problematic, from a practical point of view it can be 
argued that they are easier to deal with. If for example, the target audience 
needs to 
know 
precise details of the law, we give the name of the law in 
the source language accompanied by the official translation or a paraphrase 
in the target language. The reason for including the source language name 
here is to ensure that if the reader needs more information on the law or 
needs to seek advice from a lawyer in the source language country, they 
will be able to refer to the law using its correct name. There is, after all, lit-
tle point in referring to something by a name which nobody recognises. On 
the other band, if the precise term is not important, we simply give a de-
scription or generic term. An example of this would be a user guide for a 
refrigerator which tells users to dispose of the packaging in accordance with 
the German laws on disposal of household waste. It makes little sense for 
someone living outside Germany to dispose of waste in accordance with 

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Theory in Technical Translation 29 
German laws. In this case, we simply say that the packaging should be dis-
posed of in accordance with the relevant waste disposal laws (unless of 
course we are certain of’ the intended target country and want to mention 
specific equivalent laws but sometimes it’s best to keep these things vague!). 
Nida makes the point, however, that eliciting the same response from 
two different groups of people can be difficult, particularly when we con-
sider that no two people from the same language group will understand 
words in exactly the same way (1969:4). This sentiment is also expressed by 
Steiner (1975:28). What we are left with, therefore, is an approach which is 
theoretically quite desirable but often regarded as excessively vague, difficult 
to implement and imprecise in practice. 
Other types of equivalence include 
referential equivalence
whereby the 
equivalence centres on the ST and TT words referring to the same ex-
tratextual entities in the “real world”. 
Connotative equivalence 
is used to 
describe the relationship between ST and TT words which result in the 
same or similar associations or connotations in the minds of the reader. 
Text-normative equivalence 
involves source language and target language 
words being used in the same or similar contexts in their respective lan-
guages.