Translating the Untranslatable: On the Transfer Processes into French of Romanian Culturally-Bound Words

Abstract

The article represents an analysis of the difficulties and procedures of translating Romanian words with cultural connotations into French. At the heart of this problem is the concept of "untranslatability", where certain words cannot be directly translated because they carry meanings specific to a culture. The difficulties in translating these words are determined by both linguistic untranslatability (differences between the source language and the target language) and cultural untranslatability (differences between the source culture and the target culture). Examples of linguistic untranslatability would be the cultural terms that denote Moldovan holidays and customs. The corpus under inquiry consists of culturemes extracted from articles available on tourist websites: "virtualtur.md", "moldovenii.md", "moldavie.fr". The study examines different transfer processes used in translating these words, highlighting how translators face challenges related to cultural sensitivities. They resort to various procedures such as transliteration, borrowing, calque, contextual explanation or the use of a cultural equivalent in the target language to reproduce the original connotations as faithfully as possible. The research also looks at how these transfer processes can affect the quality and authenticity of the translation, highlighting the difficulties encountered in finding a balance between semantic fidelity and adaptation to the cultural context of the target language. Words with cultural connotations can be conveyed through a process of creative adaptation rather than a literal translation.