Translation and Culture

With years, Lefevere became more interested in questions behind the act of translation, like Why translate? Does the act of translating a text into your language imply that you feel your language/culture to be inadequate? Who translates and why? How can the reader tell that the translation is an adequate representation of the original? These questions led him on to issues of authority and power in the intercultural activity called translation. He saw it as a “channel opened, often not without a certain reluctance, through which foreign influences can penetrate the native culture, challenge it, and even contribute to subverting it” (2). The perceived difference in status between two cultures can, and does, affect translation strategy. Translators in the West have given respect to the Greek and Latin authors when they translated them because they thought that Greece and Rome had a far superior culture. But there was a certain flippancy when it came to translation of works from the Orient, which indicated the condescension in the attitude to the East and the colonies. The only time the west allowed certain liberties with Greek and Latin texts was when translation was part of a language learning exercise. Very often, the unequal relationship between languages/cultures resulted in a translation which was biased in favour of the dominant culture. This can be seen in translations from an Indian language into English where the translator feels obliged to make the reading smooth for the receptor, either by avoiding awkward usages or providing glosses.

As Lefevere points out, the “poetics” of the receptor culture affects the translations, as the translator tries to modify her/his work according to it. But the reverse can also happen whereby translators try to influence the poetics of the receptor culture through their translations. The German dramatist Schlegel, for instance, felt that the inordinate influence of the French dramatists on German drama should be lessened to a certain degree. He therefore translated Shakespeare into German in the hope of providing a different role model and an alternative approach to dramatics.

There are other ways in which translations affect the receptor culture. For one thing, translators can help enlarge the vocabulary of the receptor language. If the source text has a word that does not have an equivalent, s/he can “coin new expressions” as Cicero the famous Roman translator advised. Lefevere points out how countless translators have over the years enlarged their vocabulary as well as rhetorical devices. The activity of translating becomes a good ‘creative writing workshop' of sorts, because, it allows them to “make up a hundred little rules for themselves” (Lefevere quoting Gottschied: 46). It is also a good pedagogical device for the teaching of language. Translating from one language to the other helps in knowing and understanding a language better, or understanding another culture better. This had been an integral part of language teaching process even in schools, notes Lefevere.

The inequality between cultures tends to get emphasized in translations. If the source text is considered to be central to its culture, then its translations too will be scrutinised carefully. The Bible is a good example of this. Even a slight variation from the source text can be seen as an act of subversion against the culture it represents. Lefevere notes Sir Thomas More's allegation against Tyndale who translated the Bible into English, of having “changed in his translation the common known words to the intent to make a change in the faith” (70). Tyndale's crime was not just bad translation, but blasphemy. However, if the receptor culture perceives itself to be superior, then the attitude changes. The best example of this is Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, where he took liberties with the original. Lefevere notes: “It is in the treatment of texts that play a central role within a culture and in the way a central culture translates texts produced by cultures it considers peripheral, that the importance of such factors as ideology, poetics, and the Universe of Discourse [words, fashions, objects or concepts peculiar to a culture] is most obviously revealed” (70).