Approaches to translation and sound systems, and segment many physical objects and virtually a intellectual concepts differently. (Usually, the closer the language and the culture, the closer translation and the original.) Few words, phrases or sentences correspond precisely n the four lexical scales which interest the translator (Newmark, 1969): (1) formality cf. Joos, 1967) (from frozen to uninhibited); (2) feeling or affectivity (from overheated 1o deadpan): (3) generality or abstraction (from popular to opaquely tech mica). and (4) evaluation (four subscales: morality (good to bad); pleasure (nice to masty): intensity (strong to weak) dimension (e.g. wide to narrow)). have proposed a translation rule that corresponding words, collocations, idioms. metaphors. proverbs sayings. syntactic units and word must be equally frequent (in the appropriate style and registcr of the next) in the source and the target language; but the translator can never follow this rule to the letter. since it even has inherent contradictions. Thirdly, the individual uscs of language of the text-writer and the translator do not coincidc. Everybody has lexical if not grammatical idiosyncrasies, and attaches "private meanings to a few words. The translator normally writes in a style that come naturally to him, desirably with a certain elegance and sensitivity unless the text precludes it. Moreover. as Weightman (1947) has pointed out. a good writer's use of anguage is often remote from it not at cross purposes with. some of the conventional canons of good writing. and it is the writer not the canons that the translator must respect Lastly, the translator and the text-writer have different theories of meaning and different values The translator's theory colours his interpretation of the text. He may set grcater value than the text-writcr on connotation ard correspondingly less on denotation. He may look for symbolism where realism was intended; for several meanings wherc only one was intended; for different emphasis. based on his own philosophy or even his reading of the syntax. The different values of writer and translator may be parodied through a school report. where words like: competent fair. average, adequate (cf. adaquat e average, satisfactory. passahle. middling. to all men (cf. Trier, 1973). Thus diagranimatically one may see a may mean all things target language t as an objeet in a magnetic field which has seven or eighu conflicting forces exerted upon it. The resulting loss of meaning is inevitable and is say, to the obscurity or the deficiencies of the text and the incompetence of unrelated which are additional possible sources of this loss of meaning the translator sometimes referred to as entropy (Vinay, 1968) s the problem, and in the last 30 years, a considerable theoretical This, then literature has been dcvoted to it. A few professional linguists. as well as translators began to turn thcir attention to translation theory at a time when philosophy was substantially concerned with language and later when with the decline of Bloomfiel dian or belaviourist (rather than structuralist) linguistics an rapid progress in appli linguistics, semantics was being (grotesquely) reinstated' within linguistics. Prior to this period, translation theory was almost exclusively the concern of men o etters with the notable exception of Humboldt.