3

Cultural transposition

In this chapter, we complete the introduction to translation loss by looking at some implications of the crucial fact that translating involves not just two languages, but a transfer from one whole culture to another. General cultural differences are sometimes bigger obstacles to successful translation than linguistic differences. The chapter is based on comparison of certain features of the following ST and TT. (Contextual information. Printed together on a label, the texts were attached to a pair of Italian-made ladies' shoes bought in the United Kingdom.)

The TT is rich in translation loss! This loss is mostly lexical and grammatical. We will just look at four cases which are good examples of loss arising from differences in cultural expectations between ST public and TT public.

First, `Blackpool shoes'. An informal survey of British reactions suggests that the term `Blackpool shoes' strikes most people as comic. Doubtless the name was chosen to give the shoe a touch of foreign chic. It is easy to imagine a

26 CULTURAL TRANSPOSITION

British maker calling a style the `Sorrento' or the `Manhattan'. From the translation point of view, keeping `Blackpool' in the TT loses the consumerist cachet of the exotic. If this loss matters to the manufacturer, two alternatives suggest themselves. A different name could be adopted for the British market (`Sorrento'? `Capri'?), or the translator could drop all reference to a name and try to win respect for the shoes by some other means.

Dealing with names in translation is not usually a major issue, but, as the `Blackpool' example shows, it can sometimes require attention. If we pause for a moment to look at this question, it will prove a useful introduction to the cultural dimension of translation.

There are two main alternatives in dealing with names. The name can be taken over unchanged into the TT, or it can be adapted to conform to the phonic/ graphic conventions of the TL. Assuming that the name is an SL name, the first alternative introduces a foreign element into the TT. This loss will not usually matter. More serious is the sort of case where using the ST name introduces into the TT different associations from those in the ST. Brand names are a typical danger area. The `Blackpool' shoe is an example. So is San Pellegrino's `Dribly' lemonade: Italian sales may be enhanced by the footballing connotations, but the English connotations are completely inappropriate. Translating an Italian ST in which someone washed down a pot of Mukk yoghurt with a glass of Dribly, one would have to drop the brand names altogether, or perhaps invent English ones with more product-enhancing associations.

Simply using the ST name unchanged in the TT may in any case sometimes prove impracticable, if it actually creates problems of pronounceability, spelling or memorization. This is unlikely with `Michelangelo', but can easily happen with, say, Polish or Russian names. The second alternative in dealing with names, transliteration, to some extent solves these problems by using TL conventions for the phonic/graphic representation of an ST name. This is the standard way of coping with Russian and Chinese names in English texts. There is a good example in the text in Practical 2.2, where the first thing requiring a decision was what transliteration to use for the Russian name: ernóbyl', Cernóbil, Chernobyl', or the accepted British version, Chernobyl? When the disaster happened, of course, few in the West had heard of Chernobyl, and the first Western correspondents had to devise their own transcriptions. However, once a TL consensus had emerged, there was little choice: in translating from Russian, Italian or any

other language, translators will generally have felt constrained to use the established TL convention. This is normal practice; the translator simply has to be aware that standard transliteration varies from language to language and is common in the translation of place names: compare Venezia/Venice/ Venise/ Venedig, Salzburg/Salisburgo/Salzbourg, etc.

Some names do not need transliteration at all, but have standard TL equivalents. Compare Italian `S.Giovanni', French `Saint Jean' and German `St. [= Sankt] Johannes'; or Flemish `Luik', French `Liège', German `Lüttich' and