constructing pathways to translation - Higher Education Commission

100
assessing the segment of the Target Culture audience for which his translation is
intended.
IV. Substitution:
It is a procedure that is available to the translator in cases in which the two cultures
display a partial overlap, rather than a clear-cut presence vs absence of a particular
element of culture. This is a second way in which cultural gaps are relative.
Substitution is possible when the cultural element in question is background information,
and not the focus of the message. It is obligatory, or least unsatisfactory, when the
receiver cannot be expected to interpret Literal Translation properly, while the borrowed
term would be meaningless to him and the definition communicatively over-emphatic.
There is no firm criterion to judge the communicative situation in which translation takes
place, to warrant substitution. As a rule, the translator makes his decision for each case
separately.
Equally, no firm criterion exists to specify how similar the elements of two cultures must
be, in order to be substitutable for each other. The properties and functions which are
relevant to justify substitution, will depend on the context of the situation in which
communication takes place.
V. Lexical Creation:
Lexical creation takes a variety of forms – from lexical creation and word formation to
the semantic extension or specialization of words that are already present in the Target
Language. The most frequent form of Lexical Creativity involves new collocations –
often descriptively or semi definitionally, to new elements of culture. Lexical creation is
attempted by the translator when the communicative situation rules out a Definition or
Literal Translation, when Borrowing is socio linguistically discouraged, and Substitution
is not available for communicative reasons. The advantage that it offers is that the newly
created lexical item, or the combination, is culturally ‘empty’ ready to receive and
convey the intended context of the Source – Culture element.
VI. Omission:
It is necessitated not by the nature of the cultural element to be translated, but by the
nature of communicative situation in which such an element appears. All the previously