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Moreover, the ability of both children and adults to adjust to any
cultural pattern, although individuals differ widely in their capacity
to adjust, is not a hard enough block over which intercommunication
stumbles. The similarities that unite mankind as a cultural species
are, certainly, greater than the differences that separate. Besides,
the mental processes involved in intercommunication among categories of
the human species are almost identical. Almost by nature but with
varying degrees, man is intellectually inquisitive, socially
interactive, and culturally absorptive. "But"as Nida states, "despite
the fact that absolute communication is impossible between persons,
whether within the same speech community or in different communities, a
high degree of effective communication is possible among all peoples
because of the similarity of mental processes, somatic responses, range
of cultural experience, and capacity for adjustment to the behaviour
pattern of others". (1964, p55). By 'effective communication', Nida
means that which fulfils the basic socio-cultural reeds of the fellow-
communicants.
Since there are in fact no identical equivalents, translators must
seek the closest possible equivalents which may adequately effect
'effective communication'. Equivalence is of two kinds: formal and
dynamic. Formal equivalence is oriented towards the linguistic form of
the message. Formal equivalence translation focuses on
correspondences such as word-to-word, sentence-to-sentence, concept-to-
concept and poetry-to-poetry. This means that the message in the
receptor language should closely correspond to the message in the
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