Culture-specific items in the source and target literary texts: Classification of translation strategies

Abstract

The study deals with the representation of culture-specific items in Jojo Moyes' novels 'Me Before You', and 'After You' and their rendering in Ukrainian translations. The article specifies the role of culture-specific vocabulary as a means that adds necessary socio-cultural details to the setting making the above mentioned novels facts of the English-language (mainly British and American) culture. The research proves that numerous in number are the following groups of culture-specific items: toponyms; types of food, drinks and places to eat; anthroponyms naming famous people, film and fairy tale characters; companies, brands and organisations; mass media. Low in number are items designating education phenomena, persons’ titles and nominations, measurement, dwelling, sports, events, toys, and currency. The research also employs the notions of translation strategy and distinguishes between domesticating and foreignising ones used in order to render culture-specific lexis in a literary translation. Translation techniques of transference (direct borrowing, transcoding, transcoded substitution) and calque are viewed as components of foreignising strategies, whereas generalisation, descriptive periphrasis, cultural equivalent alone or accompanied by a footnote are viewed as implementation of domesticating ones. The study demonstrates that translation techniques representing domesticating and foreignising strategies can be combined in order to preserve their balance in the target text.