Cultural Items in Translation

Le Cong Thin

(International Office of Vinh University, Vinh City, Nghe An Province， Vietnam)

1. Introduction

Communication has always been an important need of all societies. Since the time of our cave-dweller ancestors, people have been communicating in different ways. Neanderthals drew pictures on cave walls; American Indians communicated using drumbeat and smoke. In wars, soldiers used doves to communicate top secrets. Letters and the telephone were the next step in communication. Finally, in the present century most of communication process is done through the Internet.

Communication regardless of its kind may happen between people of the same culture and language or of different cultures. There are often more problems in cross-cultural communication which happens between people of different cultural backgrounds than in communication between people of the same one. Each participant may interpret the other′s speech according to his/her own cultural conventions and expectations. If the cultural conventions of the speaker are widely different, misinterpretations and misunderstandings can easily arise, even result in total breakdown of communication.

When people of different languages are to communicate, they need a common language for understanding each other. Translation is a reasonable way of communicating in these cases. The translation process is like a car that needs a good driver to control the steering wheel in the right direction; a translator who knows not only both languages, but also both cultures, i.e., is not only bi-lingual, but also bi-cultural. Road signs are translation strategies used in this process. As checking oil and antifreeze by a driver before driving is necessary, analyzing cultural elements before translating is vital.

2. Translation is a sequence of choices

Lambert, who is concerned with the literary translator, asserts that “a translation is the fruit of a substantial creative effort by the translator, who is the key agent in the subjective activity and social practice of translation.” He notes that whatever the restrains of the network of social and cultural factors, this is, in fact, the translator who reaches the thousands of decisions and gives the translation its existence.[1]Lander also adds that “translation entails an unending skein of choices.” In other words, the translator must make a choice, and from a sequence of such choices the translation comes into existence.[2]

The process of translation differs slightly from translator to translator and is influenced by the particular work translated. The translator should overcome the conflict between accuracy and elegance by weighing the linguistic individuality of the SL author against the particular features of normal usage in the TL.

Newmark believes in closely translating the well-written literary language. He writes that literary language must remain aesthetically pleasing in translation and there should be a constant tension between the informative and the aesthetic function of language. The more serious the text, morally and aesthetically, the more accurately and economically it should be translated.

He states: Particular care has to be taken to bring out the connotations of polysemous words and expressions, and to preserve repeated words, which are often keywords. There is sometimes a case for adapting cultural metaphors and for transforming fictional proper names so that their meaning is translated and their source language morphology retained.[3]

It is assumed that all translation activity is guided and shaped by such things as the norms, value scales and the models which are prevalent in a given society at a given moment in time.[1]

Considering literature as being the product of the dominant ideology, it is obvious that sign systems cannot be taken on as understood by everyone, for language is dynamic and apt to change quite rapidly. Language is dynamic, so old signs are substituted by new ones. Indeed, the period and culture of the time have direct influence on the language, and any work is, no doubt, the production of its era.

3. Cultural items are one of the challenges for a translator

Since the concept of culture is essential to understanding the implications for translation and culture-specific items in translation, many translation theorists have dealt with the definition of culture. In 1984 Larson defines culture as “a complex of beliefs, attitudes, values, and rules which a group of people share”.[4]He notes that the translator needs to understand beliefs, attitudes, values, and the rules of the SL audience in order to adequately understand the ST and adequately translate it for people who have a different set of beliefs, attitudes, values, and rules. In 1998, Newmark remarks that culture is “the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression”.[3]Here, he asserts that each language group has its own culturally specific features.

Schmitt in 1999 maintains that culture is composed of “everything that a person should know, be able to feel and to do, in order to succeed in behaving and acting in an environment like somebody from this environment”. The process of transmitting cultural elements is a complicated and vital task. Culture is a complex collection of experiences which concerns daily life.It includes history, social structure, religion, traditional customs and everyday usage. This is difficult to comprehend completely. In 1997, Shuttleworth argues that cultural translation is a term used to refer to those types of translation which act as a tool for cross-cultural or anthropological research. He believes that cultural translation is sensitive to cultural and linguistic factors and takes different forms. Such sensitivity might take the form either of presenting TL recipients with a transparent text which informs them about elements of the source culture, or of finding target items which may in some way be considered to be culturally “equivalent” to the ST items they are translating.[5]

According to Nida and Taber, cultural translation is “a translation in which the content of the message is changed to conform to the receptor culture in some way, and/or in which information is introduced which is not linguistically implicit in the original”.[6]In the context of Bible translation, Nida and Taber state that a cultural translation is one in which additions are made which cannot be directly derived from the original ST wording. Thus, these additions might take the form of ideas culturally foreign to ST or elements which are simply included to provide necessary background information.

In 1964, Nida listed four basic factors which make communication possible and, therefore, make possible the translation of a message from one language and culture to another. These are: (1) the similarity of mental processes of all people, (2)similarity of somatic reactions (similar physical responses to emotional stimulus), (3) the range of common cultural experience, and (4) the capacity for adjustment to the behavioral patterns of others . In addition to Nida, Larson observes that all meaning is culturally conditioned and the response to a given text is also culturally conditioned. Therefore, each society will interpret a message in terms of its own culture.

The receptor audience will decode the translation in terms of his own culture and experience, not in terms of the culture and experience of the author and audience of the original document. The translator then must help the receptor audience understand the content and intent of the source document by translating with both cultures in mind.

Indeed, one of the most difficult problems in translation is found in the differences between cultures. People of a given culture look at things from their own perspective. Larson notes that “different cultures have different focuses. Some societies are more technical and others less technical.” This difference is reflected in the amount of vocabulary which is available to talk about a particular topic. Larson adds that there may also be both “technical and non-technical” vocabulary to talk about the same thing within a given society. Therefore, if the SL text originates from a highly technical society it may be much more difficult to translate it into the language of a non-technical society. However, in the case of similar cultures the conditions are not the same.

When the cultures are similar, there is less difficulty in translating. This is because both languages will probably have terms that are more or less equivalent for the various aspects of the culture. When the cultures are very different, it is often difficult to find equivalent lexical items.[4]

Thus, a translator who uses a cultural approach is simply recognizing that each language contains elements which are derived from its culture, that every text is anchored in a specific culture, and that conventions of text production and reception vary from culture to culture. Awareness of such issues can at times make it more appropriate to think of translation as a process which occurs between cultures rather than simply between languages. Most “cultural words”, according to Newmark, are easy to detect since they are associated with a particular language and cannot be literally translated. However, many cultural customs are described in ordinary language, where literal translation would distort the meaning and thus the translation “may include an appropriate descriptive-functional equivalent”.[3]

Newmark also introduced “cultural word” which the readership is unlikely to understand and the translation strategies for this kind of concept depend on the particular text-type, requirements of the readership and client and importance of the cultural word in the text.[3]Baker refers to such cultural words and concedes that the SL words may express a concept which is totally unknown in the target culture. She points out that the concept in question may be “abstract or concrete, it may relate to a religious belief, a social custom, or even a type of food.” Baker then, calls such concepts “culture-specific items” (Baker 1992: 21). Nord uses the term “cultureme” to refer to these culture specific items. He defines cultureme as “a cultural phenomenon that is present in culture X but not present (in the same way) in culture Y”.[7]Gambier also refers to such concepts as “culture-specific references” and asserts that they connote different aspects of life.

Culture-specific references connoting different aspects of everyday life such as education, politics, history, art, institutions, legal systems, units of measurement, place names, foods and drinks, sports and national pastimes, as experienced in different countries and nations of the world.

Gambier acknowledges that the culture-specific category “contains sixty clips divided into six sub-groups” which included examples of references to the system, food and measurements, sport, institutions, famous people and events, and finally the legal system. Newmark asserts that a few general considerations govern the translation of all cultural words. First, the ultimate consideration should be recognition of the cultural achievements referred to in the SL text, and respect for all foreign countries and their cultures. Two translation procedures which are at opposite ends of the scale are normally available; transference, which usually in literary texts, offers local color and atmosphere, and in specialist texts enables the readership to identify the referent in other texts without difficulty. However, transference, though it is brief and concise, blocks comprehension, it emphasizes the culture and excludes the message, does not communicate; some would say it is not a translation procedure at all.

At the other end, there is componential analysis, the most accurate translation procedure, which excludes the culture and highlights the message. Componential analysis is based on a component common to the SL and TL to which one can add the extra contextual distinguishing components. Inevitably, a componential analysis is not as economical and has not the pragmatic impact of the original. Lastly, the translator of a cultural word, which is always less context-bound than ordinary language, has to bear in mind both the motivation and the cultural specialist and linguistic level of readership.[3]The point in regard to the systematic way of translating a literary text is that “in each period of time the degree of loyalty with regard to interpretation and translation of literary texts varies regarding the three points of author, reader, and the text.” Therefore, the literary translator has to know well the critical approaches as well as their underlying structure.

4. Conclusion

Translation is a process of replacing a text in one language by a text in another language. A text is never just a sum of its parts, and when words and sentences are used in communication, they combine to make meaning in different ways. Therefore, it is the whole text to be translated, rather than separate sentences or words. A communicative text will carry its cultural features while moving from one language to another. The translator should be familiar with SL and TL cultures, know the purpose of the communication and the audience for correct and on-time decision making to do his/her translation as effective cross-cultural communication. We ought to keep in mind that, due to differences, there is no exact translation between any two languages. What one can hope for is an approximation. The more similar the systems and cultures of the two languages, the more efficient the translation in cross-cultural communication.

[References]

[1]LAMBERT J. “Literary Translation.”[M]//M Baker. Rout ledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London: Rout ledge, 1998: 130-134.

[2] LANDERS, CLIFFORD E. Literary Translation: A practical Guide[M].New Jersey University Press: Multilingual Maters, 2001:9.

[3] NEWMARK P.A Textbook of Translation[M]. New York and London Prentice-Hall, 1998:103,94,95,96.

[4] LARSON, MILDRED L. Meaning-Based Translation: A Guide to Cross-Language Equivalence[M]. Lanham and New York: University Press of America, Inc, 1984：431.

[5] SHUTTLEWORTH M，M COWIE. Dictionary of Translation Studies[M]. Manchester: St Jerome, 1997：35.

[6] NIDA E A，C R TABER. The Theory and Practice of Translation[M]. Leiden: E J Brill, 1969/1982:99.

[7] NORD C. Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained[M]. Manchester: St Jerome, 1997：34.