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Problems of Finding Linguistic Equivalence When Translating & Interpreting for Special Purposes

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This study was intended to explore the difficulties experienced by translators and interpreters as they strive to find equivalences during translation and interpretation exercises. With the observed changes in phenomena and increased innovations globally, it is expected that the translators and interpreters would ideally need to keep at par with the resultant development and even changes in choices of lexical items to be able to render their messages from the source texts (ST) into the target texts (TT) both effectively and efficiently. In doing this, the translators and interpreters may need to apply various approaches. This study used secondary data which included excerpts from texts translated from English into Kiswahili and from English into French. The analyzed data indicate that the translators will usually find it so difficult to find equivalence of some terminologies in Kiswahili and in French. Consequently, a number of strategies are employed by translators and interpreters to ensure effective and efficient translation and interpretation.
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