Short notes on Cultural Translation (Translation Studies -SEC-1) Eng. Hons

Cultural translation (5 marks)

Cultural translation is that the practice of translation while respecting and showing cultural differences. This kind of translation solves some issues linked to culture, like dialects, food or architecture. 

The main issue that cultural translation must solve consists in translating a text as showing cultural differences of this text, in respecting the source culture. 

Cultural translation is studied through social anthropology, a field of anthropology focused on cultural issues among humans. This discipline questions translation through cultural differences. Indeed, translation studies aren't only supported language issues, but also on cultural contexts between peoples. 

An anthropological translator of cultures must affect the problems between the source and therefore the target language, that is to say he must respect at the same time the cultural source of point of view and the target culture. Wilhelm von Humboldt shared this opinion of translation during a letter addressed to A.W.Schlegel, dated July 23, 1796: “All translation seems to me simply an effort to unravel an impossible task. Every translator is doomed to be wiped out by one among two stumbling blocks: he will either stay too near to the initial, at the cost of taste and the language of his nation, or he will adhere too closely to the characteristics peculiar to his nation, at the value of the initial. The medium between the 2 isn't only difficult, but downright impossible”.