Translating culture: problems, strategies and practical realities

Abstract

Literary texts display many linguistic peculiarities, as well as social and cultural aspects of our lives and, thus, we can assert that literary translation is one of the main ways of communication across cultures. When cultural differences exist between the two languages, it is extremely difficult to achieve a successful transfer, and even the slightest variation from the source language cultural term can be taken as an act of subversion against the culture it represents. Literary translation itself can even be regarded as an act of subversion, or a means of providing an alternative or sub-version of reality. This paper shows the main translation procedures and strategies that can be employed in order to solve the problems involved in translating differences between cultures. It also presents the results obtained in a study based on the translation of 4 passages of literary texts that relied on cultural aspects. The study involved 96 students attending a course on English-Spanish translation, and a total of 40 cultural terms were selected so as to analyse the different translation strategies used by students when translating them.