constructing pathways to translation - Higher Education Commission

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It follows from the above analysis that no uniform treatment of unmatched elements of
culture in translation is possible, which would be valid for all such elements and for all
communicative situations. No blanket decision is possible for a particular text type or an
individual text, either. Finally, no unique solution exists for a given cultural element that
could be utilized by the translator each time that it appears. Instead, the translator crosses
from among the possible procedures, by considering the nature of the cultural term to be
translated, and the nature of the communicative process in which it appears. He is guided
in his choice by a consideration of the status of that cultural element in the source
culture, and of the status of its linguistic expression in the source and the target language
and in the source and the target text.
For the translator, there is a hierarchy of options or an order of preference, with respect
to the above procedures. He knows that his first problem is not how to convey specific
cultural information, but whether to convey it. The dilemma does not arise when cultural
information is in the focus of communication, but only when it is incidental or back
ground cultural information in a piece of communication about something else. In the
latter case, the translator’s task is an impossible one; if he faithfully translates such
culture-specific but communicatively non- focus elements, he will give them undercommunicative
weight, and thus betray the original sender’s communicative intent. If he
masks them with substitutions or omissions, he will fail to reflect the fact that the
original communication was taking place in a different cultural setting, and that the
source text was an expression of a source culture. For this impossibility, there is no
satisfactory solution – there is only relativization and compromise.
The above exhaustive discussion can be summed up systematically in a diagrammatic
form in Table 2(Appendix A), which provides an overview of what Translation
Pedagogy in reality consists of, and how could it be worked out into a process, not only
to rationalize its feasibility but to justify it as an independent discipline in its own right.
In order to make sense of any piece of information presented in the Pedagogy, it has to
be integrated into some model of the world, whether real or fictional. Text presented
information can only make sense if it can be related to other information one already has.
A Text may confirm, contradict, modify or extend what one knows about the world, as
long as it relates to it in some way.