| name | text-level-approach-and-limits-of-equivalence |
| description | Diagnoses and reviews the whole-text approach and the standard applied — systematic reflection, guarding against interference, and treating equivalence as relative and partial; owns the overarching stance and evaluation frame, not any single linguistic level. Use when a caller asks whether a translation is "right," "literal enough," or "faithful" overall without naming a single equivalence level. |
| kind | skill |
| status | ready |
| provenance | {"principles":["P006","P010","P039","P051","P062","P078","P079","P096","P101","P111"],"claims":["C00001","C00002","C00003","C00004","C00005","C00006","C00008","C00009","C00010","C00011","C00012","C00013","C00014","C00015","C00033","C00087","C00088","C00098","C00154","C00155","C00156","C00157","C00158","C00159","C00160","C00321","C00326","C00327","C00358","C00365","C00378","C00379"],"evidence":[],"source_anchors":[],"authored_from_digest":"96347c27f6bcc03cd4ef1fe7c3307322e9272f484e33488d9a636aa239e74ad9"} |
Text-Level Approach and the Limits of Equivalence
Purpose
This skill reviews the translator's overall stance and the standard by which the work is judged. Its rule is that equivalence is relative and only partially achievable, so a translation is analysed at the whole-text level, decided by systematic reflection, and evaluated as a set of strengths and weaknesses rather than as right or wrong.
When to use
- A caller asks whether a translation is "right," "literal enough," or "faithful" overall, without naming a single equivalence level.
- Findings from a specific level-skill (word, grammar, cohesion, pragmatics, register) must be weighed against the whole-text standard.
- How closely a whole translation matches its source is being assessed against a relative, partial standard rather than an absolute one.
Procedure
- Aim for equivalence at the level of the whole text rather than the word or phrase, and analyse a text at both the level of its individual forms and the level of the whole discourse (P006, P039).
- Base translation decisions on a systematic understanding of language and reflect on them deliberately rather than relying on intuition, and perceive the meaning of words and utterances precisely in their specific context before rendering them (P010, P101).
- Treat translation as an interpretive approximation, and treat equivalence as relative and only partially achievable rather than an absolute standard (P051, P078).
- Guard against source-language interference when drafting or revising (P062).
- Avoid solving ambiguity or historical distance with phrasing that becomes technical, legalistic, anachronistic, or artificial (P096).
- Judge whether a deviant or unusual configuration is justified from the reader's point of view, not the translator's (P111).
- Evaluate a translation as a set of strengths and weaknesses open to improvement rather than as simply good or bad (P079).
Inputs
- The whole source and draft target, and the translation brief.
- The decision or standard under review.
- The reader's point of view against which deviations are judged.
Output
Per finding: state the whole-text or standard concern, whether the draft rested on systematic reflection or intuition, and the correction — framed as an improvement, with the residual limit of equivalence made explicit; in compare mode weigh two whole-text approaches by their residual strengths and weaknesses, since a translation is open to improvement rather than simply good or bad (P079). Follow the shared advise/review/compare response protocol in ../../references/translation-equivalence-key-concepts.md.
Anti-patterns to flag
- Optimising word- or phrase-level matches at the expense of whole-text equivalence (P006).
- Presenting a rendering as the single correct one rather than a relative approximation (P078, P051).
- Judging an unusual rendering from the translator's view rather than the reader's (P111).
Worked example
A caller asks only "is this translation faithful enough?" with no single level named. Diagnosis — judge at the whole-text level, not by isolated word matches (P006, P039), and base the verdict on systematic reflection rather than intuition (P010). Treat equivalence as relative and only partially achievable (P051, P078): report the translation as a set of strengths and weaknesses open to improvement, not simply good or bad (P079), judging any unusual rendering from the reader's point of view, not the translator's (P111). Residual loss — no rendering is the single correct one; make the residual limit explicit, and hand the wording back.
References
See ../../references/translation-equivalence-principles-index.md for the full principle catalogue grouped by skill, and ../../references/translation-equivalence-key-concepts.md for the equivalence vocabulary this skill uses.
Provenance
Derived from principles P006, P010, P039, P051, P062, P078, P079, P096, P101, P111, grounded in the distillation-only sources (Baker, In Other Words; Nida, dynamic and formal equivalence). The frontmatter provenance block lists the exact principle and claim ids, which resolve into principles/principles.yaml and analysis/claims.jsonl.
