Culture and Translation
May 16th, 2009
‘Personal,’ ‘collective’ and ‘expressive’ are the three most important categories of human activity being addressed by culture. ‘Personal’ signifies that individuals function and think as such; ‘collective’ means that individuals act in a social context; and ‘expressive,’ through which society expresses itself. Language, being a sole institution in which no other social body can function, underpins these three categories.
Translation involves the system of cultural encoding, recoding and decoding. Multicultural considerations then bear a rising degree as cultures gradually connect with other cultures. Translators don’t just deal with words written in a specific socio-political post, space or time, as it is the cultural aspect they’re taking into account. Transfer systems must consequently deal out attributes in relation to the target culture, thus, ensuring the credibility in readers.
Multiculturalism plays a significant role here as it affects almost all the people in the world. In addition, the advancement in technology caused cultures and nations to be united that resulted for outlines (cultural distinctions and boundaries) to rather recede.
Translators face alien cultures requiring its message to be expressed in an alien way as well. Culture conveys ‘culture-bound’ idiosyncrasies, including proverbs, idiomatic expressions and cultural works, whose use and derivation are exceptionally and intrinsically bound to that certain culture to be successful. And so, translators are asked to accomplish a cross-cultural translation that depends on their own comprehension of the culture concerned.
Concisely, the system of cultural encoding, recoding and decoding must focus not just on language transfer but also on the transposition of culture. Thus, as an unavoidable consequence, translators are required to be both bicultural and bilingual, though not necessarily multicultural.