Much has been written on this most elusive notion. Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that it be discarded altogether. The problem is that the whole question is turned upside down, or, rather, that the cart is meticulously placed before the horse. Equivalence (however one may define it, from whichever angle at any level) does not exist prior to translation, nor is it the pre-condition of translation, but rather its consequence. Equivalence is post-mortem and belongs more properly in the autopsy than in diagnostics. Equivalence, in the end, is a relationship that is always established ad hoc, as a function of the purpose a translation must serve and the cognitive and emotive effects it pursues.
Sergio Viaggio was born in Buenos Aires in 1945 and graduated in 1971 from Moscow’s People’s Friendship University with a thesis on the “Theoretical and Practical Problems in Metric Translation”. In 1974 he joined the Spanish Translation Section at the UN Headquarters in New York. In 1975 he was transferred to the Interpretation Section, and in 1991 he was appointed Chief Interpreter with the UN Office at Vienna. He retired from the UN in 2005 to become a freelance translator and interpreter. He has published some fifty papers and a “Teoría general de la mediación interlingüe” (Alicante, 2005) / “A General Theory of Interlingual Mediation” (Frank & Timme Verlag, Berlin.
He is a founding member of the European Society of Translation Studies and served as its first Vice-president. He is also a founding and Honorary Member of the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI).
In 2005 he was named Honorary Professor by the University of Vic, in 2008 Bath University named him Doctor Honoris Causa in Letters, and in 2009 he was named Honorary Member of the Argentine Association of Conference Interpreters (ADICA)
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