JoLIE 4/2011

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TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSPOSITION

 

 

Vera Savić

University of Kragujevac, Serbia

 

Ilijana Čutura

University of Kragujevac, Serbia

 

 

 

Abstract

 

The paper[1] studies to which extent and under which conditions a translator is able “to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work” (Benjamin 2008:82). In some cases, the intrinsic quality of the text (Xie 2006:207) cannot be preserved without transposition of linguistic and cultural patterns or ‘culture units’. The definition of cultural information enables the study of different translation procedures of  ‘cultural words’.

There are two hypotheses: 1. there are various modes of translating culture specific lexis; 2. there are different ideas behind using culture specific lexis in the source texts. The corpus of the research involves three literary pieces and their corresponding translations: A Guide to the Serbian Mentality by Momo Kapor, The Days of Consuls by Ivo Andrić and Ezra Pound’s poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. The methodology is interdisciplinary and includes contrastive analysis, text analysis, analysis of the lexical items and analysis of translation methods. The paper aims to study the translation methods applied by translators and their translation tendencies. Special attention is given to the translation of cultural words and untranslatable culture-specific lexica in the source texts, and to the translators’ recognition and treatment of the aims of using cultural references in the source texts, as pre-requisites of successful transposition of source text cultural concept.

 

Key words: Translation; Cultural information; Cultural words; Cultural concepts; Translation strategies.

 

 

References

 

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Andrić, I. (2003). The days of the consuls (C. Hawkesworth, Trans., in collaboration with B. Rakic). Belgrade: Dereta. (Original work published 1945)

 

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How to cite this articleSavić, V., & Čutura, I. (2011). Translation as cultural transpositionJournal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education – JoLIE, 4, 125150. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2011.4.10

 

 

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[1] The paper has been written within Project 178014, titled The dynamic structure of the Serbian language, financed by the Ministry of Science of the Republic of Serbia.