Content s introduction chapter methodical basis of translation theory

CONCLUSION FOR CHAPTER 3

In summary, since the concept of culture is essential to understanding the implications for literary 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". 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". 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"¹⁰. The process of transmitting cultural elements through literary translation is a complicated and vital task. Culture is a complex collection of experiences which condition 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.
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". 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 information¹¹.
In 1964, Nida lists 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 (Nida 1964a 53-5). 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 translating literary texts 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 nontechnical 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.
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".
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. 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'. 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". 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 all¹².
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. 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.