Cultural transportation Cultural transportation
Chapter 3
Translation LANE 350
Lecturer: Abrar A. Mujaddidi
Basic principles
• Translation is not only the process of transferring one language to another, but also the transfer from one culture to another.
one culture to another.
• The term ‘cultural transportation’ is used for the main types and degrees of departure from literal
translation in the process of transferring the contents of ST from one culture to another.
cont.,
• Cultural transportation involves:
The choice of features indigenous to the TL and the
target culture in preference to features with their roots target culture in preference to features with their roots in the source culture.
The result is to reduce foreign (SL specific features) in the TT.
Also neutralize the TT features into the TL and its cultural setting.
cont.,
• The degrees of cultural transportation can be visualized as points along a scale between the
extremes of exoticism and cultural transportation.
extremes of exoticism and cultural transportation.
Source-culture bias target-culture bias
Exoticism cultural borrowing communicative translation cultural transportation
Exoticism
• When we say that a TT is marked by exoticism is a text that uses ST grammatical and cultural features with minimum adaptation.
with minimum adaptation.
• It constantly signals the exotic source culture and its cultural strangeness.
cont.,
• Examples for exotic translation:
Peace be upon you م ا And upon you be peace م ا و And upon you be peace م ا و
• In many cases, exoticism cannot be avoided.
Like what?
Calque
• A calque is an expression that consists of TL words and respects TL syntax, but is unidiomatic in the TL because it is structured on the structure of an SL
because it is structured on the structure of an SL expression.
ت ت ا what is passed has died
ا داز It increased the clay moistness
cont.,
• Translation loss caused by ‘exoticism’ and ‘calques’
can be reduced by some techniques of
‘compensation’.
‘compensation’.
‘You know the saying: A day for you, a day against you’
Cultural transplantation
• Cultural transplantation is the extreme opposite of exoticism.
• TTs that show cultural tranplantation can hardly be called as translations but adaptations.
• Refer to examples on pg. 32
Cultural Borrowing
• Cultural borrowing lies in between the two extreme sides of the scales.
• It introduces a foreign element to the text, but unlike exoticism, cultural borrowing does not involve
adaptation of the SL expression into TL forms.
• ‘transliteration’ is a form of cultural borrowing
▫ Futa instead of wrap.
cont.,
• There are many solutions to the idea of cultural borrowing:
▫ Adding a glossary at the end of the work.
▫ Adding a glossary at the end of the work.
▫ Insert an explanation or a partial explanation to the text.
• In some cases, cultural borrowing can become established expressions in the TL such as ‘sheikh’
and ‘imam’.
Communicative translation
• Communicative translation is normal in the case of culturally conventional expressions where literal translations would sound inappropriate.
translations would sound inappropriate.
▫ ا ع no smoking
▫ لا ع no entry
Transliterating names
• The cultural transposition issue is clearly shown in the topic of transliterating names.
• There are many sounds which are hard to transliterate such as عand ح
• How do transliterate them?
Thank u!
