Articulated in its introduction, our central preoccupation in this book is to show, from the perspective of our intellectual paradigm for the scientific characterisation of Language called Performative Linguistics (UWAJEH, 2002), how translation is essentially a linguistic operation. This demonstration is effected through an in-depth study of the key translation notion of equivalence.

In Chapter One, we argue that, being a language performance, translation is impossible without language competence, comprising language structure knowledge and language use knowledge. Chapter Two characterises translation as a linguistic communication activity; we demonstrate here that information (NOT meaning) is therefore the primary goal of translation, and that there are four standard types of equivalence in translation for conveying information - following UWAJEH’s Four-Level Model of Translation.

In the remaining chapters, we examine how linguistic knowledge is exploited in different ways at the four levels of translation as a language performance.