Translation Toolkit

4. Cultural Issues in Translation

Laura Bohannan translated Hamlet for a group of West African tribal elders. She wanted to test whether the play conveys shared human values. She took into account different cultural constructs; for example, she omitted the ghost since the group she translated for do not believe in the post-death survival of the individual; she transposed the notion of scholar to witch-doctor, since book-learning was little known but traditional knowledge was held in high prestige; and, she had Laertes and Hamlet fight with machetes rather than swords. The groups of elders discussed the play after its performance; and they objected to it for several reasons:

As son, Hamlet had no business investigating his father's death as that was his uncle's job;

Ophelia's chastity, or lack of it, was irrelevant since the loss of bride price involved if she were Hamlet's mistress would have been compensated for by the social prestige and patronage opportunities that arose from her position;

Claudius was quite right to marry Gertrude in order to protect the family patrimony; and,

Hamlet's madness and Ophelia's drowning was caused by witchcraft, which can only be effected by male relatives. Laertes therefore had bewitched Ophelia for her body, and Claudius had bewitched Hamlet.

So despite Bohannan's best efforts, Hamlet was seen as a cultural exoticism that underwent only partially successful transplantation. More importantly for her work, its assumptions about the human condition cannot be held to be universal. All translation poses a challenge as it depends on the extent of shared assumptions between the source and target culture. Even when cultures are perceived as broadly similar (say Northern European or Anglophone) they have areas where overlap is partial; for example, in assumptions about what is eaten for breakfast, and when meals take place; or, in the referent of the names of everyday objects, such pants or stockings.

Translation is not just a movement between two languages but also between two cultures. Cultural transposition is present in all translation as degrees of free textual adaptation departing from maximally literal translation, and involves replacing items whose roots are in the SL culture with elements that are indigenous to the TL. The translator exercises a degree of choice in his or her use of indigenous features, and, as a consequence, successful translation may depend on the translator's command of cultural assumptions in each language in which he or she works. Decisions about translating names provide good examples of this.

Translating Names

In non-Roman scripts (Arabic, Russian, etc.) transliteration may be used either as a creative transliteration (often seen in people's names) or as a standard transliteration, each usually bringing the name into line with TL patterns of pronunciation and spelling; such as MOCKABU, becoming Moscow (Russian > English), our cultural equivalent. Other examples of cultural equivalents include:

Spanish Zaragoza but English Saragossa;

Luik, Liège, Liegi, and Lüttich in Flemish, French, Italian, and German;

Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, Aquisgrán in German, French, and Spanish;

The Channel, la Manche, el Canal de la Mancha, der [Ärmel]kanal in English, French, Spanish, and German

Saint Jean, St Johannes, San Juan, S. Giovanni in French, German, Spanish, and Italian;

the UN, UNO or ONU in English, French, and Spanish; and

the French homophones Dupont et Dupond become English Thomson & Thompson (French to English homophones).

The translator may find that a cultural transliteration rather than a cultural equivalent provides an optimal translation. For example, in a spy novel, a translator from Polish into English may have a handsome Russian people-smuggler use 'Varsovia' in speech thereby emphasizing his exoticism in both source and target culture, whilst the Polish heroine might use 'Warsaw' to signal her familiarity with the place in which the novel is set.

The same considerations apply to personal names. Consider culturally TL-biased solutions for the translation of the name 'Joe Bloggs' in one of your second languages. Given your choice of names, what are the implications if Joe is a supporter of Arsenal, and likes pie, mash, and mushy peas? Names may be translated with SL or TL bias. The decision depends on the degree to which the translator wishes to signal the exoticism of characters.

In fact, when a TT is viewed as a product, its SL-TL bias can be assessed on the following scale:

Exoticism

Exoticism is an extreme form of SL bias. It imports linguistic and cultural features into the TL from the SL, with minimal adaptation so the TT signals the source culture and its strangeness (for example, the literal TT of the stock Chinese conversation considered in Tool Box 1 put in link to relevant section): this in itself may be an attraction. This technique is often favoured in the translation of Chinese and Arabic poetry, or Icelandic sagas; some terms may need to be explained to the reader either exegetically, in a glossary or footnotes:

I went from Irak to Damascus with its green water-courses, in the day when I had troops of fine-bred horses and was the owner of coveted wealth and resources, free to divert myself, as I chose, and flown with the pride of him whose fullness overflows.

(ST: Arabic verse maqamat)

Cultural Transportation

Cultural transportation is the wholesale transplantation of the plot into a different setting, and extreme forms are more like adaptations. For example, Oscar Hammerstein's 1943 musical Carmen Jones (with a 1954 film adaptation by Oscar Preminger; for a review, see http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews2/carmenjones.html) is an American transplantation of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen (see http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/composer/bizet.html), which is a reworking of Prosper Mérimée's novel (1845-46), which Carlos Saura has also adapted as a flamenco dance film (1983). Another example is Edmond Rostand's play 1897 Cyrano de Bergerac, which was remade as the film Roxanne (1987) with Steve Martin and Darryl Hannah (http://www.fast-rewind.com; search for Roxanne), or the intralingual adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as the musical West Side Story (1961) by Leonard Berstein and Stephen Sondheim (see http://www.westsidestory.com). There are many other examples, whose success and relationship to their source culture you might like to consider.

Whilst cultural transplantation is a possible overall strategy to approaching translation, in most circumstances it is likely to be avoided. None the less, it can provide an excellent solution to particularly intractable cultural problems. Consider the following example; focus particularly on the emboldened sections:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.' The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?' 'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady, 'But it's turtles all the way down.'

(ST: Steven Hawking, A Brief History of Time)

Alice in Wonderland was once giving a lecture about astronomy. She said that the earth is a spherical planet which orbits around its centre the sun, and that the sun is a star which in turn orbits around the centre of the star system which we call the Galaxy. At the end the Queen looked at her angrily and disapprovingly. 'What you say is nonsense. The earth is just a giant playing card, so it's flat like all playing cards', she said, and turned triumphantly to the members of her retinue, who seemed clearly satisfied by her explanation. Alice smiled a superior smile, 'And what is this playing card supported on?', she asked with irony. The Queen did not seem put out, 'You are clever, very clever,' she replied, 'so let me tell you, young lady, that this playing card is supported on another, and the other on another other, and the other other on another other other...'. She stopped, out of breath, 'The Universe is nothing but a great big pack of cards', she shrieked.

(Back-translated from Greek TT of Hawking; from Baker 1992: 31-32).

The Greek translator has identified the institution of the lecture by a well-known scientist at which members of the public may ask questions as peculiarly British. He or she has therefore replaced these references with another famous British institution: Alice in Wonderland, and her argument with the Queen of Hearts. This is a very successful move, which highlights the cultural specificity of the situation Hawking describes, and allows for the argument between the two figures in the TT to take place convincingly in the ST. The ancient Babylonian legend about the nature of the universe is then replaced by a different image; however, both images introduce the idea of infinity. The Greek translator's choice of the house of cards, is - of course - doubly appropriate to the context of the example since it reinforces the Alice in Wonderland material. However, the house of cards image has the disadvantage of implying an instability which is absent from Hawking's absurd image of stacked turtles. See Mona Baker for further discussion.

Cultural Borrowing

Cultural Borrowing is the transferral of a culturally-alien ST expression into TT or its introduction in a minimally modified form. It is often used when it proves impossible to find suitable expression, such as an established borrowing, in the TL. Where a cultural borrowing is used, the term is usually taken over from the ST, adapted to TL spelling norms, and often italicized; importantly, its meaning must be clear from the context in which it is used or an exegetical explanation may be supplied. Note that successful cultural borrowings often become established:

guerrilla, bourgeois, raison d'être, joie de vivre, savoir-faire, matador, schnapps, totem, rodeo, bonanza, chiaroscuro, andante sostenuto, pizza, kindergarten

A recent example is Japanese manga, and as of 2004 (for the first time) even main stream book and record stores have manga sections: check it out using a search engine.

Communicative Translation

Communicative translation is often mandatory for culturally conventional formulae. This is particularly true where a literal ST expression is inappropriate; and it is the usual method for proverbs, idioms, and clichés. Where a communicative cultural equivalent exists, it is probably the optimal solution:

One swallow doesn't make a summer
French:	Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps
Spanish:	Una golondrina no hace verano.

The approach taken by a translator depends in part on the ST which he or she is translating, and his or her overall strategy, with regards to the sliding scale of SL-TL bias. In this ST, the children wake up on the first day of the school holidays to discover that is raining. To console them, their mother observes:

ST: Nem baj! Reggeli vendég nem maradandò.
TT1:	No problem! The morning guest never stays long.
TT2:	Never mind. Sun before seven, rain before eleven.
TT3:	Never mind! It'll soon stop raining.

TT1 is a literal translation. It has the advantage of conveying some exoticism but it is obscure and lacks conceptual precision. A translator might prefer TT1 because some idea in the proverb ties in with an important theme within the whole work; such as the length of stay of guests (literal or otherwise) or because it reinforces the characterization of the mother as a somewhat folksy individual, given to using proverbs. To make the literal rendering more acceptable the translator may preface the literal TT of the proverb with a phrase like, 'As the saying goes...' or 'You know what they say...'. None the less, the literal rendering is an example of calque.

Calque

Calque respects SL syntax, but has the disadvantage of often being unidiomatic in TL. Like successful cultural borrowing, calque can become widely accepted in the TL as fossilized calque. For example:

Flyweight	peso mosca	E > Sp/It
Weltanschauung	world-view	G > E
Kindergarten	jardin d'enfants jardín de infancia giardino d'infanzia	G> F, Sp, I
Angst in den Hosen	Ants in the pants	G > E
White House	la Casa Bianca	E > I

Where calque is unsuccessful it is extremely unidiomatic, and can cause unwanted humour (think about all those menus you may have seen in restaurants or instruction manuals). It is often interpreted as indicating the lack of TL expertise of the translator. The following example comes for an Avianca airlines brochure (the spelling was also in the TT):

Very sure you have read One Hundred Years of Solitude, that famus novel by the Colombian García Márquez, where girls fly and the deads keep up tied to the trees or stroll throgh the old mansions.
Well then, you already have an aproximate idea about this misterious country.

TT2 of the Hungarian proverb is a communicative translation.

ST: Nem baj! Reggeli vendég nem maradandò.
TT2:	Never mind. Sun before seven, rain before eleven.
TT3:	Never mind! It'll soon stop raining.

It effectively replaces the SL formulation with a suitable contextually appropriate proverb. However, some speakers of English find it unidiomatic because they are used to the formulation, 'Rain before seven, sun before eleven'. The discomfort such individuals feel at the unidiomatic nature of the proverb relates to collocation; that is, the plausibility of a given phrase in the TL, such as our preference for 'black and white' over 'white and black'; a concept explored in Section 5.

Communicative Paraphrase

TT3 of the Hungarian proverb is a succinct communicative paraphrase. It is idiomatic, and plausible but it loses stylistic flavour of the proverb (also see example of stock Chinese conversation in Section 2).

Translators can usefully view SL-TL bias as existing on a sliding scale of decision-making. The discussion of cultural issues here can be seen as one way in which the differences between (possible) texts can be measured. For ease of use, in this tool kit, textual variables such as cultural issues, and the other measurable features of texts will be presented as a series of filters that can be used to screen the ST for salient or significant features. The translator can then focus on minimizing loss in these areas.

My discussion of cultural issues also suggests the importance of accepting the lack of equivalence between languages. The lack of full equivalence, and the need for compensation can be explored more fully by examining the question of synonymy. Synonymy properly belongs to the level of textual variable that deals with meaning in texts: the semantic filter on the schema below. Other aspects of semantic variables will be discussed in the rest of the Tool Kit.

Schema of Textual Filters

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