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ISSN 1799-2591Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp. 1050-1058, June 2013© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.doi:10.4304/tpls.3.6.1050-1058Globalization and Its Effect on the NovelsTranslated into Persian: A Postcolonial ApproachNiloufar FallahshahrakDepartment of English, East Azarbaijan Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University of Tabriz, IranBahloul SalmaniDepartment of English, East Azarbaijan Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University of Tabriz, IranAbstract—Translation can be considered as one of the ways which make different cultures closer to each other.Sometimes this affinity can make cultures to adopt some cultural elements. Cronin (2003) named thisphenomenon “globalization”. This becomes an important issue when it comes to dominant and dominatedcultures. This study was intended (1) to show how globalization can affect translations of Persian novels and (2)to show what strategies the translators use, in order to see if translation and globalization serve Englishlanguage and impose Western culture into dominated culture, or help dominated cultures to become globallyknown. “Domestication” and “foreignization” strategies introduced by Venuti (1995) have been considered asmain framework of this study. In order to analyze the effects of globalization, culture-specific items have beenchosen as the unit of the study. The corpus of the study was an American novel entitled, The New York Trilogy,written by Paul Auster and its Persian translation by Khojaste Keyhan and Shahrzad Lolachi. The analysisrevealed that although foreignization strategy is more common; whenever an element is against Iran’sreligious or traditional rules, domestication strategy was preferred.Index Terms—globalization, culture specific items, foreignization, domestication, postcolonial approachI. INTRODUCTIONTranslation plays a crucial role in globalizing the cultures in the world. Nowadays, people of the world share morecultural habits than before. Maybe someday everyone would have a homogeneous, globalized culture. However, rightnow everyone is living in societies where there are different cultures and the relationship between these cultures isasymmetrical. It seems a controversial situation living within the dominated and dominant cultures. According to Wang(2009) “if translations from dominated cultures construct an image of non-western cultures as inferior, creating a needand justification for western civilizing missions, translations from dominant cultures, much larger in quantity than thosefrom dominated cultures, serve the very purpose of intellectual colonization” (p. 202). Wang (2009) also mentioned that“during the past two decades, postcolonial studies of translation have redefined our understanding of translation,particularly its relation to power, ideology and empire building” (p. 203).As a result of globalization, English language is rapidly gaining strength. This can be seen in the direction and trafficof translation. Most, if not all of the translations are from English and not into it. This can be a reason for globalization.Thus, non-English societies import textual products made in English. However, they do not merely import texts, butcultures are imbedded within texts. In such situations, translators face a dilemma. S/he can either import the culturalelement into the target language and culture, i.e. use foreignization strategy (Venuti 1995) or s/he can change thecultural element as an act of resistance against the powerful language and culture, i.e. English. Venuti (1995) called thelatter domestication strategy. If globalization means a homogeneous culture, then foreignization serves this end. Most ofthe non-English and non-natives maybe know more about the western culture because of the huge range of the bookstranslated from it. This can lead to globalization. This can be a unilateral globalization if the globalization of cultures isa western one. Foreignization can be the consequence of this kind of globalization. This fact can fade or even lead to thedisappearance of the dominated cultures and even great losses in all non-English languages.Literature has a great influence on the culture, and translations of literary texts are usually the main reason of thecultural changes. The translations of the literary texts deliver new ideas and cultural elements to the nations. Somecultures, being dominated are more ready for cultural changes. The translators of these countries may usually areconsidered as foreignized translators while the translators of dominant cultures usually prefer naturalness and fluency intranslations. As an example, when Iranian translators translate the concepts like Halloween, Valentine, Christmas, etc.globalization can take place. So gradually the literature of the dominated cultures can get affected and so does theculture itself. As a result of globalization, English gets more powerful. Venuti (1992) says that English has become asource language. Most of the societies translate from English while English doesn‟t really want to translate from otherlanguages. The problem is that by doing this, English gains more power and so does the English culture and gets therole of a colonizer; in this case the other cultures can be considered as colonized. This fact gives two choices to thetranslator while translating: s/he can choose to use foreignization strategy or domestication strategy. The first one can© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES 1051lead to the entrance of the cultural elements to the target language and culture, which means English language andculture would impose itself to the target language and culture. On the other hand, the latter prevents from the entranceof the cultural elements of the source language to the target language.The present study is an attempt to investigate the cultural elements of the translated texts and to see that ifglobalization happens and if it does, to see what its effect is on the novels translated into Persian which would bestudied and analyzed in this research from a postcolonial approach to investigate if translation is serving to theexpansion of English language and culture or helps to dominated culture‟s expansion. For example when a Persiantranslator translated Valentine‟s Day and gave footnote for it, s/he may have had no idea that s/he is actually globalizingthe western culture. Results would help to the practicing translator to get more familiar with the strategies of translationand do more theoretical translations. The results would let trainers and trainees to translate considering the effects that atranslation can has on the culture of the target language in the first place and the faithfulness to the source language inthe second place.The purpose of this study is to see how important the role of the translators is, and that how they can play crucialroles in fading some cultural elements or how to make them more strong. The research was attempted to analyze someculture specific items of an English novel, The New York Trilogy, written by an American author, Paul Auster.Translations would help different cultures to get closer to each other and they also can give a better understanding ofdifferent cultures to everyone. Although during the process of translation some cultural elements may enter to theculture of target language. This study is expected to firstly analyze the cultural elements in the translation of novels andsecondly to see how globalization took place on the translations from a postcolonial approach.II. LITERATURE REVIEWA. What Is Culture?Goodenough (1964) has defined culture as consisting of “whatever one has to know or believes in order to operate ina manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept any one of themselves” (p. 167).Sahlins (1995) defined culture as a “set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of societyor a social group” (p. 3). In addition to art and literature, culture refers to concepts such as lifestyle, ways of livingtogether, value systems, traditions and beliefs.B. Culture-specific ItemsAccording to O‟Donoghue (2005), culture-specific terms are lexical and cognitive gaps. He pointed out that suchterms originate from different ways of life, traditions, beliefs, and historical developments. He also maintained thatthese terms “refer to objects and concepts related to for example ecological, material, social, religious, and politicalfeatures of a culture” (p. 10). As O‟Donoghue (2005) pointed out, culture-specific terms are terms that refer to objectsand concepts that relate to different aspects of culture and their culture-specificity depends on the languages involvedand cultural distance between the ST and TT readers. These terms are lexical and cognitive gaps and the changes ofcognitive meaning between culture-specific terms and their translations create interpretation problems for a TT reader(p. 11). He noted that “studies on culture-specific terms and their translations have shown that all translation proceduresof culture-specific terms seem to manifest some changes of meaning” (p. 13).Newmark (1988, p. 14, quoted in Terestyényi 2011) spoke of cultural words; he defined culture as the way of life andits manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression, therebyacknowledging that each language group has its own culturally specific features. He classified cultural words as follows:1) ecology: flora, fauna, hills, winds, plains; 2) material culture: food, clothes, houses and towns, transport; 3) socialculture: work and leisure; 4) organizations, customs, activities, procedures, concepts: political and administrative,religious, artistic; and 5) gestures and habits.C. GlobalizationSince twentieth century, some “changes” have globally influenced and touched the everyday life of people fromdifferent aspects, i.e. “economics, cultures and societies”. Cronin (2009) called these changes “globalization” (p. 126).According to him (2003, p. 77), the term globalization has “the sense of a critical theory of globalization thatencompasses global movements and exchanges of people, commodities, and ideas, and a politico-historical approach tochanges in global processes” (quoted in Ho 2005, p. 86). Cronin (2003) further distinguished between “instantaneoustime” and “mnemonic time”. Instantaneous time in translation refers to the time pressure that creates a situation “wherespace-time compression and time-to-market imperatives generate demands for an extremely rapid turnaround oftranslation job” (p. 71, quoted in Ho 2005, p. 87). Mnemonic time in translation, in contrast, is the time assigned totranslation tasks that bring existing yet inaccessible texts created in ancient times or in another language and culture tothe current society or the host culture that receive the texts form past or from after. Cronin (2003, p. 34) remarked that“within a context of multiple modernities it is more proper to talk not so much about translation and globalization asabout globalization as translation”. Rather, translation should be regarded as “a constituent, integral part” ofglobalization instead of “a by-product” of it. Cronin (2003, p. 34) stressed that globalization has facilitated theexplosive demand for translation rather than the demise of translation as an activity. According to Cronin (2009) on the© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
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