American Journal Of Philological Sciences
34
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajps
VOLUME
Vol.05 Issue07 2025
PAGE NO.
34-37
10.37547/ajps/Volume05Issue07-09
Adequacy, Equivalency and Translation Evaluation
Bahrom Iskandarov
PhD Candidate, Uzbek Language and Literature University, Uzbekistan
Received:
16 May 2025;
Accepted:
12 June 2025;
Published:
14 July 2025
Abstract:
This article explores the theoretical foundations and practical implications of adequacy and equivalence
in translation studies. Drawing upon the frameworks of prominent scholars such as Y.I. Retsker, L.S. Barkhudarov,
the paper examines how different approaches define and apply the concepts of equivalence in relation to
linguistic norms, functional correspondence, and communicative effect. The analysis highlights the distinction
between formal, dynamic, and functional equivalence, and the roles they play in achieving accurate translation
outcomes. Special attention is given to the translator’s linguistic and cultural competence and the inherent
asymmetry in bilingualism, which significantly affects translation choices. Furthermore, the article discusses
translation criticism as a tool for evaluating the quality and equivalence of translated texts.
Keywords
: Translation theory, equivalence, adequacy, functional correspondence, dynamic equivalence, linguistic
norm, Retsker, Barkhudarov, bilingualism, translation criticism, translator competence.
Introduction:
In accordance with modern realities, our
era has been called the "age of translation" alongside
other epithets, due to the unprecedented growth of
information and the rapid dissemination and
consumption of that information, which humanity
owes largely to translation. Many people who are not
professional translators are engaged in translation
activities. Knowledge of the basics of translation
theory, its boundaries, capabilities, and key techniques
is becoming an essential component of a person's
general education.
Today, when the demands for a translator's worldview
and erudition have significantly increased, this
“element of general education” is more necessary than
ever for all those studying foreign languages. Global
changes in society have led to a transformation in the
role of foreign languages within the education system.
A foreign language has become a foundational element
of modern education and a means of achieving
personal and professional self-realization.
Technological progress and the international relations
associated with it require graduates of universities to
have both theoretical knowledge and practical skills in
the areas of translation, text analysis, summarization,
and annotation of texts and documents. Studying
foreign languages is now a necessary and integral
component of the general educational and professional
training of scientific and academic personnel. This is
driven by the internationalization of scientific
communication, the development of global-level
collaboration among specialists and researchers, and
the expansion of scientific discourse in modern
communication.
Knowledge of a foreign language facilitates access to
scientific information, the use of internet resources,
the establishment of international academic contacts,
and the enhancement of a researcher's professional
qualifications. The relevance of this research’s content
lies in the fact that translation theory is necessary for
translation students, novice translators, professional
translators, and translation instructors alike. As L.S.
Barkhudarov stated: “Translation as an academic
discipline cannot exist without theory, since without
theoretical generalizations, teaching is reduced to the
hardly controllable development of intuition, or worse,
to
mere mechanical training.” A professional translator
can more effectively utilize advanced experience in the
field and develop their craft if they have mastered the
method of critical analysis of translation. [1.]
METHOD
American Journal Of Philological Sciences
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American Journal Of Philological Sciences (ISSN
–
2771-2273)
People have been using translations from one language
to another for a long time, although no one can say
exactly when the first translation occurred. It likely
happened when communication between people
speaking different languages was made possible
through an intermediary language. It is worth noting
that attitudes toward translation were quite
contradictory until the emergence of linguistic
translation theory in the 1930s. For some, translation
was a hobby or favorite occupation; for others, it was a
professional duty; and for some, translation was
considered altogether impossible due to ideological
beliefs. Thanks to translation, people speaking different
languages could communicate within multinational
states.
Translation
enabled
interlingual
and
intercultural communication and facilitated the spread
of various teachings and religions.
The categories of equivalence and adequacy, when
considered within a modern communicative context,
inevitably imply a response to the translation from its
recipients
—
i.e., the consumers of the new speech
product. This implies that equivalence and adequacy
are, to some extent, normative categories. The concept
of norm is closely tied to the concept of evaluation, and
evaluation is an external category in relation to the
object being evaluated.
When it comes to a translated text, it is judged as either
good or bad by the reader of the translation. In certain
historical periods, translation quality was evaluated
according to rigid norms dictated by prevailing literary
movements. A translated work was judged by the same
criteria as an original literary work written in the target
language. It was considered good if it aligned with the
literary trends of that era, and bad if it did not.
Today, in the absence of clearly dominant literary
trends
—
or more precisely, in the presence of a
tendency toward complete freedom and variation in
literary creativity
—
the problem of external evaluation
and normative standards in translation is reduced to a
single aspect: the translated text must comply with the
norms of the target language. Otherwise, it will be
disregarded, and the social function of translation as an
act of interlingual mediation will not be fulfilled.
However, the external (reader) evaluation of a
translation does not directly relate to the category of
translation equivalence. The translated text is
evaluated as if it were originally written in the target
language. The reader assumes the author of the
original work wrote exactly what appears in the
translation. The external assessment of equivalence
specifically
—
that is, whether the translation
corresponds to the original
—
remains the domain of
one of the less-developed areas of translation studies:
translation criticism.
Translation criticism can evaluate not only whether the
translation adheres to the literary norms of the target
language, but also the degree of equivalence to the
original. More broadly, the evaluation of a translation's
equivalence is a category of the translator's self-
awareness
—
an internal category. The translator
determines their own level of responsibility to both the
author and the reader, and develops a personal
standard of fidelity between the translation and the
original text. Evaluation becomes self-evaluation, and
normativity becomes an internal conviction of the
translator regarding the criteria of truth in the
equivalence relationship between the source and
target texts.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
In essence, all treatises on translation written
throughout history, reflections on translation, and
translation criticism have been attempts to establish
norms of equivalence. This conviction is based on
knowledge
of
the
nature
of
interlingual
correspondences and discrepancies
—
both in universal
terms and within specific language pairs.
That is why one of the earliest theoretical perspectives
on translation equivalence was a purely linguistic one,
based on the comparison of structural relations
between the tw o languages involved in translation.
This view is reflected in particular in Y.I. Retsker’s
theory of regular correspondences.
"The theory of regular correspondences," wrote Y.I.
Retsker, "must establish certain parameters within
which the choice of translation options can occur.
Without offering any prescriptive formulas, the theory
of correspondences reveals the general patterns of the
translation process, based on functional dependence.
When translating from one language to another, it is
necessary to take into account the operation of the
same logical-semantic factors in order to convey the
same semantic content." [2.]
In this statement, Retsker highlights three key points:
•
parameters that limit the translator's choices,
•
functional dependence,
•
and logical-semantic foundations.
Thus, this theory is constructed from the outset as a
normative theory. The author attempts to outline the
boundaries within which translational actions may be
considered justified. He does not use the category of
equivalence as the relationship between the source
text and the target text in full, but rather speaks of
regular correspondences as relationships between
individual fragments of the original and the translated
text.
American Journal Of Philological Sciences
36
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American Journal Of Philological Sciences (ISSN
–
2771-2273)
Retsker prefers the term "adequacy" as the evaluative
category. When addressing the question of what
constitutes the criterion for choosing appropriate
means of expression to achieve translation adequacy,
he writes: "Since the criterion of adequacy can only be
the correspondence to the fragment of reality
described in the original, the equivalence of means is
determined not by identity, but by the maximum
possible approximation of the effect produced to that
of the original. Analysis of any high-quality translation
shows that the foundation for establishing the
equivalence of linguistic means must be functional, not
formal." [3.] In defining the criteria of adequacy, Y.I.
Retsker proceeds from such notions as the reader's
response and functional equivalence.
At first glance, Y.I. Retsker’s concept appears to differ
little from Eugene Nida’s theory of dynamic
equivalence
—
the main distinction lies only in
terminology. But this is not entirely the case. When
discussing functional equivalence, Retsker contrasts
the dictionary meanings of lexical units with the
meanings derived from the content of a real,
contextualized text
—
in other words, the actual speech
product. In his contrast between functional and formal
equivalence, we can see echoes of Saussure’s
dichotomy between langue and parole.
“No dictionary,” writes Retsker, “can foresee the full
diversity of contextual meanings realized in the stream
of speech, just as it cannot capture the entire variety of
word combinations. Therefore, translation theory can
only establish functional correspondences, which take
into account the dependence of the transmission of
certain semantic categories on the operation of various
factors.”
Using the terms "adequacy" and "equivalence" to
describe the required relationship between source and
target texts
—
the very relationship modern translation
theory typically refers to as equivalence
—
Retsker
introduces into his framework the concepts of
equivalent and equivalent correspondence.
He considers it unconstructive to use the term
equivalent for any type of correspondence between a
fragment of the source and a fragment of the target
text. According to Retsker, an equivalent should be
seen as a stable, constant correspondence, generally
independent of context. He places geographical names,
proper names, and technical terms into the category of
equivalents. These equivalents are subdivided into full
and partial, absolute and relative:
•
Full equivalents are units that fully match in all
meanings or have a single meaning in both languages.
•
Partial equivalents are polysemous words or
phrases that overlap in at least one of their meanings.
•
Absolute equivalents have only one acceptable
translation option.
When discussing absolute equivalents, Retsker makes
an important observation for both theory and practice:
“The tradition of interlingual equivalence is so
persistent that any other translation would be
considered incorrect.”
Thus, equivalents are linguistic units that have become
fixed due to the identity of what they denote and have
solidified through long-standing language contact
traditions.
In contrast to equivalents, Retsker identifies other
types of correspondence: variant correspondences,
contextual correspondences, and those arising from
various translation transformations. According to his
theory, there is a fundamental difference between
equivalent correspondences and these two other
groups. Equivalents belong to the realm of language
(langue),
whereas
variant
and
contextual
correspondences belong to the realm of speech
(parole).
Is this distinction significant for translation theory?
A.D. Schweitzer argues that the distinction between
equivalent and variant correspondence is driven more
by lexicographic considerations than by translation
needs. He maintains that for a translator, distinguishing
between
partial
equivalents
and
variant
correspondences is of little practical importance, since
in both cases the translator is dealing with non-unique
correspondences
—
one source language word
corresponds to multiple target language words. [4.]
It must be acknowledged that Retsker’s distinctio
ns can
sometimes appear somewhat artificial. Some of the
“variant correspondences” he describes may just as
well be viewed as lexical substitutions or translation
transformations. In other words, the boundaries
between
different
types
of
interlingual
correspondences can be quite blurred.
L.S. Barkhudarov identifies three levels of equivalence,
each characterized by distinct evaluative and
normative features. At the center lies the type of
translation “performed at a level necessary and
sufficient to convey the invariant content while
adhering to the norms of the target language.” This
type of translation is referred to as equivalent
translation. [1.]
On a lower level is literal translation, while free
translation occupies the higher level. Barkhudarov
argues that free translation is preferable to literal
translation because it avoids significant semantic
distortions and does not violate linguistic norms
—
although he admits this is not always the case.
American Journal Of Philological Sciences
37
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajps
American Journal Of Philological Sciences (ISSN
–
2771-2273)
Conclusion. The categories of equivalence and
adequacy are among the most fundamental in
translation theory. How these categories are
interpreted determines the resolution of many long-
standing theoretical issues in translation studies
—
such as:
•
What qualifies as a translation?
•
The distinction between free and literal
translation
•
The translatability of texts
•
The translator’s responsibility
•
The inevitability of meaning loss, and many
others.
Every practicing translator, once having studied the
theoretical foundations of translation, develops their
own personal concept of equivalence, which they
follow in their creative work, guided by their linguistic
and cultural competence.
The linguistic and cultural competence of the translator
—
as someone proficient in two languages and familiar
with two interacting cultures
—
is typically asymmetric.
This asymmetry is one of the core features of
translational bilingualism, which must be taken into
account when evaluating translation decisions.
Despite the complexities of translation, the translator’s
only reliable support is the text itself, and the
foundation of the linguistic approach lies in identifying
functional correspondences.
REFERENCE
Бархударов Л.С. Язык и перевод. М., 1975.
Рецкер Я.И. О закономерных соответствиях при
переводе на родной язык // Теория и методика
учебного перевода. М., 1950;
Рецкер Я.И. Теория перевода и переводческая
практика. С. 8.
Швейцер А.Д. Теория перевода. С. 77.
Швейцер А.Д. Указ. соч. С. 77.
