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Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Translation: A Critical Analysis of Snell-Hornby's Approach
Abstract
This paper analyzes Mary Snell-Hornby's seminal theoretical framework for understanding translation as an inherently cultural process. Snell-Hornby was pioneering in establishing that translation requires navigating differences in worldviews and cultural competence. Key concepts explored are culture-bound language elements, the role of expertise, and translation studies' interdisciplinarity. Practical linguistic and textual challenges posed by cultural variation are examined, along with proposed strategies for references and idioms. Case studies reveal cultural influences on translation processes and outcomes. A critical evaluation identifies strengths like emphasizing culture's centrality, and limitations addressed in later frameworks. Potential areas for further research building on Snell-Hornby's foundations are identifying, such as localized case studies, evolving digital implications, and refinement of guidance. Overall, Snell-Hornby established culture as integral to conceptualizing translation's complexities, with implications for both theory development and stewardship of cross-cultural exchange.
Problems relating to cultural aspects, linguistic differences and religious implications can complicate medical language communication. The present study delves into the challenges of translating culturally specific medical concepts between English and Arabic, focusing on cultural sensitivity in medical translation. The need to explore this area in the context of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) stems from the needs of the majorly multicultural-multilingual social fabric of modern Saudi Arabia. The study uses a random corpus of fifty medical prescriptions in English and their human-translated Arabic versions for detailed analysis. The corpus are then analyzed for four features: Cultural Sensitivity and Appropriateness, Direct Equivalents, Medical Practices and Beliefs, and Translating Specific Medical Terms to establish translation efficacy. Content analysis by medical translation experts revealed that of the four areas under study, ensuring cultural sensitivity and appropriateness was least assured in the translation of medical prescriptions. Semi-structured interviews with a smaller set of translators helped identify the challenges in translation and some recommendations for tackling them. The study is likely to transform the focus and curriculum of ESP and translation courses in Saudi Arabia as well as other similar multicultural-multilingual environments healthcare services focus on effective language strategies and communication. Finally, the identification of the key problems and issues will contribute to optimizing the experience towards building culturally grounded medical language translation practices.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges at higher education institutions (HEIs) in managing public health crises were revealed globally. The literature on HEIs has focused on Western/Northern countries and lacks theoretically grounded studies of internal instructional risk communication. This article reports the results of interviews with HEI communication practitioners at 28 universities in 16 countries in the Global South and North regarding their practices of message design and distribution during COVID-19. Using the IDEA model of instructional risk communication, the results revealed that practitioners' communication emphasized action and dissemination over internalization and explanation. Practitioners from the Global South were more likely to perceive personal relevance as important and integrate it into their messages than those from the Global North. Practitioners from the Global South also used credible sources and translated technical jargon for lay audiences more often than those in the Global North. Most of the practitioners' risk messaging was informed by personal experience and intuition rather than by theory or best practice models.
Energy efficiency contributes almost 40% of the potential for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing climate change while sustaining economic development is a crucial and complex task. The research examined energy efficiency's influence on economic growth and environmental sustainability in the top 10 nations with the highest energy efficiency levels between 1990 and 2019. The analysis used energy availability, security, and depletion as moderating factors. A comprehensive empirical investigation, including sophisticated econometric approaches, was conducted to achieve this objective. The findings of the Westerlund panel co-integration test imply long-term linkages among the variables under consideration. The research indicates a positive correlation between energy intensity, availability, and safety, as well as the levels of carbon dioxide emissions, ecological impact, and economic development. The decrease in energy availability was shown to have a detrimental effect on economic growth while positively correlated with both carbon dioxide emissions and the environmental impact. The results indicate that energy magnitude, availability, and security have an excellent effect on economic development but affect the surroundings. The empirical data suggests that economies must attempt to meet economic and ecological goals by separating energy use from economic growth. This task is performed via enhancements in energy utilization.
Morphological signs of soil are one of the main indicators of soil properties. As a result of cultivation and irrigation of soils, there are great changes in its morphological characteristics. The article presents the morphological characteristics of soil sections placed in the old part of Mirzachol. In order to compare the changes in the morphological characteristics of the soil, repeated soil sections were placed in the areas where the previous soil sections were placed and studies were conducted. As a result of the increase in the duration of development and irrigation, it was noted that there were changes in the depth of the arable layer, the color of the soil, the gypsum layer, and the depth of the carbonates.
The article pertains to rock paintings recorded during studies conducted in 2017 and 2019 by an international archaeological expedition at numerous sheltered sites in the Río Atico basin and Vilavilani region in the Río Caplina catchment area within southern Peru. During the research, archaeological sites with rock art were registered, the state of preservation of the paintings was documented, and it was determined what factors were causing their destruction/degradation. The form and thematic scope of the paintings were also determined while defining four styles/stylistic conventions (styles 1-4) of the rock painting in the area in question. New arrangements regarding the superposition of representations/paintings made it possible to define the time sequence of their creation (relative chronology). Multifaceted physicochemical analyses of colouring substances were also carried out, which allowed determining their chemical composition. The mineral origin of all colouring substances has been confirmed, i.e. they should be described as inorganic pigments. At the same time, conclusions regarding the source of origin of the raw material used for their acquisition were presented. During the research, changes in the colours of individual paintings were observed, which provides the basis for conclusions regarding the chemical processes that caused them.
The present study delves into the translation of poetry, with a specific focus on the work of Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing, who translated Nâzım Hikmet's Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları (1966) as Human Landscapes From My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse (1982). Translating poetry is a multifaceted endeavor due to the diverse directions a poem can take in its source language. This often necessitates a trade-off between prioritizing content or form. Nâzım Hikmet's fusion of prose, poetry, regional idioms, and folk sayings presents substantial hurdles for translators. It is precisely here that the present study aligns with Francis Jones' notion of "valency," aiming to convey, or more accurately, recreate the features of the source text within a new language and cultural context. The achievable goal is not a flawless replica, but a correspondence on multiple levels, which forms the foundation for the study's analytical framework. In essence, this study contributes to the field of translation studies by delving into the intricacies of translating poetry, particularly a work that amalgamates diverse linguistic elements. It highlights the challenges confronted by translators in capturing both the form and content of the source text while accommodating the constraints and nuances of the target language and culture. Through a meticulous analysis of specific excerpts, the study sheds light on the strategies employed by Konuk and Blasing to convey the essence of Nâzım Hikmet's work to an audience unfamiliar with the original language and cultural context.
An important element of what is generally referred to as translation competence is represented by the translator’s ability to offer an appropriate treatment of the culturallyembedded words, phrases and structures presented by the source text. What are the most effective means by which the translator trainer can help his/her students develop cultural competence? What are the translation trainees’ needs with regard to cultural training, and what kind of difficulties do they most frequently encounter from this point of view? The paper will discuss these aspects, taking into account both theoretical and research data.
In the context of today’s globalized market, the success of a translator depends, to a large extent, on a number of skills which make up what is generally described as (inter)cultural competence. The present paper focuses on the complex nature of the translator’s intercultural competence, examining it from various perspectives: theoretical, sociolinguistic, textual and interpersonal. The author relies on both theoretical and research evidence, with the ultimate goal of arriving at conclusions of relevance for the field of translator training.
The article presents a review of the key trends in modern Translation Studies (TS) made after thorough analysis of the most fundamental works written in various fields of TS. The review proves that not only the range of problems within TS is now more diversified, which is related to many changes in the nature of translation activity, but Translation Studies are an interdisciplinary science now and uses data from neighboring disciplines. Specific “turns” have occurred in Translation Studies, and new paradigms of translation investigation have emerged. The most important phenomena in Translation Studies include “cultural turn” and the so called “anthropocentric turn” that has given birth to communicative-functional approach to translation. This approach implies “plunging” into the communicative situation of translation, and its analysis aimed at realizing the goal of translation by the translator/interpreter. It allows a more precise formulation of tasks solved by translators in both traditional types of translation (literary translation, religious translation, interpreting) and relatively new kinds of translation activity (audiovisual translation, localization). The article proves that translation proper is the main element of any activity performed by translators while any translation activity implies cultural adaptation of the text to the perception of the source text audience. The principal feature of Translation Studies is being practice-oriented, and their focus on the study of objective laws of translation activity. It enables translation scholars to understand peculiarities of various types of translation and to realize the essence of translation as a human activity.
A translator must have a thorough grasp of a language and its culture in order to determine the most appropriate interpretation while being true to the culture's intent. They must understand the translation technique and category to maintain consistency while translating cultural texts such as idioms and culture-specific items. This study explored translation procedures for idioms and culture-specific items, as well as their categories, in light of these considerations. The researcher did a descriptive qualitative study utilizing two instruments from Lucy M. Montgomery's original novel "Anne's House of Dreams," which was first published in 1917 and had 275 pages. Meanwhile, Maria M. Lubis released a 275-page Indonesian translation in 1998. According to the findings, there were 146 data points for idioms and 26 data points for culture-specific things. The most common translation approach utilized was Translation by Paraphrase, and the least common was Translation by Omission, according to the initial statistics on idioms. Meanwhile, the second set of data on Culture-specific Items revealed that Transfer was the most regularly utilized translation approach, while Deletion was the least. Finally, the most often used category for classification was Ecology. Overall, we believe that this study will aid readers in comprehending translation.
The present study investigates the effective strategies that can be employed in translating English culture-bound expressions into Arabic. The study mainly explores the translation and idiomacity of some colour-related expressions of comparison (i.e. similes), collocations and binomials. The paper examines whether it is possible to observe any consistency in the strategies used for the translation of these colour-related idiomatic expressions. This is attempted under the notions of foreignization and domestication proposed by Venuti (1995), the framework of Berlin/Key studies on colours (1969), and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which are all concerned with the interrelationships between language, culture, and translation. The researcher is the instrument of this study. In translating the culturally-bound expressions, the researcher uses two techniques to solve the cultural gap between the source and target languages. The paper reaches the conclusion that no translation strategy should be discarded. Venuti claims that the translator's invisibility is a direct fallout of domesticating translation. However, domestication is very successful in translating many of the idioms incorporated in the corpus data by providing an equivalent idiom in the target language (TL). Foreignising translation, on the other hand, is not always favoured as a form of cultural innovation if it is taken to extremes, as is the case with colour-related idioms deeply bound to culture as it negatively affects the semantic content of the source language. | KEYWORDS
This study investigates whether it is possible to translate Islamic Arabic poetry, as a universal literary religious genre, into English to a high level of quality. A global-local translation framework (Halimah, 2020) is applied to the translation of Imam Ashshafi’ee’s[i] poem “الرضا بقضاء الله”/ “Accepting Fate with Pleasure” into English, where a methodological collaboration between a bilingual translator and an English poet manifests a two-stance methodological framework. The results, along with the qualitative and quantitative analysis of poetic extracts used in this paper, indicate that this framework has resulted in improving the quality of Islamic Arabic poetry translation. The translated materials proved to be ‘novel and appropriate’, achieving a very high 90% of approximation of the original text against ACNCS criteria. This framework can also be applied by translators of other literary and non-literary texts to bring more structure and clarity to the discipline of translation.[i]Muhammad bin Idrees Ashshafi’ee (DoB:150H/767A.D died in 204H/820A.D.) The founder of the Sunni School of Law مذهب الشافعية
In a way, the history of Translation Studies, at least for the last decades, has been that of a continuous broadening of the field of study. If the 1990s witnessed
the “cultural turn”
famously heralded by Mary Snell-Hornby, more recently scholars have turned towards the role that translation plays in cultural dominance and cultural resistance, in what has been referred to as the power turn. At the same time, a converging movement could be observed from outside the field of Translation Studies: Some thinkers, in their quest for new intellectual paradigms to tackle the challenges faced by emancipatory projects, have veered towards translation as a way to overcome particularism and nationalism, while at the same time avoiding the risks of a monocultural universalism that is seen to lead inevitably to imperialism. Translation, by necessarily reaching out to the Other and creating hybridity, offers a
unique chance to “square the circle” and find “equivalence in difference.” In this
paper, we discuss the ideas about translation of four such thinkers, coming from very different backgrounds and traditions: Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Étienne Balibar, Judith Butler and Boaventura de Sousa Santos.
Having long been accepted by many translation scholars as an interdisciplinary field, Translation Studies is now thought to be a maturated discipline with the advent of new technological tools or the integration of computerized devices into the translation practice. The interdisciplinary aspect of Translation Studies generally stems from linguistics, philology, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. Additionally, most translation scholars explain the interdisciplinarity of Translation Studies according to these fields of study. However, as explained above, there are also technological tools or computerized devices that contribute to the maturation of Translation Studies and are supported by the integrated computer technologies associated with computational linguistics, computer engineering, software engineering and so forth. This fact brings to the mind a new concept, i.e trans-disciplinarity, which is seldomly mentioned in Translation Studies. This study therefore investigates " trans-disciplinarity" within Translation Studies by connecting it with technology integrated tools commonly used in the translation practice. From this point of view, the study questions whether these tools or computerized devices contribute to the transition process from inter-disciplinarity to trans-disciplinarity in Translation Studies.
Intercultural competence is one of the key aspects of a translator / interpreter competence as it contributes to better understanding of the source text and thus, its more ‘ideal’ conveying into the target language. The purpose of this research is to clarify the areas requiring improvement in the process of developing trainee translators’ intercultural competence in the context of Kazakhstani education. Questionnaires for instructors teaching Practical English course and translation courses were used to collect data about the most problematic aspects of to-be translators’ training and cultural awareness of students. The preliminary results of the research show the lack of cultural information at phonetic, intonation and grammar levels, which supposes developing of a special system of exercises and integrating two different pathways represented by theoretical courses such as lingua-cultural studies and practical courses like English for specific professional purposes
This case study considers how educational researchers and practitioners can work together to engage in participatory knowledge building, a process rooted in both empirical research and the lived practices and expertise of on-the-ground educators that produces knowledge relevant to both educational theory and practice. The method shared was used as part of a broader approach called research-practice partnerships (RPPs), a model of collaboration between researchers and practitioners that departs from and counters traditional assumptions of “research translation” that suppose a unidirectional relationship where researchers simply share findings with educators, administrators, and youth. Instead, research-practice partnerships are characterized by joint work, mutuality, and a focus on persistent problems of practice across stakeholder groups. Within research-practice partnerships, we propose participatory knowledge building as one method that indexes these values.
Rooting our case in the production of collaborative white papers addressing shared issues between researchers and practitioners, we first focus on practical techniques associated with participatory knowledge building, then discuss the outcomes of this approach for research- practice partnerships, and finally make recommendations for utilizing this approach. In discussing techniques to develop collective knowledge through participatory processes, we detail topic emergence and selection, leveraging community contexts as spaces for knowledge building, integrating basic research data, synthesizing and creating an initial draft of the paper, and engaging in community-based feedback and dissemination. We then detail the outcomes that such a process has for those engaged in research-practice partnerships, including development of shared language, fostering a collective knowledge-building orientation, surfacing practitioner expertise, implicit renegotiation of the focus of joint work, and catalyzing new educational experiments and shifts in practice. We close with lessons learned from our experience in this area and recommendations for others who are looking to engage in this practice. Broadly, the case highlights both the practicalities and affordances of using collaborative, participatory methods of knowledge production when the goal is first and foremost to improve educational practice.
Cultural intelligence is supposed to be influential to the development of intercultural competence as individuals with a higher cultural intelligence can more easily navigate and understand unfamiliar cultures and adjust their behaviors to perform effectively in culturally diverse situations (Earley & Ang, 2003; Earley & Mosakowski, 2004; Rosen et al., 2000). Development of intercultural competence for translators, in turn, is of significance value because in translation not only two languages but also two cultures invariably come into contact. In this sense, then, translation is a form of intercultural communication (House, 2015). To investigate the relationship between cultural intelligence and quality of translation of culture-bound texts, the current study was conducted over 88 Iranian postgraduate students of English translation at universities in Britain. The Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS), developed by Ang et al. (2007), was adopted to evaluate participants’ level of cultural intelligence. The article from The Observer featuring a significant number of British cultural references used in the studies by Olk (2003) and Elyildirim (2008) was also used to evaluate participants’ ability to translate culture-bound texts. The analysis of spearman rank order correlation (rho) revealed a significant positive relationship between cultural intelligence and quality of translation of culture-bound texts. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested incorporating cultural components of source language community into every translation course.
This paper focuses on the types of translation strategies used in rendering idiomatic expressions found in the epic poem ‘The Mountain Wreath’ into English. It seeks to explore their representation and frequency of usage, as well as the extent to which the choice of the strategy depends on cultural markedness of idiomatic units. The research is done based on the Baker’s translation model, which is for the purposes of the present study modified to include two additional strategies - apart from the standard ones, i.e. using an idiom of similar meaning and form, using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form, translation by paraphrase, and translation by omission, it also incorporates loan translation (calque) and single word matches. Upon conducting both qualitative and quantitative analysis it has been concluded that loan translation and single word matches/translation by omission were the most and the least common strategies, with the frequencies of 31.94% and 1.39%, respectively. Results also suggest that the application of translation strategies involving use of idioms appears to be mostly restricted to the items expressing universal as opposed to culture-specific concepts. On the basis of these findings the paper argues that cultural markedness of idiomatic expressions could be considered as one of the most important factors behind the choice of translation strategies.
DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n13p210
Every language is rooted in the culture of its speaking community which makes learning a foreign language especially challenging if the culture of the native language and the target language are too distant such as the case of English for Algerian learners. The present paper spotlights cultural difference between Arabic-speaking and English-speaking communities examining the impact of such cultural barriers on Arab EFL learners’ writing as written texts and the ways they are used vary according to cultural groups. For this purpose a case study of 16 EFL students from the University of Tlemcen (Algeria) was undertaken. Contrastive rhetoric was used to explain many problems identified in students’ English compositions. Relying on a qualitative data analysis, the results indicated that culturally bound differences related to some linguistic factors such as alphabet, letters, way of writing, word patterns and grammar, as well as some rhetorical and syntactic styles namely coordination, subordination and metaphorical styles were responsible for a large potential for errors and difficulties faced by Algerian EFL university students when producing written English. This paper closes with a set of pedagogical implications which encourage the use of contrastive rhetoric as a tool to understand cultural differences both in teacher education and writing instruction. Techniques and strategies are proposed to help reduce cultural barriers and build bridges between the writing patterns of the two languages in order to achieve successful communication between members of different societies in this era of globalization.
Culture is a very broad concept, referring to the sum of history, geography, local customs, traditional customs, lifestyles, literature and art, code of conduct, way of thinking and values etc of a country or nation, and also spiritual wealth that human beings accumulate during creation of material wealth. While learning the second languages, people shall understand and master cultures and customs, traditional customs, cultural background and living habits of English-speaking countries, in order to have better English reading. This paper analyzes barriers of different cultural elements in reading and notes of reading from perspectives of the important role of reading in English learning, the relationship between reading and cultural elements and the role of cultural background knowledge in reading comprehension etc, and provides ideas for further English learning and raising English reading proficiency.
In this article, we introduce the cultural lens approach (CLA), a novel approach to evaluating the extent to which a psychological theory applies across cultural groups. The CLA requires scholars to apply their accumulated knowledge about cultural influences and differences (e.g., independent and interdependent self-construals; Markus & Kitayama, 1991) to the ways in which theoretical propositions are interpreted and operationalized. First we highlight three limitations in existing approaches to cultural validity and the ways in which the CLA addresses these limitations. Next, we articulate the five steps involved in the CLA and apply it to three different theories from social, vocational, and positive psychology to demonstrate its broad utility. In all cases, we highlight how applying the CLA can generate multiple novel testable hypotheses to stimulate future research and to advance knowledge that is culturally sensitive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
Translation as Culture Transfer: Evidence from African Creative Writing — Due to the impact of African oral tradition the language of African creative writing in European languages (French and English) poses specific translation problems. We wish to illustrate the various processes and techniques used to cope with these translation problems. The different translation techniques discussed will throw some light on well-known concepts in translation theory such as Newmark's semantic vs communicative translation, House's overt vs covert translation, Diller and Kornelius' primary vs secondary translation and Berman's "traduction ethnocentrique" vs "traduction hypertextuelle." Translation as culture transfer, particularly regarding non-related language cultures, has been discussed by translation theorists such as Mounin, Nida, Lefevere, and Snell-Hornby. Translating African creative works is a double "transposition" process: (1) primary level of translation i.e., the expression of African thought in a European language by an African writer; (2) the "transfer" of African thought from one European language to another by the translator. The primary level of translation results in an African variety of European languages, and the translator's task is to deal with the unique problems posed by this so-called non-standard language. This paper is focussed on the various translation techniques used by translators of African works. These translators show a clear preference for semantic, overt and "literal" translation, in which, in Nida's terms, formal equivalence is given priority over dynamic equivalence. Such an approach is judged by the translators to be the most reliable for an effective representation of African sociocultural and sociolinguistic reality in European languages.
This paper discusses the main challenges that face literary translation and literary translators. These challenges have been divided into three main categories: Linguistic, cultural, and human. The first type of challenges comes from the nature of the discipline itself since it involves the difficult task of dealing with phonological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, stylistic and pragmatic issues occurring in literary texts whose language is additionally characterized by its linguistic deviation from the norm, especially in its use of figurative language. The second source of challenges stems from the fact that literary translation is primarily concerned with translating culture-bound expressions and concepts which pose one of the most difficult tasks for translators when trying to render them into a foreign language. The third type of challenges is related to the barriers facing literary translation including lack of government funding, poor literary translator training, language and cultural hegemony, cultural insularity and indifference towards translated literature. The discussion focuses on the situation of literary translation in the Arab world and in the English-speaking world with some illustrative examples and statistics..
This study investigates the phenomenon of information (in)sufficiency in the context of flood risks. Individuals’ perception of how much risk information they need is a major trigger and driver of information-seeking behavior, and therefore it is an important part of creating effective preventive risk-communication campaigns. To understand factors that contribute to individuals’ sense of information (in)sufficiency, the roles played by prior experiences of floods and general risk sensitivity were analyzed using survey data from residents in flood-risk zones. The findings highlight that every third respondent reported a state of information sufficiency. Residents with prior experience evaluate their information sufficiency level based on their perception of consequences of future floods. But it is general risk sensitivity that best explains need for more information.
Translation Studies is still a discipline in the making. Having undergone several transitions and transformations since the last decades of the twentieth century, the field is ever receptive to newer enquiries and experimentations. The present article attempts to explore several emerging trends and approaches in the field to suggest the possibility of identifying Translation Studies as an enabling space for interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences. Increasingly, research in the social sciences and humanities programs worldwide is waking to the fact that it is impossible to work in isolation while protecting strict disciplinarian boundaries. The paper identifies Translation Studies as an inclusive space that can harbour research interests across disciplines. However, to enable such a possibility there are some basic reconfigurations that are necessary for understanding and defining the scope of Translation Studies as a discipline in particular and translation as a concept in general. The present paper attempts to lay the field for similar investigations for interdisciplinary research.
Cultural translation is a holistic process. The analysis of this process demands a critique that is similarly holistic which proposes that a translation can be examined from the perspectives of translators, documents, and readers. The present study purposes to demonstrate that this three-part critique is crucially interrelated in the English translation of Madurese cultural texts. To do this, in-depth interviews, document analysis, and questionnaire distribution were applied. The results reveal the translators’ competence of translation processes in practice and the readers’ responses regarding work of translation play a significant role in the performance of the translation task of Madurese cultural texts.
The topic of this contribution is the relationship between hermeneutics and translation practice. In the first theoretical part, some relevant central concepts dealing with the ontological valence of language and the ontological foundation in humans are introduced and discussed; in this part the concern is with the possibility and the meaning of translation between languages and cultures. Considerations by some important scholars and philosophers, linguists, and semioticians such as Augustine of Hippo, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Fritz Paepcke, and Umberto Eco are included in this section. The starting point is the antagonistic thinking which characterizes two main perspectives in translation studies; this antagonism has always characterized the history of translation and is now deeply anchored in European Translation Studies. Even if some theoretical answers to the ancient antagonism have been presented in the last years (e.g. Mary Snell-Hornby, Christiane Nord, Sergio Bolanos Cuellar), this contribution aims to criticize the theoretical exclusion of perspectives by proposing a comprehensive approach that takes into account both opposing but complementary viewpoints. As a key to good translation two main concepts are thus proposed: the idea of negotiation introduced by the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco and the concept of compromise as explained by the German initiator of philosophical hermeneutics Hans-Georg Gadamer. The theoretical reflections on language and human communication are then illustrated with reference to the practice of translation. The point is to show how the interweaving of theory and practice is particularly adequate for the task of translation, especially when the hermeneutic approach is employed in order to find the right translation solution. This work shows both the challenges translators face in their encounter with the foreign text and the practical and theoretical refinements that a hermeneutic reading of the translating process can bring, especially when it invites translators to take into account the thinking, the feeling and the action of the subjects involved in the translation process. This illustration is done with the help of text examples and by discussing the steps of a personal translating process as applied to some literary poems translated from German into Italian.
This paper examines the work of a sample of contemporary Arab prose poets whose poetic investments exceed the linguistic parameters of previous generations. Unlike the pioneers of the prose poem in Arabic in the early 1960s, the poets of this generation are not interested in interrogating Arabic poetic language or reimagining Arabic literary history. Instead, these poets embrace the Arabic literary tradition as an open multi-generic practice exercised in the space between multiple literary and linguistic traditions. This essay shows how their deliberate detachment from the Arabic poetic tradition, as well as from the inheritance of the early modernists, reveals a relationship with the Arabic language that differs from that of their predecessors. Their poetry is thus born translated: it is multilingual and exophonic in its motivations.
Acknowledging language as an integral element of a sociocultural community highlights some sensitive areas in the realm of translation studies. Since the translator acts as a mediator between two unique cultures, the efficiency of cross-cultural interaction appears to be largely dependent on the quality of such intermediacy. The present paper aims to examine this culturally determined specificity of translation activity and consider lingua-cultural competence as a cornerstone of translators’ performance. The authors also contemplate the opposition of ‘accuracy’ vs ‘readability’ as a stumbling block for translator’s activity, and draw up a model of the lingua-cultural competence of translators specialising in intercultural business communication. Inferences made in the study rely on the data obtained from a questionnaire distributed among tutors and lecturers employed in higher educational institutions and involved in specialised translation training. The data collected were analysed based on statistical analysis that helped identify the importance of each separate skill incorporated in the lingua-cultural competence for the training of student translators specialising in intercultural business communication. This evidence was further utilised to elaborate on a set of methodological guidelines capable of developing the lingua-cultural competence of student translators specialising in intercultural business communication.
This paper is a reflection upon the work of Latour and its influence upon accounting research, thirty years after the publication of Science in Action. After outlining the core features of the Sociology of Translation, we reflect upon the reasons we consider made the sociology of translation a productive methodology for understanding accounting practices. We place this analysis within the context of the development of an organizational and sociological understanding of accounting that was emerging during the 1980s. Three key themes in the accounting research that has drawn upon the sociology of translation are elaborated. We follow this with an extended account of the accounting literature that has mobilised Latour’s work. We conclude with several suggestions for where this work is still going and might go further, before a concluding summary.
A number of recent research tendencies in Translation Studies focus explicitly on the translator in some way, rather than on translations as texts. These trends might be grouped under the term “Translator Studies”. The article argues that this new focus is inadequately represented in Holmes’ classic map. Evidence of the recent trends is found especially in translation sociology, but also in translation history and in research into the translator’s decision-making processes. A broad outline of Translator Studies would cover sociology, culture and cognition, all looking at the translator’s agency, in different ways.
p>Translating across language and cultural barriers is one of the most complicated tasks translator might face. This is due to the fact that text produced in one language and culture contains information about persons, institutions, habits, customers and traditions which accessible to speakers of the source language text but not understood by the speakers of another language. This article shows procedures and strategies used to overcome such problem and difficulties in translating Arabic dialect expressions into English. A central issue of this discussion is to highlight Venuti;s translation strategies foreignization and domestication that have been used in translating dialecticll expressions and culture-specific elements into English, with special reference to Janet Watson”s translation of Sana’ani Arabic dialect. Relying on the distinction of the two key cultural strategies of Domestication and Foreignization, this study reveals the way in which Arabic culture-specific elements have been portrayed in foreign context. The paper considers the validity of those cultural translation strategies and discusses their applications in different occasions. According to the obtained results, both foreignization and domestication strategies have been used to overcome the language and cultural barriers in translation of Sana'ani Arabic into English. But foreignization has been used more as the most pervasive cultural strategy. </p
Culture-bound elements, such as proper names and food items, not only place the story of a book in a specific culture and period of time, but also imply certain values and create an ambience. These elements also have an effect on how the reader identifies with the story and characters. Thus, it is important to find the most appropriate strategy to translate such elements. This paper considers the Finnish translation (1949) of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (1908), a multi-layered and allusive children's book set in Edwardian England, and some other children's tales translated into Finnish around the same era. The translation of The Wind in the Willows dates back to a period of time when British culture was not yet well known in Finland. The paper argues that certain inconsistencies in the translation of culture-bound elements in the book make it difficult for target text readers to understand its layers of meaning and to identify with the characters. Similar inconsistencies in the translation of culture-bound elements are found in other Finnish translations of children's books from the same period. The findings may be explained by a limited knowledge of foreign cultures in post-war Finland.
Literary texts display many linguistic peculiarities, as well as social and cultural aspects of our lives and, thus, we can assert that literary translation is one of the main ways of communication across cultures. Translating literary texts, however, is not an easy task, since it certainly poses many problems for the translator. One of the problems a translator can face arises from the fact that some words or phrases denoting objects, facts, phenomena, etc… are so deeply rooted in their source culture (SC) and so specific (and perhaps exclusive or unique) to the culture that produced them that they have no equivalent in the target culture (TC), be it because they are unknown, or because they are not yet codified in the target language (TL). When discussing the problems of correspondence in translation, “differences between cultures may cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure” (Nida 130). Moreover, several theorists, such as Santoyo, García Yebra and Yifeng, amongst others, support untranslatability when we face texts with terms which are so culture-bound and culture-specific as to defy translation (cf. Fernández Guerra, “The issue” 41).
Translation raises ethical and epistemological dilemmas inherent in cross-cultural research. The process of communicating research participants' words in a different language and context may impose another conceptual scheme on their thoughts. This may reinforce the hegemonic terms that Development Studies should seek to challenge. The article explores the idea that a reflexive approach to translation can not only help to overcome the difficulties involved in cross-cultural research, but also be a tool with which to deconstruct hegemonic theory. It addresses the epistemological and political problems in translation, techniques of translation, and the impact of translation on the author's own research, which is used to illustrate some of the ways in which translation can support deconstruction and highlight the importance of building a framework for talking with rather than for research participants.
: This article is aimed at clarifying the concept of interdisciplinarity in Translation Studies (TS). It concentrates on three aspects of possible interdisciplinary TS research: cultural studies, psychological issues, and technological aspects (machine translation). Depending on the kind of information-processing devices which translators have, and the amount of intellectual abilities which a specific translation task requires, there will emerge a relatively realistic picture of what translational information-processing is like and which type of interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary research would secure efficient translator performance.
Résumé: Cet article se propose d'éclairer le concept d'interdisciplinarité en démêlant trois aspects différents de la recherche interdisciplinaire: les études culturelles, le domaine psychologique et des aspects technologiques (traduction automatique). En distinguant les différents procédés de traitement de l'information à la disposition des traducteurs, et le genre d'aptitudes intellectuelles requises par l'activité de la traduction, on arrive à mieux fixer la nature du traitement de l'information, ainsi que le type de recherche interdisciplinaire/ multidisciplinaire qui convient aux performances traductives.
: The aim of this paper is to pin down the mental factors which essentially account for efficient translation performance: first, context; second, culture; third, originality and automatization; fourth, speed; and fifth, processual components such as inferencing, schematizing, mapping, comparing, evaluat-ing, problem-solving, decision-making, intuiting and rule & strategy formation. The whole presentation amounts to a specification of information-processing factors that are instrumental in: 1. learning how to behave intelligently and creatively when one is confronted with a novel or a familiar intertextual transfer situation; 2. planning what operations have to be executed in a specific environmental situation; 3. executing them on the basis of a repertoire of knowledge and skills which shows that behavior-in-context is practically always the result of an organized functioning of both cognitive and noncognitive (associative) processes.
Résumé: L'objet de cet article est de decrire les facteurs mentaux qui rendent compte de performances traductrices efficaces: le contexte, la culture, l'originalité et l'automatisation, la vitesse, ainsi que des composants proceduraux comme l'interférence, la schématisation, la planification, la comparaison, l'évaluation, la solution de problimes, la decision, Vintuition, et la constitution de régies et de strategies. Une telle representation conduit a la specification des diffirents facteurs que le traitement de l'information met au service de (1) l'apprentissage d'attitudes intelligentes et inventives devant des situations, familiéres ou nouvel-les, de transfert intertextuel; (2) la prévision des opérations a exécuter dans une situation environnementale donnée; (3) l'exécution mime de ces opérations sur la base d'un repertoire compose de savoirs et de techniques; ce repertoire révéle en même temps que le comportement contextualise est presque toujours le fruit de l'agencement de processus cognitifs et recognitifs (ou associatifs).
This paper is an attempt to testify with Chinese historical data that the cultural status of a language (or dialect) directly affects the translation flow, legal power of parallel texts, orientations of translators, selection of a TL temporal dialect, etc. It has been discovered that when the actual power of a language and its acknowledgement by translators contradict, the cultural positioning of translators seems more decisive. A distinction must be made between translators as a cultural collectivity and as individuals. Ideology may also interfere with language selection in translation.
TL choice is often influenced by the power of a temporal dialect and its users. Varying with the context, translation for the elites may involve selection of the classical dialect or highly literal and modernizing forms. A language becomes dominant when it is considered the vehicle for advanced technology and thought. Its interaction to translation is hence dynamic.
Cultural factors surface from the confrontation of cultural deposits in the process of translating from one language to another and make it impossible to recapture the relationship of the source text in the source culture. Generally speaking, four different models can be identified in translation practice: the Blocking Model, the Modulation Model, the Go‐ahead Model and the Integrating Model. Certain parameters work for the option of each of the four models. Cultural factors often take three linguistic forms, i.e. culture‐specific expressions, imagery confrontations and discourse patterns. Examples from Chinese‐English or English‐Chinese are included and discussed.
Cultural translation is a key conceptual tool for understanding the effects of cross-cultural mixtures and transnational flows. It is also a necessary term for grasping the cosmopolitan forms of agency and collectivity. In this paper I explore the strengths and limits of models of cultural translation that focus on the creativity produced at the point of the encounter with difference. By reflecting on the example of the invention of a new visual language by Indigenous artists in Australia I also consider the need to expand the concept of creativity. This expanded definition of creativity would need to confront the paradoxical force of the void. Hence, I contend that the theoretical debates on cosmopolitanism and cultural translation should also be tied with an investigation into the critical force of the void in creativity.