ABSTRACT
Translation is concerned with meaning. However, the term ‘meaning’ is elastic and indeterminate, especially when applied to a whole text. This is true even of literal (or ‘cognitive’ or ‘denotative’) meanings-that is, those that are fully supported by ordinary semantic conventions, such as the convention that ‘window’ refers to a particular kind of aperture in a wall or roof. In the case of words, it is this literal meaning that is given in dictionary definitions. Yet even the dictionary definition of a word has its problems. This is because it imposes, by abstraction and crystallization of a core meaning, a rigidity of meaning that words do not often show in reality. In addition, once words are put into a context, their literal meanings become even more flexible. These two facts make it difficult to pin down the precise literal meanings in any text of any complexity. The more literary the text, the more this is so; but it is true even of the most soberly informative texts. In this chapter, we shall discuss three degrees of semantic equivalence-that is, how close given expressions are to having identical literal meanings.
