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.