What is Formal Equivalence?

There are several different ways to translate a document. Most commonly, a translation is about conveying the meaning of an original document into the meaning of another document, written in a new language. Here, the move from A to B is not necessarily achieved by translating “word for word.”

This will create then two documents with more or less the same meaning; however, in order to achieve the same meaning the documents can end up “looking” very different, i.e. with contrasting forms. Languages are obviously different, some extremely so and so the route to the right meaning can be meandering.

Often though, clients require two documents that look more or less the same and may be prepared to lose some of the integrity of meaning as a result of this. This process is known as formal equivalence, whereby form takes precedence over meaning.

Formal equivalence can be very challenging. It is all about sticking as closely as possible to the original grammatical structures, sentence size, syntax. Across lingual boundaries this can be very difficult, however it is possible as long as one is prepared to sacrifice some meaning.

In order to get around the problems of loss of meaning with formal equivalence, it is common for the translator to use footnotes and other annotations in order to explain various cultural idiosyncrasies: jokes, puns, turns of phrase etc.

Many people looking for business translations choose formally equivalent translations.