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Title: Doubts and Directions in Cultural Translation Studies: Challenging the

Tradition

Conference Paper · November 2013

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Amine Belmekki
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 Title: Doubts and Directions in Cultural Translation Studies:
Challenging the Tradition

Amine Belmekki

Abstract
Problems of translation in multilingual environments have attracted increasing attention in recent
years. It is argued that translating languages, whether in the multiculturalism of society or in the
plurilingualism of the individual, do not exist in a vacuum. Thus, within any translation, culture is
labeled. What interests me in this paper is not achieving only a specific defined ideal equivalence
relation between a source text ST and its translation, but, among other things, the question of
viewing information about translations and translation institutions as marginal facts subjugated to
explaining phenomena in translated texts, for exploring cultural processes, i.e., translators need to
be aware of the linguistic, extralinguistic and translational components to be borne in mind before
rendering a text into another language, such as reader oriented translations, culture-bound texts or
discussion of different solutions to a translation problem

Translation, viewed as one of the very intricate linguistic processes, is becoming, more and more,
a mass requirement, revealing a pivotal function for both monolingual and multilingual societies.
Its significance has been gradually conceived as subject of heated debates since it is regarded as a
fast developing industry. Several connotations have been associated with the translation task; this
may encompass, according to translators, the act of interpreting, decoding, paraphrasing,
descriptive and functional equivalent between the source and the target language. In this sense, it
is widely believed that this activity is often seen as a difficult and multifaceted process as there is
no clear cut definition.
In addition to this, two notions have been closely linked with this process, namely translation as
social and professional practices. The former, generally, refers to the social activity undertaken
by social actors to perform a daily task; the latter, on the other hand, is rather used to speak about
those subject specialists possessing the underlying systems of knowledge as far as specific
competencies and skills for interpreting in interlingual and cross-cultural societies.
Theories of translation, traditionally speaking, stressed fundamentally on the linguistic
competence that enables the translators to obtain intralingual translation such as word-for-word
substitution; summarising; paraphrasing which known under the label of rewording, in addition to
the inter-semiotic interpretation that is closely related to gestures and images (BASSNETT, 1980).
Translators have conventionally dealt with only what is known as ‘written translation’. In this end,
three different processes have been undertaken. The first task is known as ‘intra-lingual
translation’ which refers to rewording, summarising as well as paraphrasing within the same
language. Moreover, the stress has been placed upon the ‘inter-lingual translation’ which has
required achieving linguistic competence of both source and target languages. Later on, another

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kind has been used to fit for the new requirement of the interpreting activity through the application
of what concieved as the ‘inter-semiotic translation’.
This new shift has been oriented towards obtaining a shared knowledge to attain a cross-cultural
understanding of the socio-cultural values of particular linguistic situation. This challenge has
emerged to confront the traditional objectives calling upon a new responsibility on the part of
translators as proposed by Freddie De Corte (cited in Tsi, 2003) that generalisations about
linguistic competence and specialized proficiency at a time of international interaction should take
among these other additional things the vital contextual circumstances into consideration such as
the political and the cultural aspects.
In this vein, BASSNETT, (1980:1) argues:
For globalization has its antithesis, as has been demonstrated by the world-wide renewal
of interest in cultural origins and in exploring questions of identity. Translation has a
crucial role to play in aiding understanding of an increasingly fragmentary world.
The notion of culture is essential to considering the implications for translation and, despite the
differences in opinion as to whether language is part of culture or not, the two notions of culture
and language appear to be inseparable.
In this respect, it is to be pointed out that translators have to bear in mind that languages of different
speech communities, represent different cultures and used to perform different social tasks. Thus,
it has become necessary, if not compulsory, to incorporate the cultural dimension and what entails
with the translation process so that to better facilitate readers, listeners and speakers to engage in
inter/multicultural communication. In this line of thought, NEWMARK, (1988) believes that each
environment has his own language structures and his own culture, thus, for successful translation,
translators should take into account several paradigms which systematically interplay with the act
of translation such as having a full knowledge as far as the writer and the readerships, being
knowledgeable about the norms, cultures and setting and traditions of both the source and the target
languages. This has been summarized in the following diagram:

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 Adopted from NEWMARK, (1988:4)
Translators, in this sense, have to display a kind of ionter or bilingual competence, but rather a
multilingual competence so that to process the top-down model of the original texts. In this vein,
Tosi (2003) highlights its significance to translation activity in the following words:
“Plurilingual competence has always enabled language users to translate and interpret texts,
and to introduce foreign words which, with frequent use, are adapted and integrated into
the receiving language”
In this field of enquiry, culture might be obtained from different sources. These are professional
culture, embedding culture and personal culture.

 The professional culture: this initiative is widely believed to be about general culture
related to translation competence as defined by Pacte (2000:10) as “the underlying
system of knowledge and skills needed to be able to translate.” Accordingly, this includes
the norms and the structures of the two languages.
 An embedding culture: is used to refer to the general knowledge and values about the
social environment that the translator is part of.
 Personal culture: this may include the personal motivation to know about the others’
culture.

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 Personal culture Professional culture

TYPES OF
CULTURES

Embbeding culture

Diagram 2: Types of culture used for effective translation.

Therefore, Long debate have been held over when to paraphrase, when to use the nearest local
equivalent, when to coin a new word by translating literally, and when to transcribe. All these
“untranslatable” cultural-bound words and phrases continued to fascinate translators and
translation theorists.
It is probably of no doubt to consider that there has never been a time when the community of
translators was unaware of cultural differences and their significance for translation. As commonly
agreed, translation theorists have been cognizant of the problems attendant upon cultural
knowledge and cultural differences at least since ancient Rome. That is, cultural knowledge and
cultural differences have been a major focus of translator training and translation theory ever since
they witness their existence.
The term ‘cultural translation’ was originally coined by anthropologists in the circle of Edward
Evans-Pritchard, to describe what happens in cultural encounters when each side tries to make
sense of the actions of the other. The concept of cultural translation has recently been taken up by
a group of literary scholars concerned with the translatability of texts. It may also be used to refer
to visual images (discussed by Hsia below) and to everyday life. It has often been suggested, from
August Schlegel through Franz Rosenzweig to Benvenuto Terracini, Octavio Paz and George
Steiner, that understanding itself is a kind of translation, turning other people’s concepts and
practices into their equivalents in our own ‘vocabulary’.
It can be said that the first concept in cultural translation studies was ‘Cultural Turn’ that was
presaged by the work on Polysystems and translation norms by Even-Zohar in 1978, and in 1980
by Toury. They dismiss the linguistic kinds of theories of translation and consider them as having
moved from word to text as a unit but not beyond. They themselves go beyond language and focus
on the interaction between translation and culture, on the way culture impacts and constraints
translation and on the larger issues of context, history and convention. Therefore, the move from
translation as a text to translation as culture and politics is what they call it a Cultural Turn in
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translation studies and became the ground for a metaphor adopted by Bassnett and Lefevere in
1990. In fact Cultural Turn is the metaphor adopted by Cultural Studies oriented translation
theories to refer to the analysis of translation in its cultural, political, and ideological context.
In attempt to reconcile fidelity to originality with an acceptable intelligibility to the readership,
translation is believed nowadays to imply some kind of ‘negotiation’, a concept which has, in fact,
expanded its domain in the last generation, moving beyond the worlds of trade and diplomacy to
refer to the exchange of ideas and the consequent modification of meanings. The moral is that a
given translation should be regarded less as a definitive solution to a problem than as a messy
compromise, involving losses or renunciations and keeping the way open for renegotiation.
In this vein, even subject specialists are becoming increasingly conscious of both the linguistic
and the wider cultural problems involved in turning conversations with informants into their own
academic prose. Besides, the task of translating law or medicine in the sense of taking legal or
medical ideas across linguistic as well as sociocultural frontiers is even more difficult; how far the
researchers could go in adapting (or as was said at the time, ‘accommodating’) the Christian
message to the culture in which they were working.
These conflicts reveal the most vivid early modern examples of the difficulties of both interlingual
and intercultural translation. Some other views handle the idea of discussing cultural translation
by suggesting a double process; that of decontextualization and recontextualization _ first reaching
out to appropriate something alien and then domesticating it _. The relation between linguistic
translation and cultural translation has recently been the concern of a number of perceptive studies
focused on the movement of ideas such as liberty, individualism and democracy from the West to
China, Japan, West Africa and elsewhere. However, the greater the linguistic gap between
languages and cultures exists, the more clearly the difficulties of translation emerge. This, in fact,
led to identify two essential issues within a more general problem of at least facets. First, let us
raise the difficulty of grasping, understanding and gaining access to concepts and discursive
practices, including concepts and practices of translation, in languages and cultures other than our
own. Secondly, there is the fact that the cross-lingual and cross-cultural study of concepts and
discursive practices, involving concepts and practices of translation which systematically calls for
the use of translative operations. Differently put, one needs to translate in order to know and thus,
study translation.
Hence, with the notion of the globalization process, a new demand has been required, this makes
the available theories seem to be inappropriate to our present situation supported by BASSNETT
(1982: ix) that they:
‘no longer seem to fit the reality experienced by a new generation’. The aim …would be
to ‘encourage rather than resist the process of change’ by combining nuts-and-bolts
exposition of new ideas with clear and detailed explanation of related conceptual
developments

That’s why, turning much more attention to the cross-cultural study of concepts and practices of
translation, one may also meet with the additional paradox that this form of translation studies

136
have to prompt translation to investigate concepts and practices of translation. In this vein, Lydia
Liu (1995: 20) expresses it in the introduction to her Translingual Practice, a cross-cultural study
is itself a translingual act and as such ‘it enters, rather than sits above’ its object.
This awareness brings on a self-reflexive stance. In the absence of a fixed external point from
which to ascertain the adequacy of our renderings, we can only, pragmatically, try out certain
instruments and see what they allow us to see and to what extent they remain open to critical self-
examination.
To put it in a nutshell, if engaged in cross-cultural translation one should leave away the idea that
what we are aiming at is a full and accurate representation of foreign concepts of translation, that
the accuracy of this representation could be measured in a way that would allow us to compare
representations and choose the best one, and that once we have arrived at the correct representation
the matter can be closed. Such an assumption, would probably better help us accept the fact that
what we are about to do is rather the creation of vocabularies which will enable us to realize
particular achievements, such as mapping cross-cultural concepts of translation and, may be more
importantly, reexamining that prevailing vocabulary of the kind of translation studies that we have
been using as a means to carry out those mappings.
The fact to admit the almost impossibility of a full and accurate representation of foreign concepts,
i.e., the pragmatic recognition of the impossibility of total description, and substituting the chimera
of complete understanding with the critical inspection of the vocabularies one may employ to
conduct the cross-cultural hermeneutic exercise. Secondly, as a translingual act (Liu, ibid) the
cross-cultural study of translation obliges us to suggest in our own language terms that need to
cover the foreign terms, thus continually positing our terms implicitly or explicitly, tentatively or
not, as approximations of, as matching, as equivalent to, those foreign terms. Similarly put, and
following a sociolinguistic approach to language use based on the variant rules of use, six basic
questions may be raised at this level as well: Who translates? With what intentions? What? For
whom? In what manner? With what consequences?
Furthermore, and at another layer of analysis, other kind of questions Lydia Liu (1995: 1) poses in
her book when she asks: ‘In whose terms, for which linguistic constituency, and in the name of
what kinds of knowledge or intellectual authority does one perform acts of translation between
cultures?’
Such questions have been as well asked about the human sciences in general; they are, in fact,
questions which try to draw the conditions and circumstances under which knowledge is produced,
who that knowledge is directed at, and how this production and reproduction of knowledge affects
the structure, status and development of individual disciplines (Hopper 1995: 65-66).

137
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