Culture and Civilization
Cultural translation obviously implies the notion of culture, which needs here to be defined, in order to understand well the term cultural translation. Culture offers two different meanings: the first one defines culture as a civilized society in a developed country, whereas the second one considers culture as a whole of behaviors and ways of life that a people shares. As previously explained, culture gets an important role and meaning in translation. According to Katan, culture is a shared model of the world, a hierarchical model of beliefs, values and strategies which can guide action and interaction of people. Culture can be acquired through diverse ways, like education.
The term civilization is defined as a developed human society which managed to create its own culture through people. Through this concept, a translator is able to translate a text by solving the issue of a culture’s development. In this case, Newmark is convinced that translation is culturally valued, that is to say translation improves cultures’ development within the entire world. As civilization lead to the creation of evident ways of communication, such alphabet, dictionaries and to a tremendous development of languages and literatures, this process raised new questions in cultural translation.
Culture has a huge influence on society and politics of a country, in terms of ideology. According to some translation researchers such as Even-Zohar, Bassnett and Trivedi, culture is also linked to the will of power and to the way people pretend to this power. In this sense, translation deals with making systems of ideologies comprehensible for the readers. Translation of cultures is therefore linked to ethics and explains a new way of thinking. This kind of translation must show the context and the personal way of thinking through translated texts.
Read more about this topic: Cultural Translation
Famous quotes containing the words culture and, culture and/or civilization:
“The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.”
—Richard Rodriguez (b. 1944)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“It is a fundamental characteristic of civilization that man most profoundly mistrusts those living outside his own milieu, so that not only does the Teuton regard the Jew as an incomprehensible and inferior being, but the football player likewise so regards the piano player.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)