Translation and Culture THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

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C. Culture 1. Definition of Culture

The term culture addresses three salient categories of human activity: the personal, whereby we as individuals think and function as such; the collective, whereby we function in a social context; and the expressive, whereby society expresses itself. Language is the only social institution without which no other social institution can function; it therefore underpins the three pillars upon which culture is built. 17 Good enough defines culture in his book, “Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics”, as follows: A society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves. Culture, being what people have to learn as distinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the end product of learning: knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term. By this definition, we should note that culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behaviour, or emotions. It is rather an organization of these things. It is the forms of things that people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating, and otherwise interpreting them. As such, the things people say and do, their social arrangements and events, are products or by-products of their culture as they apply it to the task of perceiving and dealing with 17 Karamanian, ,A.P. http:www.accurapid.comjounal Accessed on June 22th 2012. 13 their circumstances. To one who knows their culture, these things and events are also signs signifying the cultural forms or models of which they are material presentations”. 18 Culture is everything one need to know, master and feel in order to judge where people’s behaviour conforms to or deviates from what is expected from them in their social roles, and in order to make one’s own behaviour conform to the expectations of the society concerned - unless one is prepared to take the consequences of deviant behaviour. 19 Newmark defines culture as the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expressions. 20

2. The Categories of Cultural Words.

Newmark categorize cultural words and offer some typical example: Ecology, Material Culture, Social Organization and Gesture and Habit 21

a. Ecology

Geographical features can be normally distinguished from other cultural terms in that they are usually value-free, politically and commercially. Nevertheless, their diffusion depends on the importance of their country of origin as well as their degree of specificity. Many countries have local words for plains -prairies, steppes, tundra, 18 W.H. Goodenough, Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology New York: Harper Crow, 1964. p. 36 19 Snell-Hornby, Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1995. p. 40 20 Peter Newmark, 1998, op.cit. p. 94 21 Ibid, p. 96 14 savannahs, llanos, campos, paramos, and ‘bush’- all with strong elements of local colour. All these words would normally be transferred, with the addition of a brief culture-free third term where necessary in the text. Nida has pointed out that certain ecological features -the seasons, rain, hills of various sizes cultural words: down, ‘moor’, kop, dune - where they are irregular or unknown may not be understood denotatively or figuratively, in translation. 22 However, here, television will soon be a worldwide clarifying force. Notoriously the species of flora and fauna are local and cultural, and are not translated unless they appear in the SL and TL environment ’red admiral’, Vulcan, Admiral

b. Material Culture

It is culture specific element that including food, clothes, and transportation etc. Food is for many the most sensitive and important expression of national culture; food terms are subject to the widest variety of translation procedures. Various settings: menus - straight, multilingual, glossed; cookbooks, food guides; tourist brochures; journalism increasingly contain foreign food terms. For English, other food terms are in a different category. Macaroni came over in 1600, spaghetti in 1880, ravioli and pizza are current; many other Italian and Greek terms may have to be explained. Food terms have normally been transferred, only the French making continuous efforts to naturalize them rosbif, choucroute. 22 Nida, in Newmark. Text Book of Translation Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1998. p. 97