Semantic shift

Synonymy

Use a near-equivalent where no exact one exists, or to avoid a repetition. Also called Near-equivalent or variant reference.

Reference/All techniques

Optional Word Newmark (1988) Franco Aixelá (1996) Chesterman (1997, S1)

What it is

Synonymy selects a target item that is close to the source item without being its equivalent. The two overlap across most of their range and diverge at the edges, and the translator accepts the divergence because the position in the text does not exploit it. Unlike generalization, the target item is not a superordinate: it sits alongside the source item rather than above it.

The label covers three different operations proposed by three authors, and the differences are worth keeping visible. Newmark defines synonymy as a near target equivalent used where an exact one does not exist and where a componential analysis would not be worth the space, typically for adjectives and adverbs of quality in positions that are not critical to the argument; he is explicit that the procedure is a last resort. Chesterman's S1 has a different motive: the target item is chosen to avoid repeating a word, which is a stylistic operation on the target text rather than a response to a semantic gap. Franco Aixelá's synonymy, one of the substitution strategies on his scale for culture-specific items, is likewise motivated by recurrence, when the same culture-specific item comes round again and the translator uses a parallel reference instead of repeating it.

One correction belongs on the record. Secondary literature not infrequently describes Aixelá's synonymy as the substitution of a target-culture item for a source-culture one. That is a different strategy on the same scale, naturalization, and it sits considerably further along the axis of intercultural manipulation. Aixelá's synonymy does not domesticate anything; it varies the wording of a reference that has already been established.

When it applies

  • No exact target equivalent exists for a qualitative term, and the position in the text does not turn on the difference.
  • The source repeats an item in a way that target-language usage in that genre does not tolerate, and the repetition carries no function.
  • A culture-specific item has already been introduced and identified, and a variant reference to it is more readable than the full form repeated.

Examples

FR>EN

  • Source: Il s'est montré très gentil.
  • Target: He was very kind.
  • Comment: Newmark's case. The French adjective spreads across kind, nice, sweet and obliging, and no single English word covers it. In an incidental position a near equivalent is proportionate; a gloss unpacking the range would give the word a weight the sentence does not give it.

DE>EN

  • Source: das Unternehmen ... das Unternehmen ... das Unternehmen
  • Target: the company ... the firm ... the group
  • Comment: Chesterman's S1, applied in a genre that permits it. German business prose repeats the head noun where English journalism varies it. The same operation in the company's articles of association would be an error, because there a change of term implies a change of referent.

NL>EN

  • Source: de Tweede Kamer ... de Tweede Kamer
  • Target: the House of Representatives ... the lower house
  • Comment: Aixelá's case. The institution is named in full at first mention and referred to by a parallel expression afterwards. The motive is recurrence, not cultural distance: no target institution has been substituted, and the reference remains to the Dutch chamber throughout.

Watch out for

Newmark's warning is the one to keep. A near equivalent is admissible in a non-critical position, and the judgement about what counts as non-critical is the whole of the technique. Where the term is defined, contrasted, disputed or carried forward, no position is non-critical, and the difference the translator was prepared to absorb becomes the difference the reader needs.

  • In terminology-controlled text, elegant variation is a defect rather than a virtue. Defined terms and standardized designations are repeated deliberately, and varying them breaks the link the definition created.
  • Repetition in the source is sometimes doing work: rhetorical insistence, legal precision, or reference tracking in a text with several similar entities. Establish that it is inert before removing it.
  • A synonym chosen for readability accumulates. One substitution is invisible; a pattern of them leaves the target vaguer than the source and offers a reviser no single place to object.

References

  • Franco Aixelá, J. (1996). "Culture-Specific Items in Translation", in R. Álvarez & M. C.-Á. Vidal (eds), Translation, Power, Subversion. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 52–78, at 61–64.
  • Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall, p. 84.
  • Chesterman, A. (1997). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Revised edition 2016, Ch. 4.

Terminological situations that call for this

The entries below describe states of a concept or of its designation in which this technique is the operation that answers them. They are reasons of evidence and of conceptual fit rather than of grammar.

Causes of denominative variationTerminological variation

Held inadmissible for

In the situations below a named authority holds this technique inadmissible, and the record gives the authority and the ground. This is not a preference of the house: where an entry appears here, a source says so in print.

Synonymy, polysemy and acceptability

Related entries

Generalization Established equivalent Emphasis change

Translation that can be checked

Every Translyta delivery comes with a quality report and a terminology report, so the decisions described here are visible to your reviser instead of buried in the text.

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