Cultural Specific Items

8/3/2019 Cultural Specific Items

1/10

Volume 14, No. 1

January 2010

Front Page

Sepideh Firoozkoohi received herB.A in English translation in 2005from Sistan & BloochestanUniversity of Zahedan, Iran.Currently, she is a senior MAstudent in Translation Studies atChabahar Maritime University.Her MA thesis is on diachronicstudy of domestication andforeignization strategies ofculture-specific items in English-

Persian literary translations of sixof Ernest Hemingway's books.She works as a part-time Englishteacher in Chabahar MaritimeUniversity as well. She isinterested in studies related tovisibility and invisibility of thetranslator, the postcolonial turnin Translation Studies, andtranslation quality assessment.

Ms. Firoozkoohi can be reachedat [email protected].

Select one of theprevious 50 issues.

Select an issue:

Index 1997-2009

Culture-Specific Items inLiterary Translations

by Dr. Esmail Zare-Behtash (Associate Professor ofChabahar Maritime University), Sepideh Firoozkoohi

Chabahar Maritime University,

Chabahar, Iran

Abstract

In most societies literary translation seems tohave become so important that the veryconcept of translation tends to be restricted to

literary translation in comparison with othertypes of translation and other texts.Furthermore, translating culture-specific itemsin literary translations seems to be one of themost challenging tasks to be performed by atranslator. In the present paper attempts weremade to explore the concept of literarytranslation. Finally, the discussion wasrestricted to culture-specific items in literarytranslation which argued about the differentkinds of culture specific items in literarytranslation.

Keywords

: literary translation, culture-specific items,invisibility of translator, source language,target language

1. Introduction

Page 1 of 10Culture-Specific Items in Literary Translation

2/8/2012http://www.bokorlang.com/ ournal/51culture.htm


2/10

Translating culture-specific items inliterary translationsseems to be one of

the most challengingtasks to be performedby a translator.

TJ Interactive:

Translation Journal Blog

Translator Profiles

Twenty Years of Steady

Workload

by Andrei Gerasimov

The Profession

The Bottom Line

by Fire Ant & Worker Bee

Translators Around the

World

Where Can I Find a Chinese

Sworn Translator in Rio de

Janeiro?

by Danilo Nogueira and Kelli

Semolini

Cultural Aspects of

Translation

Culture-Specific Items in

Literary Translations

by Sepideh Firoozkoohi

Medical Translation

How Many Varieties of

Medical Practice Are There?

by Rafael A. Rivera, M.D.,

FACP

Science & Technology

Translating a Patent:

Translator's Templates

by Kriemhild (Karen) Zerling

Translators and the

Computer

Automatic Web Translators

as Part of a Multilingual

Question-Answering (QA)

System: Translation of

Questions

ranslation as a phenomenon is such an incredibly broadidea that it can be understood in many different ways.Therefore, not surprisingly, many different definitionshave been offered, each reflecting a particular underlyingtheoretical model. The American theorist Lawrence Venuti,for example, defines translation as " a process by whichthe chain of signifiers that constitutes the source-languagetext is replaced by a chain of signifiers in the targetlanguage which the translator provides on the strength ofan interpretation" (Venuti 1995: 17). Venuti sees the aimof translation is:

To bring back a cultural other as the same, therecognizable, even the familiar; and this aimalways risks a wholesale domestication of theforeign text, often in highly self consciousprojects, where translation serves anappropriation of foreign cultures for domesticagendas, cultural, economic, and political.

(Venuti 1995: 18)

In Venuti's view, the viability of a translation is establishedby its relationship to the cultural and social conditionsunder which the translation is produced and read. Hebelieves that a foreign text is the site of many differentsemantic possibilities that are fixed, only provisionally, inany one translation on the basis of varying culturalassumptions and interpretive choices in specific socialsituations and during different historical periods.

2. Literary Translation

It is actually believed that, of all the types of translation,literary translation lets one consistently share in thecreative process of translation (Landers 2001: 4-5).According to Bush, literary translation is "an originalsubjective activity at the center of a complex network ofsocial and cultural practices"

(Bush 1998: 127).

Lambert, who is alsoconcerned with the literarytranslator, asserts that "apublished translation is thefruit of a substantial creative

effort by the translator, whois the key agent in thesubjective activity and socialpractice of translation." Henotes that whatever the

restrains of the network of social and cultural factors, thisis, in fact, the literary translator who reaches thethousands of decisions and gives the literary translation itsexistence (Lambert 1998: 130). Lander also adds that"literary translation entails an unending skein of choices."




3/10

by Lola Garca-Santiago and

Mara-Dolores Olvera-Lobo

The Efficacy of Round-trip

Translation for MT

Evaluation

by Milam Aiken and Mina

Park

Arts & Entertainment

Empirical Study of Subtitled

Movies

by Maria Bernschtz, Ph.D.

Literary Translation

La influencia de Voltaire en

el primer Hamletespaol

Laura Campillo Arnaiz

Translators' Education

English Language Teaching

Through the Translation

Method (A Practical

Approach to Teaching

Mongolian CPAs)

by Dr. Naveen K. Mehta

Translators' Tools

Pondering and Wondering

by Jost Zetzsche

Translators Emporium

Caught in the Web

Web Surfing for Fun and

Profit

by Cathy Flick, Ph.D.

Translators On-Line

Resources

by Gabe Bokor

Translators Best Websites

by Gabe Bokor

In other words, the literary translator must make a choice,and from a sequence of such choices the translationcomes into existence (Landers 2001: 9). Differentstrategies might be necessary to approach a poem or afiction. A translator of fiction, as Bush quotes from Levine(Levine 1991 cited in Bush 1998: 129), has to engagewith the different rhythms, the images and symbols anauthor may use in the course of hundreds of pages. Heargues that:

Repeated reading and research enable thetranslator to identify such patterns, thoughsome will be translated subconsciously as partof the process of imaginative rewriting.... Theliterary translator creates a new pattern in adifferent language, based on personal reading,research, and activity. This new creation inturn becomes the basis for multiple readingsand interpretations, which will go beyond anyintentions of either original author or

translator.(Bush 1998: 128-9)

The process of translation differs slightly from translator totranslator and is influenced by the particular worktranslated. Newmark concedes that it usually happens thatthe literary translator first has to deal with words set onthe page by an author "who may be dead physically ormetaphorically and now lives in the variegated readings bya host of readers of the source language" (Newmark1998: 117). Then, the literary translator should overcomethe conflict between accuracy and elegance by weighingthe linguistic individuality of the SL author against the

particular features of normal usage in the TL. Sinceliterary translators translate those works which areselected for translation and which now exist whereotherwise there would be silence, they are involved at "akeen point of cultural convergence":

They often play a key role by suggestingworks for translation regularly writing readers'reports for their publishers on books sent byforeign authors and their agents. The eventualselection implies the work is representative-even if it is anticanonical- of a particularquintessential use of language and feeling in

the source culture. It also implies that thepublishers believe there is a market for thatliterary translation.

(Newmark 1998: 127-8)

Newmark believes in closely translating the well-writtenliterary language. He writes that literary language mustremain aesthetically pleasing in translation and thereshould be a constant tension between the informative andthe aesthetic function of language. The more serious the




4/10

Call for Papers andEditorial Policies

text, morally and aesthetically, the more accurately andeconomically it should be translated, reflecting thethought, style, emphasis, and as far as possible,particularly in poetry, the rhythm and sound of original(Newmark 1998: 201). He states:

Particular care has to be taken to bring out theconnotations of polysemous words and

expressions, and to preserve repeated words,which are often keywords. There is sometimesa case for adapting cultural metaphors and fortransforming fictional proper names so thattheir meaning is translated and their sourcelanguage morphology retained.

(Newmark 1998: 103)

Undoubtedly, the essence of the type of event that iscasually referred to in Translation Studies as literarytranslation, as Lambert points out, "makes it incumbenton scholars to define the conditions under which this typeof event takes place, as well as to investigate theconditions under which it does not occur." Now consideringthe ambiguous state of translated literature particularlywith regard to the concept of 'visibility and invisibility' ofliterary translation, the act of translation is not an easytask. Lambert then, acknowledges that "a translation maybe presented explicitly as a translation, in which case it isvisible, or it may be disguised as an original, whichexplains why the majority of readers remain unaware ofthe foreign origins of some literary texts" (Lambert 1998:130). He argues that both pseudotranslations and invisibletranslations offer interesting indicators of the valueposition of imported literature in a given culture. He

asserts that such translated texts "deserve to be studiedsystematically as central issues in the development ofliteratures" (Lambert 1998: 131).

Then, Landers involves himself in translation problems. Heasserts that translation problems are not like mathproblems that have only one or at most a strictly limitednumber of right answers. As a subfield of literature,translation is subjective in essence. He maintains that"reasonable people may well disagree about which ofseveral proposed alternatives to a particular translationproblem best addresses it" (Landers 2001: x). However, inany other branches of translation this problem would not

arise, that is, the information would be conveyedirrespective of considerations of style (Landers 2001: 10).Landers remarks that:

The goal of literary translation is publication.Translation for pleasure or as intellectualexercise is well and good, but the dedicatedliterary translator aims at sharing the finalresult with TL readers for whom the workwould otherwise forever remain inaccessible. A




5/10

portion of this guide is devoted to the questionof how to go about finding an outlet for one'stranslations.

Landers 2001: ix)

Lambert then asserts that since literary translation isgenerally a goal-oriented activity designed to fulfill a needin the target literary culture, "an analysis of these needs

and the strategies employed to address them may help usexplain the dynamics of literary relationships andtraditions, and hence of literary translation." He alsoasserts the necessity of taking into account the influenceof translated literature on shaping the dynamics ofdiscourse, communication and culture. He argues that theneed for serious, descriptive research in this area cannotbe overestimated (Lambert 1998:132-3).

Any translation activity and any utterance abouttranslation is part of the data that can be used toelaborate a "profile of a given translation environment andto establish the position that literary translation occupieson the cultural maps of the world" (Lambert 1993 cited inLambert 1998: 132). In this respect, he concedes thatstatements of translators and their critics or readers areinteresting not so much in themselves but as objects ofresearch. Lambert notes that "most cultures have only alimited tradition of translation criticism and theory butthere is generally an obvious systematic in their implicitdiscourse on translation." He points out the entire networkof relationships between translated texts, translators, theircritics and readers become more intelligible "whenconsidered as a complex tradition or system" (Lambert1998: 132). He points that:

Within this functional research paradigm then,it is assumed that all translation activity(whether it involves producing, using orcommenting on translations) is guided andshaped by such things as the norms, valuescales and the models which are prevalent in agiven society at a given moment in time. Thestudy of literary translation therefore consistsof the study of translation norms, models andtraditions.

(Lambert 1998: 132)

Considering literature as being the product of thedominant ideology, it is obvious that sign systems cannotbe taken on as understood by everyone, for language isdynamic and apt to change quite rapidly. "Language isdynamic, so is literature and from time to time andideology to ideology old signs are substituted by newones" (Abbasi 2005: 33). Indeed, the period and culture ofthe time have direct influence on the language, and anyliterary work is, no doubt, the production of its era. It is sosignificant that Bassnett states "all these elements can be




6/10

missed if the reading does not take into full account theoverall structuring of the work and its relation to the timeand place of its production" (Bassnet 1992: 79).

3. Culture-Specific Items in Literary Translation

Since the concept of culture is essential to understandingthe implications for literary translation and culture-specificitems in translation, many translation theorists have dealtwith the definition of culture. In 1984 Larson definesculture as "a complex of beliefs, attitudes, values, andrules which a group of people share" (Larson 1984: 431).He notes that the translator needs to understand beliefs,attitudes, values, and the rules of the SL audience in orderto adequately understand the ST and adequately translateit for people who have a different set of beliefs, attitudes,values, and rules. In 1998, Newmark remarks that cultureis "the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar

to a community that uses a particular language as itsmeans of expression" (Newmark 1998: 94). Here, heasserts that each language group has its own culturallyspecific features.

Schmitt in 1999 maintains that culture is composed of"everything that a person should know, be able to feel andto do, in order to succeed in behaving and acting in anenvironment like somebody from thisenvironment" (Schmitt 1999: 157 cited in Gambier, 2004:33-4). The process of transmitting cultural elementsthrough literary translation is a complicated and vital task.Culture is a complex collection of experiences whichcondition daily life. It includes history, social structure,religion, traditional customs and everyday usage. This isdifficult to comprehend completely. In 1997, Shuttleworthargues that cultural translation is a term used to refer tothose types of translation which act as a tool for cross-cultural or anthropological research. He believes thatcultural translation is sensitive to cultural and linguisticfactors and takes different forms:

Such sensitivity might take the form either ofpresenting TL recipients with a transparenttext which informs them about elements of the

source culture, or of finding target items whichmay in some way be considered to beculturally "equivalent" to the ST items they aretranslating.

(Shuttleworth & Cowie 1997: 35)

According to Nida and Taber, cultural translation is "atranslation in which the content of the message is changedto conform to the receptor culture in some way, and/or inwhich information is introduced which is not linguisticallyimplicit in the original" (Nida and Taber 1969/1982: 199).




7/10

In the context of Bible translation, Nida and Taber statethat a cultural translation is one in which additions aremade which cannot be directly derived from the originalST wording. Thus, these additions might take the form ofideas culturally foreign to ST or elements which are simplyincluded to provide necessary background information(Shuttleworth & Cowie 1997: 35).

In 1964, Nida lists four basic factors which makecommunication possible and, therefore, make possible thetranslation of a message from one language and culture toanother. These are: 1) the similarity of mental processesof all people, 2) similarity of somatic reactions (similarphysical responses to emotional stimulus), 3) the range ofcommon cultural experience, and 4) the capacity foradjustment to the behavioral patterns of others (Nida1964a 53-5). In addition to Nida, Larson observes that allmeaning is culturally conditioned and the response to agiven text is also culturally conditioned. Therefore, eachsociety will interpret a message in terms of its own

culture:

The receptor audience will decode thetranslation in terms of his own culture andexperience, not in terms of the culture andexperience of the author and audience of theoriginal document. The translator then musthelp the receptor audience understand thecontent and intent of the source document bytranslating with both cultures in mind.

(Larson 1984: 436-7)

Indeed, one of the most difficult problems in translating

literary texts is found in the differences between cultures.People of a given culture look at things from their ownperspective. Larson notes that "different cultures havedifferent focuses. Some societies are more technical andothers less technical." This difference is reflected in theamount of vocabulary which is available to talk about aparticular topic (Larson 1984: 95). Larson adds that theremay also be both "technical and non-technical" vocabularyto talk about the same thing within a given society.Therefore, if the SL text originates from a highly technicalsociety it may be much more difficult to translate it intothe language of a nontechnical society. However, in thecase of similar cultures the conditions are not the same:

When the cultures are similar, there is lessdifficulty in translating. This is because bothlanguages will probably have terms that aremore or less equivalent for the various aspectsof the culture. When the cultures are verydifferent, it is often difficult to find equivalentlexical items.

(Larson 1984: 95-6)




8/10

Thus, a translator who uses a cultural approach is simplyrecognizing that each language contains elements whichare derived from its culture, that every text is anchored ina specific culture, and that conventions of text productionand reception vary from culture to culture. Awareness ofsuch issues can at times make it more appropriate to thinkof translation as a process which occurs between cultures

rather than simply between languages. Most 'culturalwords', according to Newmark, are easy to detect sincethey are associated with a particular language and cannotbe literally translated. However, many cultural customsare described in ordinary language, where literaltranslation would distort the meaning and thus thetranslation "may include an appropriate descriptive-functional equivalent" (Newmark 1988: 95).

Newmark also introduced 'cultural word' which thereadership is unlikely to understand and the translationstrategies for this kind of concept depend on the particulartext-type, requirements of the readership and client andimportance of the cultural word in the text (Newmark1988: 96). Baker refers to such cultural words andconcedes that the SL words may express a concept whichis totally unknown in the target culture. She points outthat the concept in question may be "abstract or concrete,it may relate to a religious belief, a social custom, or evena 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. Hedefines cultureme as "a cultural phenomenon that ispresent in culture X but not present (in the same way) inculture Y" (Nord 1997: 34). Gambier also refers to such

concepts as 'culture-specific references' and asserts thatthey connote different aspects of life:

Culture-specific references connoting differentaspects of everyday life such as education,politics, history, art, institutions, legalsystems, units of measurement, place names,foods and drinks, sports and nationalpastimes, as experienced in different countriesand nations of the world.

(Gambier 2004: 159)

Gambier acknowledges that the culture-specific category

"contains sixty clips divided into six sub-groups" whichincluded examples of references to the system, food andmeasurements, sport, institutions, famous people andevents, and finally the legal system (Gambier 2004: 160).Newmark asserts that a few general considerations governthe translation of all cultural words. First, the ultimateconsideration should be recognition of the culturalachievements referred to in the SL text, and respect for allforeign countries and their cultures. Two translationprocedures which are at opposite ends of the scale are




9/10

normally available; transference, which usually in literarytexts, offers local color and atmosphere, and in specialisttexts enables the readership to identify the referent inother texts without difficulty. However, transference,though it is brief and concise, blocks comprehension, itemphasizes the culture and excludes the message, doesnot communicate; some would say it is not a translationprocedure at all.

At the other end, there is componential analysis, the mostaccurate translation procedure, which excludes the cultureand highlights the message. Componential analysis isbased on a component common to the SL and TL to whichone can add the extra contextual distinguishingcomponents. Inevitably, a componential analysis is not aseconomical and has not the pragmatic impact of theoriginal. Lastly, the translator of a cultural word, which isalways less context-bound than ordinary language, has tobear in mind both the motivation and the culturalspecialist and linguistic level of readership (Newmark

1988: 96). The point in regard to the systematic way oftranslating a literary text is that "in each period of timethe degree of loyalty with regard to interpretation andtranslation of literary texts varies regarding the threepoints of author, reader, and the text." Therefore, theliterary translator has to know well the critical approachesas well as their underlying structure (Abassi 2005: 32).

4. Conclusion

Considering literature as being the product of thedominant ideology, it is obvious that sign systems cannot

be assumed to be understood by everyone, for language isdynamic and apt to change quite rapidly. Furthermore, inmost societies literary translation seems to have becomeso prominent that the very concept of translation tends tobe restricted to literary translation in comparison withother types of translation and other texts.

One of the most difficult problems in translating literarytexts is found in the differences between cultures. Peopleof a given culture look at things from their ownperspective. Indeed, one of the most difficult problems intranslating literary texts is found in the differencesbetween cultures. A translator who uses a cultural

approach is simply recognizing that each languagecontains elements which are derived from its culture thatevery text is anchored in a specific culture, and thatconventions of text production and reception vary fromculture to culture.

References




10/10

Cultural Specific Items

Documents

Transcript of Cultural Specific Items