The Notion of Culture in Translation Studies - Assignment Example

The notion of culture in Translation Studies Introduction The relationship between language and culture cannot be denied. In fact language is part ofa nation’s culture; for this reason any attempt to develop or change the characteristics of the official language should be appropriately designed in advance in order to avoid any potential turbulence within the society. In many countries around the world significant changes have been made through the years regarding the various aspects of the language used. In literature, the role of culture in the development of language has been extensively examined. It has been proved that culture can directly affect the various forms and aspects of language including translation. However, because the relationship between culture and translation is not quite clear, appropriate theories were necessary in order to prove its existence and mainly its development. Current study refers specifically to the relationship between the culture and the language. The importance of culture for the translation studies is proved in practice through a series of examples of translation from English to Chinese (and vice versa). It is proved that culture has a primary role in the development of language patterns and forms in modern society. On the other hand, it is proved that culture can be sometimes a constraint towards the development of language; however, all these facts are appropriately analyzed and explained in order to identify the reasons for the possible negative impact of culture of language as well as the potential chances for language through the development of a country’s cultural framework. A series of theories are going to be employed in current study in order to prove the relationship between culture and language; the polysystem of Even-Zohar, the norms theory of Toury and the dynamic equivalence of Nida are certain of these theories that will be used in this study in order to support the existence of a relationship between culture and language proving at the same time that culture can have a multi-dimensional role within society; it is not limited in traditional roles like the formulation of specific social aspects (e.g. views of society on the development of arts); it is rather expanded to numerous social and political activities influencing most aspects of modern life. Study It is widely accepted that culture has a significant role in the development of language. In fact, the above view has been supported by most modern theorists. However, the relevant issue is in fact older. The relationship between culture and language has been diagnosed as existed in ancient Rome. Another issue is the fact that through the years the relationship between the language and the culture has been differentiated; translation efforts made be scientists have focused on the identification of the role of culture to the development of specific language characteristics, not as a science at its whole. In other words, despite the fact that culture can have an impact on all aspects of language specific aspects of language, like the translation, have not been related closely with culture probably because they are considered as being depended rather on grammatical rules and principles. The first definition is presented by Catford (1965: 20). He states that translation is the replacement of textual material in one language by equivalent textual material in another language. In this definition, the most important thing is equivalent textual material. Yet, it is still vague in terms of the type of equivalence. Culture is not taken into account. According to Snell-Hornby (1988:40), the connection between language and culture was first formally formulated by Wilhelm Von Humboldt. For this German philosopher, language was something dynamic: it was an activity (energia) rather than a static inventory of items as the product of activity (ergon). At the same time language is an expression of culture and individuality of the speakers, who perceive the world through language. The contemporary approach sees language as an integral part of culture. According to Snell-Hornby(1988: 39), the exclusion of cultural aspect from the discussion of translation theory is due to the view of the traditional approach in linguistics which draws a sharp dividing-line between language and "extralinguistic reality" (culture, situation, etc.). (ibid) Susan Bassnett (2002:22) describes the relations between language and culture as：”Language ,then, is the heart within the body of culture, and it is the interaction between the two that results in the continuation of life-energy. In the same way that the surgeon, operating on the heart, cannot neglect the body that surrounds it, so the translator treats the text in isolation from the culture at his peril.” Hence the notion of culture is essential to considering the implications for translation, the two notions of culture and language appear to be inseparable. For example, regarding social relationships, in the past most Chinese families of generations (three to four) used to live with their extended families under one roof. For this reason, there are different words in Chinese language to refer to each relation. There are words to address a wifes mother or father, a wifes sister or brother, a husbands sister or brother, a mothers sister or brother, and so on. This lifestyle of extended family living together is unheard of in western countries; therefore, the English language lacks the corresponding terms. Customs and tradition are part of a culture. Beliefs and feelings change from culture to culture. For instance, in France, the exchange of kisses is part of the greetings. In feudal China, a distance had to be kept between a male and a female. According to Confucian rules of etiquette, man and woman should not touch each other when giving and receiving something. These major components of culture present major hurdles in translating a text. The comprehensibility and acceptability of a cross-cultural translation will be based on a thorough understanding of the culture the translators are working with. The target text is appreciated in terms of the readers interest in the informational content and the explicitness with which it is expressed. As an old English saying says: “Beauty is in the eyes of beholders.” The response of the receptor can never be identical because of various cultural and historical settings. In 1964, Nida discussed the problems of correspondence in translation, conferred equal importance to both linguistic and cultural differences between the SL and the TL and concluded that differences between cultures may cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure. It is further explained that parallels in culture often provide a common understanding despite significant formal shifts in the translation. Culture includes history, social structure, religion, traditional customs and everyday usage. This is difficult to comprehend completely. That culture consist of cultural words, proverbs and idiomatic expressions, whose use are intrinsically and uniquely bound to the culture originated. Especially in relation to a target language, one important question is whether the translation will have any readership at all, as the specific reality being portrayed is not quite familiar to the reader. In Nida (1964)s concept of dynamic equivalence, the celebrated example is taken from the Bible, that is the translation of "Lamb of God" into the Eskimo language. Here "lamb" symbolizes innocence, especially in the context of sacrifice. As a matter of fact, Eskimo culture does not know "lamb". Thus, the word does not symbolize anything. Instead of "Lamb of God", he prefers "Seal of God" to transfer the message. Here he considers cultural aspects. According to him cultural implications for translation are thus of significant importance as well as lexical concerns. Regarding translation of cultural elements he paid more attention to dynamic equivalence which tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture without insisting that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context. As the content addresses all walks of life and culture plays an important role in human life, culture, therefore, should be considered. It is aimed that the meaning can be extracted and passed on without any damage to content and coherence. In practice, however, the possibility depends on the purpose and how deep the source text is embedded in the culture. The more source-text-oriented a translation is, the more difficult it is to do. Similarly, the deeper a text is embedded in its culture, the more difficult it is to work on. In the mid 1980s Vermeer introduced skopos theory which focuses above all on the purpose of translation, and determined the translation method and strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally adequate result. Accordingly cultural elements will be translated according to the purpose of the translation, keeping the local color of SL depends on the purpose of translation. The translation theories and practice passes through a path: The source text (includes original cultural connotation) the translator  structured text by translator (to contain which is comprehended by the translator in terms of cultural connotation) the translator’s transmits (cultural connotation which can be transmitted by the translator) the reader’s acceptability (connotation which can be understood by the reader). In other words a translation and the cultural translation aims at the reader. André Lefevere (1992a) regards a translation as a rewriting of the source text. In comparison with the traditional approach of “source-text oriented" translation, he adopts this “target-text oriented” approach. The prime aim of “target-text oriented” approach is to achieve the comprehensibility of readers. He analyses the factors of power, ideology, institution and manipulation to govern the acceptability of the translation. Is it our task to focus primarily on the source culture or the target culture? The answer is not clear-cut. Nevertheless, the dominant criterion is the communicative function of the target text, a balanced rendition in the target language. Peter Newmark suggests a communicative translation, ……. In brief, theoretically the degree of probability for perfect translation depends on how far the source language text (SLT) is embedded in its culture and the greater the distance between the culture between SLT and target language text (TLT), the higher is the degree of impossibility. Since Socrates created debates as a thought-provoking way, the western people are accustomed to logical and abstract thinking. While the Chinese stress thinking in images. This could be demonstrated via the difference between the Chinese and English language. Chinese language is a form of ideogram while English is made up of alphabetic scripts. On top of basic feature differences, other factors like history, religion, tradition, ideology and philosophy etc make a translation a rather challenging task. Lawrence Venuti (1992) mentioned the effective powers controlling translation like governments and other politically motivated institutions that may decide to censor or promote certain works, value system, a set of beliefs, or even an entire culture. He said that they effect cultural translation by their power. Venuti discussed invisibility hand in hand with two types of translating strategies: domestication and foreignization. He considered domestication as dominating Anglo-American (TL) translation culture. Just as the postcolonialists were alert to the cultural effects of the differential in power relation between colony and ex-colony, so Venuti bemoaned the phenomenon of domestication since it involves reduction of the foreign text to the target language cultural values. This entails translating in a transparent, fluent, invisible style in order to minimize the foreignness of the TT. Venuti believed that a translator should leave the reader in peace, as much as possible, and he should move the author toward him. Like the other cultural theorists, Venuti (1995) insisted that the scope of translation studies needs to be broadened to take the account of the value-driven nature of sociocultural framework. He used the term invisibility to describe the translator situation and activity in Anglo-American culture. He said that this invisibility is produced by: 1- The way the translators themselves tend to translate fluently into English, to produce an idiomatic and readable TT, thus creating illusion of transparency. 2- The way the translated texts are typically read in the target culture: “A translated text, whether prose or poetry or non-fiction, is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential meaning the foreign text_ the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation, but the original.” (Venuti, 1995) If a culture is more adaptive, it will be more open-up to other cultures and therefore it will encourage translation from other cultures. Generally speaking, weak cultures are more adaptive than strong cultures. They are adept at learning the elites of other cultures and view translation as a means to enrich and develop themselves. According to Venuti, in 1989, Italian publishers brought 33893 books, of which 8602 were translations (25.4 percent). (Venuti, 1995:13) Zohar contributed to developing a polysystemic theory of translation, i.e., designed to account for translation as a complex and dynamic activity governed by system relations rather than by a-priori fixed parameters of comparative language capabilities. This has subsequently led to studies on literary interference, eventually analyzed in terms of intercultural relations. It can be said that the first concept in cultural translation studies was cultural turn that in 1978 was presaged by the work on Polysystems and translation norms by Even-Zohar and in 1980 by Toury. They dismiss the linguistic kinds of theories of translation and refer to them as having moved from word to text as a unit but not beyond. They themselves go beyond language and focus on the interaction between translation and culture, on the way culture impacts and constraints translation and on the larger issues of context, history and convention. Therefore, the move from translation as a text to translation as culture and politics is what they call it a Cultural Turn in translation studies and became the ground for a metaphor adopted by Bassnett and Lefevere in 1990. In fact Cultural Turn is the metaphor adopted by Cultural Studies oriented translation theories to refer to the analysis of translation in its cultural, political, and ideological context. Conclusion (1,980 words) Read More