Defining Equivalence And The Process Of Translation

According to roman jakobson,  interlingua translation involves substituting messages in one language not for separate code-units but for entire messages in some other language. The role of a translator, therefore, is to read the original carefully, codify accurately and transmit the message meaningfully in the target language.

Can we say that translation involves two equivalent messages in two different codes?

Roman jakobson, in his ‘on linguisticsaspects of translation’, talks about the problem of equivalence in meaning between words in different languages. It was also pointed that there was ordinarily no fully equivalence between code-units.

It is however also impossible to find an exact equivalent word or expression in the target language. The reason is that our language is based on the socio-cultural practices. Let us say, if one is trying to translate the term ‘cheese’ in Russian language one finds that it is very difficult to directly find an expression equivalent to the English word.

It is not a problem that is faced only by the translators, but it is also faced by the indian english writers writing about India. In one instance mulk raj anand had to translate the term ‘namak haram’ into english and he coined the expression ‘spoiler of the salt’.

Do you think the sense of ‘namak haram’ ?