Translating Culture

Abstract

Culture is inextricably bound to translation. Transferring culture from a source text (ST) to a target text (TT) is a fundamental aspect of the phenomenon of translation. Translators are entrusted with the task of bridging cultural differences and enabling TT receptors to understand the original message in its entirety, just like its ST receptors. Taking into consideration the wide array of culture-specific terms present in each language, it only follows logically that, sometimes, these terms can be notoriously difficult to translate. However, many translation theorists purport that difficult though it is to handle culture-specific terms in translation, it is not entirely impossible. In that respect, they classify the culture-specific terms in various domains and propose numerous translation strategies for rendering culture-specific terms (e.g. borrowing, adaptation, explanation, generalization, reduction, etc.), their general tendency being either towards ‘domesticating’ or ‘foreignising’ the translated text as a whole.