Cultural Differences And Translation Methods

Language is the main and most important vehicle of communication between human beings. Translation, as a major means of communication among people speaking different languages, is not just a language transfer exercise; it is also a cultural transfer and involves the cultures of the two languages involved. As a bridge which helps two different cultures to connect and communicate with each other, translation is to some extent a creative activity. In order to obtain a satisfactory translation, the translator should compare the two languages and cultures, and adopt suitable methods, strategies and techniques of translation according to the similarities and differences between the cultures and languages.The Chinese culture and Western culture have different origins, and differ in such fields as history, geography, customs, politics, economy, religious beliefs, and others. For target readers lacking sufficient understanding of the cultural background of the source language, they will find it difficult to understand the meaning of the text. Without the comparison between the two cultures, translators will be unable to correctly understand and translate the text. Thus, translators must learn both languages and cultures in order to create better target texts.The book Slavery by Another Name:The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II takes slavery as its subject and it is based on plenty of original documents and oral material. The text is full of American cultural and historical characteristics. Therefore, it is very important to find out and deal with these cultural differences in the process of translation.During my translation of the excerpt from English into Chinese, based on the features of the source text, methods of addition, literal translation plus annotation, idiomatic translation, domestication, and foreignization were adopted to deal with the cultural differences. Addition was used for circumstances where literal translation of some words failed to convey the deep meanings to readers. For proper nouns involving important historical events, places, people and others, the strategy of literal translation plus annotation was adopted, and the annotation appears in the footnote. When it was difficult for the target readers to understand the literal translation. the method of idiomatic translation was used in order to make the meaning more accessible. Domestication was used when the target readers are not familiar to something like the Imperial System of units. Foreignization was used for culture-loaded words to introduce the unique western culture.