Analyzing English Translation of Premchand’s Urdu Short Stories: A Cultural Perspective

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this research is to look at the idea of mistranslation in English translations of Premchand’s Urdu short stories. The source text is Urdu short stories penned by Premchand and the target text is its English translation. Translating the culture of source language is considered to be one of the most challenging tasks faced by translators. The translators confront several challenges to translate the source culture.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: The researchers use the model of Newmark in order to analyze the mistranslation from the cultural perspectives. It has always been a heated debate whether the cultural embedded ideas and concepts may be exactly translated into target language or not. Though the translators have been using various strategies in order to translate the culturally specific items both in form of material and expression, they are not fully successful in translating the cultural specific terms and concepts. These culture embedded concepts can be the religious beliefs or social dialogues that are only understandable for the source culture readers.
 Findings: The study concludes that mistranslation occurs because of many reasons such as translator’s immature knowledge of the two languages, translator’s intentional use of mistranslation, cultural barriers, language differences on lexical level and ideological differences.
 Implications/Originality/Value: The study also reveals that there are many problems in the translation of the cultural items both in material forms and expressions due to translators, incompetence intercultural pragmatics.