Abstract
Assessing the success of a translated text is one of the controversial topics often discussed in the field of translation studies. The definition of a so-called successful translation is itself controversial. Therefore, for the purpose of this study, the success of a given translation may be defined as transmitting a similar, though rarely identical, semantic frame reference in the Target Language (TL) as was intended by the Source Language (SL) and may be quantified by comparing alternate translations and choosing the one with the highest number of equivalent frame references. One of the factors which could be considered detrimental to the production of a successful translation, as defined above, is the (un)translatability of cultural terms. Cultural terms, defined here as expressions referring to concepts or entities that are unique to a certain culture, are believed to be untranslatable. This paper uses Arabic visual frames referencing the Egyptian garment ǧal-labiy-ya (or ǧilbāb) as an example and argues that (un)translatability can be quantified using semantic frames based on the assumption that all SL terms have multiple frame references, some of which, mostly the ones indicating denotative meaning, have parallels in the TL while some others, mostly the ones indicating connotative meaning, do not. The degree of (un)translatability may, therefore, be quantifiable by observing which TL terms possess a higher rate of similar frame references in SL, which aids in the evaluation of translated texts in terms of relative equivalence and the degree to which the Target Text (TT) audience receives similar information to that received by the Source Text (ST) audience.
Highlights
Assessing the success of a translated text is one of the controversial topics often discussed in the field of translation studies
The translation of cultural elements, expressions denoting concepts or entities that are unique to a certain culture, presents an issue that seems to almost constantly yield opinions tending toward the conclusion that cultural elements are, to various degrees and for various reasons, untranslatable
The degree oftranslatability may, be quantifiable by observing which Target Language (TL) terms possess a higher rate of similar frame references in Source Language (SL), which aids in the evaluation of translated texts in terms of relative equivalence and the degree to which the Target Text (TT) audience receives similar information to that received by the Source Text (ST) audience
Summary
The translation of cultural elements, expressions denoting concepts or entities that are unique to a certain culture, presents an issue that seems to almost constantly yield opinions tending toward the conclusion that cultural elements are, to various degrees and for various reasons, untranslatable. The premise of this study is that there is a grey area between the fully translatable and the fully untranslatable where terms are partially translatable based on how many of the total number of SL frame references activated by the SL reader can be activated by the Target Language (TL) reader. This means that the higher the percentage of TL frames activated by the TL reader that are activated by the SL reader, the more successful the translation is considered. Whereas past studies of the same topic focus on proving, or otherwise disproving the applicability of English-based frames in creating parallel lexicon fragments in other languages to be used in translation, the present study focuses on examining what happens when the English-based frames are not applicable
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