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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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