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 future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you’d never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)
“Unthinking people will often try to teach you how to do the things which you can do better than you can be taught to do them. If you are sure of all this, you can start to add to your value as a mother by learning the things that can be taught, for the best of our civilization and culture offers much that is of value, if you can take it without loss of what comes to you naturally.”
—D.W. Winnicott (20th century)
“One measure of a civilization, either of an age or of a single individual, is what that age or person really wishes to do. A man’s hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)