Formal and Dynamic Equivalence in Translating English and Uzbek Proverbs: A Comparative Analysis

Translating paremiological units – specifically proverbs presents significant challenges due to their heavy cultural embeddedness, figurative structures, and stylistic devices. This study investigates the application of Eugene Nida's translation framework specifically Formal Equivalence and Dynamic Equivalence in translating proverbs between English and Uzbek. Drawing on a specialized corpus of 50 paired proverbs sourced from standard lexicographical collections, the research evaluates target audience comprehension and pragmatic fidelity under both translation approaches. Quantitative and comparative evaluations demonstrate that Formal Equivalence preserves original imagery without compromising communicative clarity in only 8% of non-overlapping proverbs. Conversely, Dynamic Equivalence achieves a 92% rate of communicative effectiveness by mapping core pragmatic functions onto native target idioms. The study concludes that while Dynamic Equivalence is essential for communicative naturalness, academic and literary translation benefits from a hybrid strategy pairing formal translation with explanatory glossing.