VLADIMIR IVIR

FORMAL CORRESPONDENCE VS. TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE

REVISITED
In: Even-Zohar & Gideon Toury (1981) Theory of Translation and Intercultural
Relations, University of Tel Aviv (= Poetics Today 2:4), p. 51-59
The two concepts which feature in the title of the present paper belong to
two different, though (as will be shown) by no means unrelated, activities.
Formal correspondence is a term used in contrastive analysis, while translation
equivalence belongs to the metalanguage of translation. In principle, perhaps,
the two terms could be discussed separately in their two disciplines, and it is
indeed possible to imagine a theory of translation which would operate with the
concept of equivalence defined without reference to formal correspondence, just
as it is possible to imagine contrastive analysis which would rely on the concept
of correspondence established without the use of translation. In practice,
however, both terms have been found necessary by students of translation and
by contrastive analysis.
Issues that are raised in connection with formal correspondence and
translation equivalence are certainly more than just terminological: a discussion
of formal correspondence in translation concerns the role of linguistic units in
translation and the place of linguistics in translation theory, while a discussion of
translation equivalence in contrastive analysis concerns the role of translation in
contrastive work. The relationship between them has been discussed by Catford
(1965) from the point of view of translation theory and by Marton (1968), Ivir
(1969, 1970), Krzesowski (1971, 1972), Raabe (1972) from the point of view of
contrastive analysis.
1
Our understanding of the concept of translation equivalence will depend
on the view we take of translation itself. Looking at translation as a result or
product, faced with two texts one of which is a translation of the other, we might
be tempted to conclude that translation is the replacement of textual material in
one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TI.)
... or more generally that it is the rendition of a text from one language
to another (Bolinger, 1966: 130). Equivalence would then exist between texts
i.e., it would hold together chunks of textual material or linguistic units (texts
being simply linguistic units of a higher order than the smaller units which
compose them). This is a static view both of translation and of equivalence:

pushed to its extreme, it forces in the conclusion that for any linguistic unit (text
of portion of a text) in the source language there is an equivalent unit in the
target language and the it is translator's job to find that unit. Hence the search for
different textual types and their characteristics in different languages.
Another picture of translation and translation equivalence is obtained
when a dynamic view is taken and translation is regarded as a process rather
than as a result. One then speaks about substituting messages in one language
for messages in some other language (Jakobson, 1959: 235), about reproducing
in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the message of the
source language (Nida, 1969: 495), or about the nature of dynamic
equivalence in translating Nida, 1977).
This letter view of translation is the communicative view, and it sees,
translation equivalence not as a static relationship between pairs of texts in
different languages but rather as a product of the dynamic process of
communication between the sender of the original message and the ultimate
receivers of the translated message via the translator, who is the receiver of the
original message and the sender of the translated message, Messages are
configurations of extralinguistic features communicated in the given situation.
The original sender starts from these features and relying on the resources of
his language, on his command of that language, and on his assessment of the
nature of the sociolinguistic relationship between him and his (actual of
potential) receivers codes them to produce the source text. The coded message
(source text) reaches the translator through the (spatio-temporal) channel of
communication. He decodes it and receives the original sender's message, which
he then proceeds to code again in the target language, relying on the resources
of that language, on his command of that language, and on his assessment of his
relation to the ultimate receivers.
Under this view, what is held constant (i.e., equivalent) are not texts but
rather messages, and it is messages that the participants return to at every step in
the process of communication. The translator, in particular, does not proceed
directly from the source text to the target text: rather, he goes from the source
text back to that configuration of extralinguistic features which the original
sender has tried to communicate as the his message and having arrived there he
codes that message again, in a new and different communicative situation,
producing a text in the target language for the benefit of the ultimate receivers.
Several points must be made in connection with the view of translation
and equivalence presented here. First, the nature of the translator's job in
receiving the original sender's message does not essentially differ from the job
of other source-language receivers of that message, and his job in coding the

received message again in the target language is not unlike the task performed
by the original sender (only the communicative situation is different, that is, the
translator is a different linguistic person than the original sender, he uses a
different language and codes the message for different receivers than the original
sender).
Second, messages are not communicated absolutely. The original message
undergoes modifications in the process of coding (depending on the potential of
the language, the sender's command of that language, and the intended
audience), in the process of transmission (owing to the noise line the channel),
and in the process of decoding (depending on the receiver's command of the
language and his ability coming from the shared experiential background . to
grasp the sender's message).
Clearly, such modifications also take place when the translator receives
the message, when he codes it again in the target language, when he transmits
the coded message through the channel of communication linking him with his
receivers, and when the ultimate receivers decode the translated message. This
relativity of communication any communication, and not jus that involving
translation -. places the concept of equivalence in translation in a new
perspective: equivalence holds between messages (communicated by the
original sender, received and translated by the translator, and received by the
ultimate receivers) which change as little as possible and as much as necessary
to ensure communication. Thus, true translation is by no means limited to
communicative situations involving two languages. An act of translation takes
place each time that a text is produced as a coded expression of a particular
configuration of extralinguistic features and is decoded to enable the receiver to
receive the message (cf. Steiner, 1975: 47),
The third point that can be made about translation equivalence follows
from what has just been said: equivalence is a matter of relational dynamics in a
communicative act it is realized in that act and has no separate existence
outside it. It can thus be compared to abstract units of the linguistic system, such
as phonemes, which do not exist physically outside the speech act in which they
are realized and whose realization in speech is somewhat different and is yet
produced and received as the same phoneme. Or it could be compared to a
person's signature; there is no ideal signature of a given person, and in each
act of signing it comes out a little different visually; yet, it is recognized as
equivalence with any other of it realizations allowing for the fact that
different realizations take place in different communicative situations.
2

Since translation equivalence is the translator's aim and since it is

established at the level of messages, in the communicative act, and not at the
level of linguistic units, it may appear that there is no need for the concept of
format correspondence in the model of translation presented here. I will argue
further below that this is not so and that there is a sense in which formal
correspondence holds together the source and target texts. But in order to
demonstrate this, a modification of some of the available definitions of formal
correspondence will be needed.
Catford has defined formal correspondence as identity of function of
correspondent items in two linguistic systems: for him, a formal correspondent
is any TL /target language/ category which may be said to occupy, as nearly as
possible, the same place in the economy of the TL as the given SL/source
language/ category occupies in the SL (Catford, 1965: 32). Marton (1968) and
Krzeszowski (1971, 1972) postulated an ever closer relationship between
linguistic expressions in the source and target languages that of congruence
which is characterized by the presence, in the two languages, of the same
number of equivalent formatives arranged in the same order. Realizing that
relying on a concept defined in this way would prevent the contrastive analyst
from working with real language (and would thus make his results useless for
any conceivable pedagogic purposes), Krzeszowski later (1972: 80) went back
to the concept of equivalence. However, he applied it to sentences possessing
identical deep structures (i.e., semantic representations of meaning) rather than
those which were translations of each other. At the level of deep structures
equivalent sentences were also regarded as congruent, their congruence
disappearing in later derivational stages leading to the surface structure.
Both Catford's formal correspondence and Marton-Krzeszowski's
congruence/equivalence represent attempts at bringing linguistic units of the
source and target languages into some kind of relationship for purposes of
contrasting, the necessary tertium comparationis being provided by the identity
of function or meaning. Without a tertium comparationis no comparison or
contrasting of linguistic units is possible, but the question is what can serve as
the tertium comparationis. One possibility would be an independently described
semantic system whose categories would be held constant while their linguistic
expressions in pairs of languages under examination would be contrasted.
However, such a system has not yet been proposed and we do not know what its
categories might be.
Another possibility might be a common metalanguage in terms of which
both the source and the target language would be described to the same degree
of exhaustiveness. This metalanguage would supply categories in terms of which
the appropriate parts of the two systems could be contrasted since the
descriptions would be matchable, their contrasting would consist in simply

mapping one description upon the other to establish the degree of fit. Again, the
descriptions of no two languages meet this requirement. Formal correspondence
as defined by Catford can hardly be said to exist: even in pairs of closely related
languages it is practically impossible to find categories which would perform the
same functions in their respective systems, and that probability decreases with
typological and genetic distance. Marton-Krzeszowski's concepts of
congruence/equivalence in fact make use of the metalanguage of the
transformational-generative grammar, in particular of the notion of deep
structure, to avoid relying on the postulate of translational equivalence. But the
postulated of deep structure and transformation are no easier to work with: the
status of deep structures is far from clear, as is also the meaning-preserving
nature of transformations.
So, one falls back on the concept of translation equivalence in one's
search for a suitable tertium comparationis for contrastive purposes. (One feels
all the more justified in doing this when one observes actual contrastive practice:
no matter what they otherwise profess, contrastive analysts begin with sentences
which are obviously translational pairs and proceed to demonstrate the bilingual
person's, that is the analyst's, intuition of their equivalence.) However, we must
remember that translation equivalence holds together communicated messages
and not linguistic units used to communicate them and that we must go beyond
equivalence to find the necessary tertium comparationis which hold linguistic
units together. It has been suggested (Ivir, 1969: 18) that a good candidate for
the job would be formal correspondence but formal correspondence defined
not with reference to linguistic systems (as Catford would have it) but rather
with reference to translationally equivalent texts. Formal correspondents to
modify Catford's definition given above would be all those isolable elements
of linguistic form which occupy identical positions (i.e., serve as formal carriers
of identical units of meaning) in their respective (translation ally equivalent)
texts.
The difference between language-based and text-based (or system-based
and equivalence-based) formal correspondence is seen in the fact that while the
former type of correspondents stand in a one-to-one relationship, the
relationship in the latter type is on-to-many. Typically, a given formal element of
the source language, used in different texts produced in different communicative
situations, will have several target-language formal elements which will
correspond to it in translated target texts. But it should be realized that precisely
for that reason the formal elements which are correspondent in translationally
equivalent texts are never matched in totality, as they would be if parts of the
systems of the two languages were contrasted. Rather, they are matched in those
of their meanings with they participate in the particular source and target texts.

The approach to contrastive analysis based on the concept of formal

correspondence presented here has been outlined in Ivir (1970) and applied in
various papers coming out of the Zagreb-based Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian
English Contrastive Project (cf. Filipovi, 1971.). Only a brief description will
therefore be given here of what it means for formal correspondents to stand in
one-to-many relationships and to be matched only in meanings involved in
particular texts. For instance, the Serbo-Croatian instrumental case yields
several different correspondents in English translation the prepositions with,
by, on, through, across, along, in, then the subject position of the noun in
question, then the plural of the noun in question, the adverb in ly, etc. Clearly,
the different correspondents stand for the different meaning of the SerboCroatian instrument ease: with for instrument (rezati noem cut with a knife) or
company (doi s nekim come with someone), by for means of transportation
(doi vlakom come by train), on and/or the plural noun for time.
Muzej je zatvoren ponedjeljkom the museum is closed on Monday/ on
Mondays/Mondays), in for mode (pisati tintom write in ink) in, through,
acress, along for place (etati parkom walk in the park, prolaziti umom
walk through the forest, prelaziti poljem walk across the field, ii cestom
walk along the road), the subject-noun for place (pijev ptica odzvanjao je
umom the forest resounded with the chirping of birds) or instruments (ovim
kljuem mogu se otvoriti sva vrata this key open all the doors), the adverb in
ly for manner (s indignacijom indignantly), etc.
Thus, in looking for formal correspondents in English for the SerboCroatian instrumental case one scans translationally equivalent texts and
establishes a list of formal linguistic elements, each of which corresponds not to
the Serbo-Croatian instrumental as such but to some particular aspect of its
meaning. (It should be noted in passing that such multiple formal correspondents
are important analytical pointers to distinctions of meaning in the source
language of which native speakers may be unaware. Hence the importance of
translation and contrastive analysis for native language description.) But
normally the particular aspect of the meaning will not be expressed by means of
just one kind of formal elements in the target language (just as it is not the case
that a particular meaning will be expressible by only one kind of formal element
in the source language the one-to-many relationship among formal
correspondents in pairs contrasted languages is merely a reflection of similar
relationships between meanings and linguistic units in single languages). We
have already seen, for instance, that the temporal meaning of the Serbo-Croatian
instrumental case is expressed in English by the preposition on plus the name of
the day in singular or plural, or simply the name of the day in the plural without
a preposition but unmistakably in the position of an adverbial adjunct).
Differences in meaning may be hardly detectable in some cases (s indignacijom

 indignatly or with indignation); they may be slight in other cases (Mondays

and on Mondays belong to different varieties of English, while on Monday is
potentially ambiguous and may refer to one particular Monday , an
interpretation not permitted by the Serbo-Croatian instrumental, or to every
Monday), or they may be more appreciable though not quite easy to specify
(doi automobilom arrive by car or arrive in a car).
The presence of correspondent formal elements in texts which express
equivalent messages is a matter of likelihood, not certainty. In seeking to
communicate, in the target-language communicative situation, a message
equivalent to the one received in the source language, the translator as noted
earlier has at his disposal a different potential set of linguistic devices than that
used for the coding of the message in the source language. There fore, in a given
translated text, some linguistic units of the source text will have no formal
correspondents, while the formal correspondents of others will inevitably carry
found to be Lets take the lift, then the search for the English correspondent of
the Serbo-Croatian instrumental case is in vain: the message is structured
differently, using a verb which does not accept a means-oftransportation
construction. In the case of the sentence Doi e popodnevnim vlakom (Hell
come by the afternoon train) translated as Hell come on the afternoon train,
the preposition on focuses on an aspect of meaning not in the focus of the
Serbo-Croatian instrumental.
In view of what has just been said, a procedure is needed that will enable
the contrastive analyst to isolate formal correspondents in translationally
equivalent texts. The recommended procedure is that of back-translation
(Spalatin, 1967), which is intended to serve as a check on the semantic content.
Because of its function, back-translation, unlike translation proper, does not deal
with messages but with formal linguistic elements isolated from the target text,
which are then translated back into the source language to give the
corresponding linguistic element of that language. Back-translation can thus be
defined as one-to-one structural replacement. This means that an element of
form isolated from the target
language as a likely candidate for a formal correspondent of an element in the
source text is translated literally and only once) back into the source language to
see if it will yield exactly that element whose correspondent it is though to be.
Thus the translated expression come by train back-translates as doi vlakom and
we know that the by-construction is a formal correspondent of the means-oftransportation instrumental in Serbo-Croatian. But when the translated sentence
Hell come on the afternoon train is back-translated into Serbo-Croatian, we get
Doi e na popodnevnom vlaku, which is understood by native speakers,
correctly, as having an element of meaning that Doi e popodnevnim vlakom
does not have, but which they can hardly accept as a grammatical sentence of

Serbo-Croatian. The lack of grammaticalness does not matter since we are

dealing with structural replacement, not translation in the ordinary sense. What
does matter is that the meaning is not quite the same, because in expressing this
particular message English reveals an aspect of the real woeld which SerboCroatian does not.
Is the contrastive analyst to conclude from this that the on-construction is
not to be accepted as the formal correspondent of the means-of-transportation
instrumental (that is, that the establishment of translation equivalence has
necessitated structural changes between the source and target texts involving the
disappearance of any formal trace of the source-text instrumental)? The answer
to this question would have been positive if the translator had been free to use
the by-construction but had for some reason failed to use it. But when , as in this
case, the translator could not very well have used it and at the same time ensure
the translational equivalence of messages (because the by-construction would
have been less natural than the instrumental case was in the original and
equivalence would have suffered), the formal element which he did use is
accepted as a correspondent. The shift is meaning which it brings about and the
exact conditions of its use are precisely what contrastive analysis should
elucidate. A sufficiently large corpus of translationally equivalent texts will ..
Supply further examples of formal correspondence to make
generalizations possible. In the case of the means-of-transportation instrumental,
for instance, one will find doi automobilom translated ase arrive by car doi
vlastitim automobilom as arrive in ones own car and doi automobilima as
arrive in cars, which seems to indicate that no restricitions are placed on the use
of the Serbo-Croatian means-of-transportation instrumental, while the English
by-construction is largely restricted to unmodified nouns of this class in the
singular. Moreover, the class of nouns admitted in this construction is broader in
Serbo-Croatian than in English, as illustrated by examples like the following:
putovati prvim razredom travel by first class.
3
The preceding section has shown how translation equivalence enable the
analyst to isolate formal correspondents which are the contrastively analysed.
An indication of the actual contrastive procedure has also been given, but is full
description is outside the scope of the present paper. What remains to be shown
now is how contrastive correspondents (and the results of contrastive analysis)
are used in translation.
It was said above, in the first section, that the process of translation is
characterized by repeated recursions to the extralinguistic content of messages.

However, the process of translation is also a linguistic process and a strict

separation of the translation would look as follows:
Extralinguistic message

Formal correspondence
source text

target text
Formal correspondence

The contrastive pair of formal correspondence links forms the base of the
triangle of communication by translation and servers as a basis for the
establishment of translation equivalence. The translator begins his search for
translation equivalence from formal correspondence, and it is only when the
identical-meaning formal correspondent is either not available or not able to
ensure equivalence that he resorts to formal correspondents with not-quiteidentical meaning or to structural and semantic shifts which destroy formal
correspondence altogether. But even in the latter case he makes use of formal
correspondence as a check on meaning to know what he is doing, so to speak.
A realistic theory of translation will have to account for the
communicative and for the linguistic (in the narrow sense) aspects of the
translators work. The linguistic aspects are contrastive in nature. Equivalence
appears as a product of the contrasting of textually realized formal
correspondents in the source and the target language and the communicative
realization of the extralinguistic content of the original senders message in the
target language. Both components are present in the process of translation and
together ensure dynamic equivalence which avoids both literalness and
paraphrase.
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