TRANSLATION AND MEANING: A CULTURAL- COGNITIVE ...

These interrelationships are most complex with literary texts, since
literature is part of a society with its culture and linguistic creativity. Each
culture develops its own sets of contextualization conventions and focuses
on a limited number of “likely inferences”. When one set of contextualized
conventions does not correspond to the new found reality, the result is the
so-called “culture shock”. This happens in translating culture-specific terms.
Traditions and beliefs are encoded in texts and are not immediately
understandable in translation. It is only when such coordinates are cleared
up that texts can be said to have meaning. This is not a semantic meaning,
but a culture-bound meaning, or meaning in the context of culture. Thus, the
translator has to be aware of all the pragmatic aspects of language use,
which are typically culture-specific, or are subject to wide variations in
different cultural systems. S/he needs solid background information about
the two cultures in contact, about the geographical area and about the social
and political conditions. These make up the backbone of the cognitive
environment of culture. Some of these features are sensitive not only to
variables dependent on ethnic culture, but also to variations in material
culture (food, clothes, housing) and organizational culture (organization,
customs, ideas, i.e. political, social, religious, artistic), to mention only two
of the types belonging to Newmark’s (1988) classification of the different
categories of culture-specific terms and expressions. Culture-bound
information is necessary for contextualization. The purpose of the text,
motivation, and the cultural, technical and linguistic level of readership are
among the contextual factors needed.
One of the greatest translation traps is the psycho-cultural distance
between the ST words and the TT approximately corresponding ones which
makes them represent different realities. For example, there is psychocultural
distance between bondiţă and waistcoat, prispă and verandah, tindă
and entrance lobby, mămăligă and corn mush, scăfiţă (de brânză) and bowl
(of cheese), câşlegi and carnival, rachiu and brandy, candelă and oil lamp,
chimir and belt, horă and dance, hudiţă and narrow street, capra and the
symbolic goat.
Thus, the translator does not engage in the exact translation of words,
but communicates the ideas in terms that are meaningful to the members of
the target audience. The notion of mediation is a useful way of looking at the
translators’ decisions regarding the transfer of intertextual reference (Katan,
2004:14).
However, sometimes words may not be completely meaningful due
to the lack of corresponding realities (culture-specific elements).