Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators

‘Translating across cultures’ and ‘cultural proficiency’ have become buzz words in translating and interpreting. Back in 1996, Mona Baker warned that many scholars had already begun to adopt a “‘cultural’ perspective ... a dangerously fashionable word that almost substitutes for rigour and coherence” (Baker 1996: 17). Anthropologists, who were the traditional custodians of the field complained that “Everyone is into culture now” (Kuper 1999: 2). Indeed, ‘culture’ became “top look-up” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2014. Its (over)use has led some anthropologists to seriously jettison the term (Agar 2006). As one anthropologist is reported to have stated, “studying culture today is like studying snow in the middle of an avalanche” (in Agar 2006: 2). In translation, the term took central stage with “the cultural turn in translation studies” (Snell-Hornby 1990:84; 2006: 50-60). The ‘cultural turn’ itself began life much earlier in the field of Cultural Studies, a discipline focussing on contemporary ideologies, politics and how the media manipulates thought. For this discipline, ‘cultural translation’ involves analyzing the dynamics of conflicting models of reality and how they effect or suffer change as a result of contact both at an individual level and at the level of communities. Translation Studies also began to interest itself in the effects or changes as a result of intervention on the text, as well summed up by translation theorist Susan Bassnett (2014: 25): “In the same way that the surgeon, operating on the heart, cannot neglect the body that surrounds it, so the translator treats the text in isolation from the culture at his or her peril.” For linguists this means that understanding the text in question, whether original (source) or translated (target) is not only a question of vocabulary and the grammar, but also a question of assessing the nature of the situation; accessing and understanding what is implied, what can be referred, in what way, by whom and so on. This is the focus of Translating Cultures. Interestingly, Bassnett is also equally a Comparative Literatures scholar, and hence equally at home discussing cultural translation, which occurs in literature when novels are written by what Indian-born author Salman Rushdie called “translated men”. In this case the “translation” is to do with the intralingual usurping of the colonial language by a subject of colonialism for a post-colonial readership. Our focus here is on interlingual communicating of meanings across language and cultural divides. Hence translation is understood as Intercultural Communication, an often- used epithet, used for example in 2012 by the International Federation of Translators to promote International Translation Day. The simple question is, what is the “cultural” that affects communication in translation? The aim of this book then is to answer this question, and in so doing to put some rigour and coherence into this fashionable word. It explains what translators, interpreters and other mediators should know about the cultural factor and its importance in communication, translation and interpretation. As such, it aims to provide the context of culture marginalised or missing in books or courses focussing on either translation theory or translation practice, and to provide an understanding of translation theory and practice for those working in intercultural communication. Most importantly, in clarifying ‘culture’, it aims to raise awareness of its role in constructing, perceiving and translating reality. This book, then, should serve as a framework for interpreters and translators (both actual and potential) working between any language, and also for those working or living between cultures who wish to understand more about their intercultural successes and frustrations. The book is divided into three main parts: Part 1: Framing Culture: The Culture-Bound Mental Map of the World. Part 2: Shifting Frames: Translation and Mediation in Theory and Practice. Part 3: The Array of Frames: Communication Orientations. Framing Culture: The Culture Bound Mental Map of the World Part 1 outlines the complexity of translation, and how even simple technical language can easily create problems that Google Translate cannot cope with, given its limited analysis and understanding of context. Differences across languages, as will be seen, often have their roots in differences across a variety of contexts, ranging from those of the immediate situation to those involving culture. We begin by discussing how the concepts of context, community and culture have been approached. We then move to organising ‘culture’ and approaches to teaching it, into one unifying framework of Logical Levels, which will then form the backbone of the book itself. Throughout this book, culture is perceived as a system for making sense of experience. A basic presupposition is that this organization of experience is never an objective representation of ‘reality’. It is instead a simplified and distorted model that makes sense to one group of people but should not be expected to be universal. So, cultures act as frames within which external signs or ‘reality’ are interpreted. Logically then, we should not expect that the use of language to express these culture-bound models of reality may be directly translatable. How and in what ways those who interpret and translate should intervene on the text, and the subtly separated roles of the translator/interpreter and the cultural mediator are then discussed. Part 1 concludes with an in-depth analysis of how individuals perceive, catalogue and construct reality, and how this perception is communicated through language. The approach is interdisciplinary, taking ideas from anthropology, such as Gregory Bateson’s Logical Typing and metamessage theories; Bandler and Grinder’s Meta-Model theory; Sociolinguistics; Speech Act Theory; Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory, and Hallidayan Functional Grammar. Shifting frames: Translation and Mediation in Theory and Practice Part 2 begins with a discussion of the strategies a translator, interpreter or cultural mediator needs to adopt to account for culture-bound frames. It includes a brief overview of how culture has been associated with translation. Translation itself, following Nida (1976:65), is here viewed as “essentially an aspect of a larger domain, namely, that of communication”. Steiner (1975:47) in his aptly titled book After Babel takes an even wider view of translation: “inside or between languages, human communication equals translation”. Hence, translation is discussed within the wider context of communication. This stance entails making the basic differences in translation theory clear. Either translation is principally an activity of transferring or converting text from one language to another, or as we propose, a service with the aim of ensuring communication for people who do not have the necessary language skills. We focus on a number of procedures (such as chunking and use of the metamodel) designed to account for and mediate the context of culture and (re)frame the language for the new listener or reader. In all cases, practical examples of translations with commentary are provided. The Array of Frames Part 3 provides an outline of the major influences cultural orientations can have on communication. It begins with an explanation and taxonomy of cultural orientations. The main thrust concerns the communication orientation, and Edward Hall’s theory of contexting. This theory discusses the changing importance of implicit and explicit communication between cultures in the transmission of a message. Communication itself is divided into transactional (the transmission of information) and interactional (relational). Cultural orientations are then discussed according to their relevance in either transactional or interactional communication. As a result, commonly understood pragmatic features of languages, such as lexical density, clarity, (in)directness and politeness are linked to culture. Examples are given, and mediation procedures are discussed. Generally, indicators are given as to likely linguacultural orientations, as well as the pan-cultural situational factors. Emphasis is placed on the variety of factors that may affect communication style or response and the motivations that logically may give rise to those behaviours. Paralinguistic and non-verbal features of languacultures are touched on, and again are linked to cultural orientations. Apart from our own input, regarding our own spheres of experience, the main sources in the literature come from interculturalists, such as Hofestede, Lewis and Trompenaars, who provide a mixture of qualitative and quantitative information regarding cultural motivations and communication. Practical examples are also taken both from the press and from translations.