Translation, culture, and context
Translation is a kind of activity which
inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions. As this
statement implies, translators are permanently faced with the problem of how to
treat the cultural aspects implicit in a source text (ST) and of finding the
most appropriate technique of successfully conveying these aspects in the
target language (TL). These problems may vary in scope depending on the
cultural and linguistic gap between the two (or more) languages concerned.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in translation, whre
at every step decisions must be taken about when to provide explanation and
extra detail, and how far to dapart from the original. Even in the translation
of a relatively simple business etter for example, there will be valid reasons
not to use a literaltranslation but to mould
what is said in one language to the conventions of another.’Respected
Gentleman Smith’ may be the word-for-word translation of the Russian ‘Uvazhayemy
Gospodin Smith’, but ;Dear Mr Smith’ is more appropriate in the context.
The study of translation –now commonly referred to as translation
studies –has a far longer history than applied linguistics. Theories
and practices of translation have changed but at their heart is a recurring
dabate, gong back to classical times, aboout the degree to which a translator
should attempt to render exactly what is said, or intervene to make the new
text flow more smoothly, or achieve a similar effect aas the original.
Word-for-word translation is impossible if the aim is to make sense. This is
clear even when translating the most straightforward utterances between closely
related languages. Take for example, the French ‘Ca me pplit’.
Translated word for word into English it is ‘That me please’. At the very least,
this demands reordering to ‘ That please
me’ to become a possible English sentence. Yet, in most circumstances, a more
appropriate rendering would be ‘l like it’. The issue therefore is not whether
one should depart from the original but how much. Of necesseity,
translators and interpreters must make such judgements all the time.
These may seem to be linguistic rather than cultural
matters. Indeeed, they beg the question of the relationship between language
and culture, for translation, as conventionally defined, is between languages
not culture. Yet, as even a simple example will show, translation cannot be
conducted at a purely linguistic level but must incorporate cuktural and
contextual factors too. Take, for example, the translation of the English pronoun
‘you’ into a language which has a distinction between an informal second person
pronoun and a formal aone (tu versus vous in French for example).
In every instance a decision must be made about which to choose, and it cannot
be based upon linguistic equivalence alone.
In many case translation decisions can be a major factor
in cross-cultural understanding and international affairs. The difficulties of
translating news stories between Arabic and English provide many example.
Decisions have to be made about whether to gloss emotive words such as
‘martyrdomll which has quite diffent connotations from the Arabic ‘shahaada’,
or simuply to give up in difficult cases and import the original word, as in
the case of ‘jihad’ and ‘sharia’, thus assuming in the reader a relevant
background knowladge which they may not have. The importance of such decisions,
playing as they do a role in each community’s view of the other, cannot be
underestimated.
‘Traduttore traditore’-‘The translator is traitor.
This Italian adage provides its own illustration, for translated into English
it loses the almost exact echo of the two words. It illustrates, too, why
despite many attempts across the centuries, there can never be foolproof rules
for doing a translation or precies ways of measuring its success. In every translation something must be lost. One
cannot keep the sound and the word order and the exact nature of the phrase.
One cannot always make, in Hymes’ terms, the translation at once accurate, feasible, and appropriate.
Yet, translation is-in the (loosely ttranslated!) words of Geothe-‘impossible
but necessary’, essential both in world affairs and in individual lives. It is
work at the boundaries of possibility, and when subjected to scrutiny it
inevitably attracts criticism, like applied linguistics itself. There are
always judgements and compromises to be made, reflecting the translator’s
evaluations both of the original text and of the translation’s audience. This,
incideentally, is why machine translation by computer, though it may
provide a rough guide to what has been said, does not challenge the need for
human judgement.
Own language: rights and understanding
The inevitable losses of translation lie behind the
popular view that, if we are truly to understand someoone and the culture from
which they come, then it is necessary tha we understand their language. This
accounts for the widespread nation in literary and religious study that
something essential is lost if texts cannot be read in the original. To a
degree this view is motivated by some vague belief in ‘the spirit of the
lanuage’; more precisely it devires from a belief that importandt ideas and
traditions are pecific to a particular language.
The corollary of this view is that if someone is to
express themselves fully, they may need to do so in their own language. To
preserve their culture, they must also have the right to educate their children
in that language. These needs, which have been referred to as language
rights, have clear implications for languge planning. They are implicit in
a good deal of national and internatioanl regislation, eunsuring the
possibility of own language use both in formal transaction and schools. On the
other hand, there are many contexts where language rights are danied and linguistic
majorities impose upon minirities, often throught oppressive legislation. With
increasing frequncy such conditions contribute to languages dying out
completely. In extensively multilingual and multicultural societies there are
preasure groups seeking to preserve linguistic diversity and other seeking to
restict it. The ‘English Only’ movement in the USA in an example of the latter.
Thought the moral case for diversity seems self-evident, there are obvious
practical problems in institutionalizing the use of every language, however
small, in a community, and a valid practical need for at least one lingua
franca. There is also the danger that language preservation, persued in
certain ways, can leat to segregation and sectarianism. The task of the
language planner is to reconcile all of the interest and factors. Like that of
the translator, it is inevitably thankless and controversial.
Teaching culture
Althought relevant to every area of applied linguistic,
the study of cross cultural communication has often been related to ELT.
At firs
glance it seems sensible, when learning a language, also to study the culture
of the people who speak it. While learning icelandic-to return to the example
use in Chapter 3-one would expect to study the lifestyle of the Icelanders.
Thus. Teaching materials cuold reasonably include an element of ‘Icelandic
studies’ with decription of the treeless landscape, the historic links with
Denmark, the importance of the fishing industry, and so on. For students such
materials would be both necessary and motivating as they are unlikely to be
studying the Icelandic langaage if they are not also intersted in Icelandic
culture.
With
English however, and to a degree with other widely distributed languages such
as Spanish and France, the situation is rather more complicated. Firstly,
English is the language of many different culture and the conventions governing
its use very accordingly. Our earlier example of ‘How are you?’ illustrates the
point nicely. When used formulaically it functions differently in the USA.
Where it is a greeting on first introduction, and Britain, where it is a
greeting on subsequent meetings. And when it is ussed as an actual enquiry
about health for feelings it also elicits varying responses in differrent
English-speaking communities.
Such
variations, and the role of English as a global lingua franca, raise doubt
about the association in many EFL materials of the English language with
specifik cultural practices, usually those of the dominant mainstream culture
in either Britain or the USA. For some learnes, whose need is to use English
outside such communities or who do not wish to absorb either British or
American Culture, the issue is considerably more cmplex. The question arises as
to whether the cultural content of English as a lingua franca can be customized
according to learner needs, or whetherindeed the turn, raises the larger issue
of whether language and culture can be dissociated, and whather English can
become the vechile not only of specifik local cultural identities but of ‘word
culture’ as well. Can such a world culture culture be neutral or will it
inevitably carry with it the values and beliefs of the societies whose language
it has adopted?
These
are issues resonant with ideological overtones, and individuals must make up
there own minds about them. It is not for applied linguistic to do this for
them. However what applied linguistic can do is to affer informed insights so
that when decisions are made, as they necessarily must be in professional practice,
both the fact and various interpretations of them are as clearly formulated as
possible. The fraught area of intercultural communication is, in the modern
word, at the very heart of applied linguistic.
Behind
any applied linguistic discussion of culture is the difficult issue of the
relation between a language and a culture and the degrre to which one is
implicated in the other, in linguistic the linguistic relativity hypothesis,
which holds that language determines a unique way of seeing the word, has fallen
frpm favour under the influence of Chomky’s emphasis on language as a
biological rather than a social phonemenon. Yet, whatever the degree to which
the language which we speak can determine our ways of thinking, it is certainly
true that the linguistic choices we make within that language both
reflect our ideology and influence the opinions of our audience. The the ways
in which linguistic choices construct values and meaning is particularly
evident in the two areas of applied linguistic to which we turn our attention
in Chapter 7.
