Equivalence at a word level
As translators, we are primarily concerned with communicating the overall meaning of a
stretch of language. To achieve this, we need to start by decoding the units and structures
which carry that meaning. The smallest unit that possesses meaning is the word. The
word is “the smallest unit of language that can be used by itself”. Meaning can also be
carried by units smaller than the word, which are more complex than the single word and
by various structures and linguistic devices.
Elements of meaning which are represented by several orthographic words in one
language, may be represented by one orthographic word in other, and vice versa. This
suggests that there is no one-to-one correspondence between orthographic words and
elements of meaning within or across languages.
In order to isolate elements of meaning in words and deal with them more effectively,
some linguists have suggested the term morpheme to describe the minimal formal
element of meaning in language, as distinct from the word, which may or may not contain
several elements of meaning. In comparison to the words, a morpheme cannot contain
more than one element of meaning and cannot be further analysed.
Some morphemes have grammatical functions such as marking plurality, gender and
tense; other change the class of the word, for instance from verb to adjective, or add a
specific element of meaning such as negation to it (e.g. unhappy).
LEXICAL MEANING
The lexical meaning of a word or lexical meaning unit may be thought of as the specific
value it has in particular linguistic system and the “personality” it acquires through usage
within that system. It is rarely possible to analyse a word, pattern, or structure into distinct
components of meaning. According to Cruse, we can distinguish four main types of
meaning in words and utterances:
• propositional meaning;
• expressive meaning;
• presupposed meaning;
•evoked meaning.
Presupposed meaning
Presupposed meaning arises from co-occurrence restrictions on what other words or
expressions we expect to see before or after a particular lexical unit. These restrictions are
of two types:
1. Selectional restrictions: these are a function of the propositional meaning of a
word. These restrictions can be violated in the case of figurative language.
2. Collocational restrictions: these are semantically arbitrary restrictions which do
not follow logically from the propositional meaning of a word.
Evoked meaning
Evoked meaning arises from dialect and register variation. A dialect is a variety of
language which has currency within a specific community or group of speaker. It may be
classified on one of the following bases:
1. Geographical (e.g. Scottish dialect, or American as opposed to British English);
