Cultural Translation - Skepticism Towards Translation of Cultures

Skepticism Towards Translation of Cultures

Some anthropologists raise objections to translation of cultures. According to these researchers, culture seeks a certain coherence that can be found in people’s thinking and practices In this case, a cultural translator must have a much more widespread knowledge than the text actually provides.

Besides, translation of cultures cannot be as equal as it should be, as some cultures and societies remain dominant compared to others, therefore power is a limit to translation of cultures. Indeed, within a translation of cultures, the target language may dominate the source culture in order to make the text comprehensible in a sense of culture for the readers. The meaning of culture is quite difficult to understand, therefore translation of cultures is certainly limited, all the more so boarders exist between cultures, which must be thus distinguished. This limit of translation of cultures was also explained in the theory of Edward Sapir, an American linguist and anthropologist : “The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached”. “Each linguistic community has its own perception of the world, which differs from that of other linguistic communities, implies the existence of different worlds determined by language”.

Some linguists assume that untranslatability doesn’t only come from linguistic limits but also from cultural barriers within translation. According to some linguists, such as C.L. Wren, differences of point of view between peoples relatively impose narrow limits to cultural translatability. The theory of universal translatability is therefore disapproved by some researchers, like André Martinet, who is convinced that human experience cannot be well communicated because it is unique. Catford rationalised this theory in his book "Linguistic Theory of Translation" : "Cultural untranslatability arises when a situational feature, functionally relevant for the source language text, is completely absent from the culture of which the TL the translatability of texts: a historical overview is a part . For instance, the names of some institutions, clothes, foods and abstract concepts, amongst others."

Popovic also assumes that there is a difference between linguistic and cultural untranslatability, an idea that he defends in “A Dictionary for the Analysis of Literary Translation” : “A situation in which the linguistic elements of the original cannot be replaced adequately in structural, linear, functional or semantic terms in consequence of a lack of denotation or connotation”

Dominance of some cultures is consequently obvious within the World History, for instance during the time when colonialism represented a main ideology among many different countries. Indeed, some cultures were represented as pure and as the essence of the world’s functioning. One should say that translation of cultures may remind an inequality between cultures and peoples. Furthermore, translation of cultures provides other issues, such as conflicts between cultures and historical changes.