Dynamic Equivalence: Nida’s Perspective and Beyond

Translation is an interlingual and intercultural communication, in which correspondence at the level of formal and meaningful structures does not necessarily lead to a successful communication: a secondary communication or even a communication breakdown may occur due to distinct historical-cultural contexts. Such recognition led Nida to put forward Dynamic Equivalence, which brings the receptor to the centre of the communication. The concept triggered the focus shift from the form of the message to the response of the receptor. Further, its theoretical basis went beyond applying the research results of linguistics to the practice of translation; it founded a linguistic theory of translation for researchers and provided a practical manual of translation for translators. While Nida’s claims on the priority of Dynamic Equivalence over Formal Correspondence have been widely accepted and cited by translation researchers and practitioners, the mechanism and validity of Nida’s theoretical construct of the translation process have been neither addressed nor updated sufficiently. Hence, this paper sets out to revisit Nida and explain in detail what his theoretical background was, and how it led him to Formal Correspondence and Dynamic Equivalence.