Translation and culture - cultural elements in translation
by Lingo24, 15th October, 2007
As can be seen, the cultural component in any language must always be recognised and acknowledged before a successful localised translation can be made.
No language evolves in a vacuum and every language will contain within it, elements of its country’s unique cultural, political and social past, for instance; English contains components of French, Norse, Danish, German and Latin - traces of the races that settled here or conquered these shores. Similarly French will contain traces of phraseology dating back to its revolutionary upheavals, Spanish will contain traces of Moorish influence and Italian contains flowery idioms hailing back to its renaissance era. Over a period of time, these historical developments contribute to the formation of unique collocations within a language and it is these collocations that give a language its unique cultural makeup. Collocations are set piece linguistic constructs that purvey meaning and sense to other speakers of the same language and it is these collocations that provide a cultural differentiator between languages. Here are some examples of a collocation; an Englishman would use the term bread and butter or swings and roundabouts, rather than butter and bread or roundabouts and swings. Likewise the German phrase ‘ein stuck butterbrot’ denotes a piece of bread and butter, whereas a foreigner would probably opt for the incorrect ‘ein stuck der brot und butter’. Similarly, if one casts ones net much further afield, and looks at such languages such as Japanese, Chinese or even Arabic, cultural traits are even more deeply ingrained than European languages…often along religious lines. Take the Arabic ‘Insha Allah’ for instance; the phrase can be translated as ‘god willing’, but to native speakers it denotes a far more heartfelt inner sense of fatalism than would be apparent in the direct translation. There are, however, also other cultural traits common to many languages, an excellent example being within the Czech language. There is a ‘correct’ version of Czech used in news broadcasts and in newspapers, but there is a slightly different version used by people in everyday usage. This is the ‘Volk’ version. As can be seen, the cultural component in any language must always be recognised and acknowledged before a successful localised translation can be made. Translation, in any case, has often been said to be an art rather than a science, it takes a steady discipline to learn a language but it also requires a certain flair and free-form creativity to make a language sound as natural in its translated form as it did in its original form. A competent translator will have mastered the localisation of collocations and thus, make his work transcend any cultural mores.
© Lingo24
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