Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 3095–3097

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Pragmatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Book review

Uguale ma diverso. Il mito dell’equivalenza nella traduzione

The main objective of Francesca Ervas’ book is introduced using a metaphor taken from ancient Greek mythology’s myth
of Sisyphus. The huge boulder Sisyphus is compelled to push uphill just to see it roll down once it reaches the top – a well-
known emblem of useless, hopeless labor – is used to shed light on the thorny relationship between a source and a target text
in translation. The nature of this relationship has been qualified in various ways in scholarly reflections on the subject, from
‘truthfulness’ to ‘freedom’ to ‘equivalence’. Uguale ma diverso, cutting across various disciplinary and theoretical
perspectives, from philosophy to linguistics, to Translation Studies, specifically focuses on the relationship between source
and target texts with the aim of comprehending what is meant by equivalence in the translation process.
In Chapter One, the author points out the historical importance of equivalence in defining the concept of translation. She
underlines the plurality of definitions found within a number of theoretical approaches that have been used to explain
the term. According to the author, as more and more meanings have been attached to this seemingly fundamental concept,
the term has become so vaguely defined that it is difficult if not impossible to compare the theories that have tried to explain
it. Moreover, scholars themselves have come to cast doubts on whether equivalence should even be used to define
translation. Ervas, therefore, stresses that the term cannot be considered as a uniform, monolithic, undifferentiated concept
(p. 25). However, given that equivalence is a central tenet in translation theory, she surveys its development and then goes on
to suggest that it is the specific ways in which equivalence has been tackled that have made it an unreliable concept to
explore the relationship between source and target texts.
The historical overview Ervas provides in the first chapter efficaciously demonstrates how different definitions of
equivalence were influenced by the historical period in which they were produced. For example, when the term was
introduced by Johann Jakob Breitinger in the mid eighteenth century, the notion of equivalence was rooted in the idea that
universality of thought among human beings was reflected in language and that, therefore, similarity across languages had
to be stressed. By the time Friedrich Schleiermacher published Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, the main tenet of Romantic approaches to translation was that diversity was a gap that
could not be filled between the translator’s language and the author’s language. Ervas shifts to contemporary philosophical
debates on translation, introducing Gadamer’s reflections on the nature of interpretation, briefly touching upon French
hermeneutics, moving to Quine’s research on the indeterminacy of translation, and, finally to Davidson’s formulation of
equivalence as a momentary agreement: ever changing, ever being brought up for discussion in favor of a different, new
moment of convergence with the interlocutor (p. 37).
Ervas next discusses the way the notion of equivalence has been tackled within linguistics, and how the concept of
linguistic equivalence has been tackled under both normative, source-oriented approaches and within descriptive
translation studies. Jakobson’s famous essay On linguistic aspects of translation opens the section. According to Jakobson
‘‘equivalence in difference is the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal concern of linguistics’’ (1959:233). This is the
case because ‘‘a faculty of speaking a given language implies a faculty of talking about this language. Such a ‘metalinguistic’
operation permits revision and redefinition of the vocabulary used’’ in any language (Jakobson, 1959:234). However, within
linguistics, equivalence has also been defined pragmatically in terms of effect, that is, the potential of the translated text to
reproduce in a new audience the same effects that the source text has on its original audience. This is what Nida (1964) called
‘dynamic equivalence’ as opposed to ‘formal equivalence’. Ervas criticizes Nida’s approach by pointing out that Nida’s
analysis of a text’s deep structure is based on a separation between form and content which, in her view, is untenable.
Catford’s (1965) notion of textual equivalence as ‘sameness of situation’ is also considered. Ervas suggests that ‘sameness of
situation’ is difficult to define because situation in Catford’s approach basically relies on a theory of meaning that is
referential and that, as such, cannot explain how the language of a text interacts with extra-linguistic reality.
Finally, Ervas describes the scholarly work of Descriptive Translation Studies (cf. Toury, 1995) which has taken a target-
oriented approach to the issue of equivalence, according to which translated texts are analyzed as belonging in primis to the
polysystem represented by the culture they belong to. According to this approach, no a priori connection can be established

0378-2166/$ – see front matter

between the source and the target text and equivalence can only be conceived of as a postulate. Throughout the chapter
Ervas cogently shows that what makes the various theories of equivalence inadequate to highlight the nature of translation is
the fact that they are based on tenets that are in different ways problematic. She therefore concludes that equivalence itself is
best viewed as an aporia, i.e. as an insoluble problem.
In Chapter Two Ervas turns her attention to the difficulty of defining the ‘unit of translation’, i.e. the text segment that is
used as a unit of work or analysis. This difficulty is deeply rooted in determining first of all whether there is and what is the unit
that contains meaning, if and where one can obtain the meaning to be transferred in translation (p. 60). A general agreement
exists in translation studies that the unit of translation is the minimal linguistic unit carrying the meaning to be conveyed.
But, Ervas underlines, meaning, by its very nature, escapes the boundaries of a unit of translation, to the extent that in the
translation process such a unit cannot be defined a priori because it constantly changes depending on the translator’s choices
and on contextual information (p. 67). Ervas relies on analytic philosophy’s approach to this problem, according to which the
unit of translation is less and less conceived of as an atomistic entity and more and more as a holistic meaning emerging from
a network of meanings. She invokes Quine’s experiment of radical translation and Davidson’s Principle of Charity to support
her conclusion (p. 94) that the boundaries of the unit of translation constantly change according to the communicative
situation, and have to be searched for in the translator him/herself. It is the translator who decides where the boundaries are
in a dynamic, constant interaction with the reader. Here Ervas’ ideas are consistent with post-Cartesian views within
linguistics, which underline the necessity to focus more and more on human beings in the study of language.
In Chapter Three, the author returns to the relationship of sameness in difference between the source and target text in
analytical philosophy. A relationship of equivalence is a relationship whereby a text x shares some, not all, qualities or values
(e.g. function, style) with a text y which is its translation. Such a relationship is therefore not a relationship of identity. In this
chapter, Ervas engages critically with Quine’s attempt to explain the relationship of equivalence as one of synonymity, that
is: given two utterances E and E1 belonging respectively to the two languages L and L1, if E is a good translation of E1, then E
and E1will have the same reference. The problem with this, according to Ervas, is that reference is always relative to a specific
translation context, with the consequence that there can be many translations of one text.
Neither does Davidson’s approach to equivalence in terms of truth conditions – two utterances s and p are equivalent
when s is true only and only if p is true – seem satisfying. Ervas shows that also this approach is mined by difficulties and
limits, most of them due to the fact that natural languages are too unstable, complex, semantically open, and fundamentally
indexical for a truth-conditional approach to be fruitfully applied. Consequently, the author proposes to attach a new
meaning to the term equivalence. Thus equivalence has to be taken as ‘having the same value’ (p. 143).
Chapter Four focuses on values or qualities that need to be kept constant in the translation process. At the outset of this
chapter, following Pym (1992), Ervas states that a target translation unit is equivalent to a source translation unit when it
maintains a specific value of it, which does not vary in the translation process (p. 146). This definition rests upon the concept
of value. However, translation is always characterized by a multiplicity of values (style, function, effects), and it is among
them that, influenced by a multiplicity of factors (cf. Gutknecht and Rölle, 1996), the translator decides each time which one
has to be given priority in a given context. Nonetheless, not only is it difficult to define precisely each value, but it is also
difficult to pin down how the translator establishes the hierarchy of values that have to be kept unchanged so as to have
equivalence in translation. At this point, Ervas gives her own definition of ‘value’ as being only partially an intrinsic
characteristic of the translation unit. As a consequence, it should not be exclusively searched for in the objective features of
the text, since in translation practice it is the translator who determines the ‘value’ that connects what is designated as the
source translation unit and as the target translation unit.
Thus ‘value’ is fundamentally intersubjective and, as a consequence, equivalence can only be determined by the context of
each communicative encounter. Therefore, interpretation will be a process whereby the interpreter gradually adapts her
solutions to what the speaker seems to believe or intend. Equivalence is thus a process characterized by the formation on the
part of the interpreter of passing or occasional theories on the basis of incoming information from the context thanks to which
the interpreter moves closer and closer to the speaker’s positions. In this perspective ‘value’ is not ‘value of use’ but ‘exchange
value’ (Pym, 1992), namely the value the translator decides upon in the ongoing process of convergence with his/her
interlocutor.
Semantic equivalence, however, should not be abandoned according to Ervas. Nonetheless, it is not sufficient and a notion
of equivalence as a momentary, ever-changing agreement seems to be more suitable to explain the nature of the relationship
between the source and the target text in translation.
At the very end of the book, Ervas brings the discussion back to Davidson’s Principle of Charity as the principle that
explains why translation is always possible. However, if this principle explains the deeper sense of equivalence that makes
translation possible, it cannot explain the diversity among various equivalent translations because this diversity depends
upon the subjectivity of each translator. And on this diversity any theorization seems simply impossible.
All in all, Ervas shows a good ability to move with clarity between philosophy, linguistics and Translation Studies. Indeed,
one of the two major strengths of the book – which has won the Premio Filosofico Castiglioncello 2010 for young authors – is,
in my opinion, its interdisciplinarity and its ability to show how only the interaction and integration of perspectives can shed
light on a complex phenomenon like language. The other major strength is the crystal-clear style in which the book is
written.
On the more critical side, first of all, one would expect that in the section in which Ervas discusses Croce and Gentile,
Gramsci would be more than just briefly mentioned. A more thorough analysis of his thought would have enhanced the
 Book review 3097

quality of the argument not only because Gramsci was involved in the debate about translation with Croce, but above all
because his ideas about the translation process as being foremost a process of cultural mediation makes him a precursor of
the cultural turn of Translation Studies of the 1980s (cf. Boothman, 2004). A more thorough discussion of this would have
given support to the importance Ervas gives to the context of each communicative encounter in shaping the value of
equivalence, such a context being fundamentally cultural. Secondly, given that the importance of the target text recipient
comes out very clearly in Ervas’ definition of equivalence, it would have been more useful to discuss more thoroughly how
translation can be grounded in cognition, and, in this perspective, the contribution that, more than any other theory,
Relevance Theory (cf. Gutt, 1991; Sperber and Wilson, 1995; Wilson and Sperber, 2004) has given to such a debate.

References

Boothman, Derek, 2004. Traducibilità e processi traduttivi. Un caso: A. Gramsci linguista. Guerra, Perugia.
Catford, John C., 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay on Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press, London.
Gutknecht, Christoph, Rölle, Lutz J., 1996. Translating by Factors. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Gutt, Ernst August, 1991. Translation and Relevance. Cognition and Context. Blackwell, Oxford.
Jakobson, Roman, 1959. On linguistic aspects of translation. In: Brower, R.A. (Ed.), On Translation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 232–239.
Nida, Eugene A., 1964. Towards a Science of Translation. Brill, Leiden.
Pym, Anthony, 1992. Translation and Text Transfer: An Essay on the Principles of Intercultural Communication. Peter Lang, Frankfurt.
Sperber, Dan, Wilson, Deirdre, 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Blackwell, Oxford.
Toury, Gideon, 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Wilson, Deirdre, Sperber, Dan, 2004. Relevance theory. In: Horn, L.R., Ward, G. (Eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 607–632.

Carla Vergaro is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, University of Perugia, where she teaches the Linguistics of English. She has carried
out research in pragmatic linguistics, rhetoric, text and discourse analysis, language contact/contrast. Her articles have been published in international journals
such as the Journal of Pragmatics, English for Specific Purposes, Discourse Studies, Multilingua, Text and Talk, Linguistics and Education. She is currently working on the
translation of motion events from Satellite-framed to Verb-framed languages, focusing on English-to-Italian translations.

Carla Vergaro
Department of Ancient, Modern and Comparative Languages and Literatures,
University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy
E-mail address: [email protected]

Available online 23 June 2011