Using the Six Wh-Questions in looking for Equivalence in translating a text.
1. What? Is the message contained in the text, the content of the signal, the propositional content of the speech acts?
2. Why? Orients us towards the intentions of the sender, the purpose for which the text was issued.
3. When? Is concerned with the time of communication realised in the text and setting it in its historical context; contemporary or set in recent or remote past or future.
4. How? Is ambiguous as it can refer to:
A. Manner of delivery: the tenor of the discourse; is it serious or ironic?
B. Medium of communication; the mode of the discourse: is it oral or written?
5. Where? Is concerned with the place of the communication; the physical location of speech event realised in the text.
6. Who? Refers to the participants involved in the communication; the sender and receiver(s). Both spoken and written reveal the characteristics of the speaker or writer as an individual.