Functional Equivalence: A Top Priority in Translating Jordanian Culture-bound Expressions
Abstract
Despite the progress in information technology, artificial intelligence as well as all kinds of machine translation software, we found that to dynamically capture the essence and the spirit of the cultural item, one needs to resort to the human mind rather than to the machine that only decodes words away from their shades of meaning. The objective of the current study is to highlight the equivalence that must be used in translating 14 proverbial expressions randomly selected from Jordanian Vernacular Arabic, mainly from the elderly speech and people’s daily discourse. To achieve this objective, the current researchers resorted to an analytical method that aims at comprehending the items in question in light of their contextual debate, and then each item was examined in light of equivalence parameters of formal, ideational or functional equivalence. It was found that text typology was a top priority in the rendition of culturally-bound-expressions., It was also found that a semantic miscue is bound to occur if a translator resorts to formal and/or ideational equivalence. While formal equivalence could be an excellent equivalence in case the text is universally recognized, functional equivalence still can be the best resort when dealing with culture-specific expressions. Ideational equivalence, nonetheless, may cause great content distortion of the original message. A major limitation of the current study is its being restricted to vernacular culture-specific expressions rather than the standard one. It is highly recommended that another study is conducted on standard Jordanian culture-specific expressions.