It means that the target language has no direct equivalent for a word which occurs in the source text. The type and level of difficulty posed can vary tremendously, depending on the nature of non-equivalence. Different kinds of non-equivalence require different strategies , some very straightforward, others more involved and difficult to handle. Since, in addition to the nature of non-equivalence, the context and purpose of translation will often rule out some strategies and favor others. Some common types of non- equivalence at word level with examples from various languages. (a) Culture-specific concepts. The source-language word may express a concept which is totally unknown in the target culture. The concept in question may be abstract or concrete; it may relate to a religious belief, a social custom or even a type of food. An example of an abstract English concept and difficult to translate into other languages is that expressed by the word privacy. Speaker (of the House of Commons) has no equivalent in languages such as Russian, Chinese and Arabic, among others. It is often translated into Russian as ‘chairman’, which does not reflect the role of the speaker of the House of Commons as an independent person who maintains authority and order in Parliament. An example of a concrete concept is airing cupboard in English, which, again, is unknown to speakers of most languages. (b) The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target language. The source-language word may express a concept which is known in the target culture but simply not lexicalized, that is not ‘allocated’ a target-language word to express it. Landslide has no ready equivalent in many languages, although it simply means ‘overwhelming majority’. (c) The source-language word is semantically complex. An example of such a semantically complex word is arruação, a Brazilian word which means ‘clearing the ground under coffee trees of rubbish and pilling it in the middle of the row in order to aid in the recovery of beans dropped during harvesting’. (d) The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning. The target language may make more or fewer distinctions in meaning than the source language. What one language regards as an important distinction in meaning another language may not perceive as relevant. For example an Indonesian makes a distinction between going out in the rain without the knowledge that it is raining and going out in the rain with the knowledge that it is raining. English does not make this distinction with the result that if an English text referred to going out in the rain, the Indonesian translator may find it difficult to choose the right equivalent.
