Abstract：Abstract：The concept of equivalence, as one of the super-memes in translation theory and practice, has exerted strong influence far and wide. Yet a brief review shows that there has no consensus in the interpretation of the meaning of translation equivalence. In the past two decades, translation studies based on discourse analysis such new terms as textual semantic equivalence and creative equivalence have been put forward. In systemic functional linguistics, the term texture has been used in the literature for four decades, but its meaning has not yet been explicitly expounded. Based on functional linguistics, pragmatics and discourse analysis, this paper explores the multifaceted nature of texture, which is seen as the integration of intentionality, selectivity, creativity, coherence and intertextuality. It is then argued that these aspects of texture are possessed by both the source text and the target text, and that in translation as re-instantiation the translator needs to fully play the subjective roles in pragmatic inferring, discourse analyzing, textual meaning constructing, and mediating cultural differences, so as to create textual semantic equivalence.
Key words: re-instantiation; textual semantic equivalence; texture; subjective roles of the translator
