ABSTRACT
The notion of translation as transference is deeply rooted in the very etymology of the word ‘translation’ and its metaphorical associations of ferrying across – and the word ‘metaphor’ itself means transference, transposition, translation. Like the metaphorical baggage conveyed by the word ‘translation’ and its cognates and forerunners, ‘equivalence’ carries its own load. The real problem lies in the fact that Gideon Toury’s approach to pseudo-translations creates a pseudo-problem. The problems raised by Toury’s second postulate, his ‘transfer postulate’, can be dealt with more briefly. They are of a more philosophical nature and concern the relation between language and meaning. The transfer postulate refers to “the transference from the assumed source text of certain features that the two share”. The idea is also present in the broad semiotic definition of translation which Toury provided for Thomas Sebeok’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics of 1986.
