Translation and Culture-Specific Terms

This study is an attempt to investigate the translation of culture specific terms into the target language. There are some words called culture specific-terms which are rooted in the culture of any nation andcountry. As a consequence of the difference in culture, these terms in the source language have nolexical equivalents in the target language. Therefore, the translation of culture-specific terms from the source language to the target language becomes difficult for translators as the term to be translatedrefers to something that is absent or unknown in the target language. In other words, translatingcultural elements can be a demanding task due to the fact that such elements have specific meanings in the culture and language in which they arise but not necessarily in others. Here, the literaltranslation of these terms to the target language brings about an erroneous, strange, and ambiguousmeaning in the target language. Translation is not a mere change of words from the source language to the target language. In fact, translation is not a matter of words only; it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture. Consequently, some adjustments are required in order to transfer the source language element to the target language. In this study, three interchangeable strategies fortranslating culture-specific items are introduced and discussed.

کلیدواژه ها:

Culture ، Translation ، Culture-Specific Terms