TRANSLATION THEORY AND THE PROBLEM OF EQUIVALENCE

A theory is an ensemble of concepts which explains a part of reality. Theories are not necessary but they are very useful. Mankind has lived for thousands of years without knowing physics but it is useful to know physics, you can drive cars and have electricity and computers and telephones. Medicine men have cured or killed humans for thousands of years but it is useful to have hospitals and laboratories and drugs and all that the medical science has created, you can live longer and better. People have translated for thousands of years, nowadays half the planet is busy translating what the other half says. The XXth century is being called many names, the best name is the "century of translation". Never before in the course of human history, have so many translated the words of so many. But believe or not, we still have no theory of translation, no science of translation although thousands of pages are being written about particular aspects of the translation activity. Practitioners, teachers and clients, we all live with wrong ideas about what translating is. Millions of people still believe that there is such a thing as a literal translation. And they pay for literal translations and then they pay again for a rewriting into journalistic language of that literal translation. We need a science to know that all translations must come already "rewritten", because all professional translations are made, not in the abstract, not in the void, but for somebody, for th