Translation Strategies in a Rapidly Transforming Culture

Abstract

This article examines cultural asymmetry, a feature engendered by rapid cultural transformation and posited to be a crucial contextual factor in translating into and from weaker or dominated cultures. It argues that the asymmetry affects translators’ choices – often implicitly – in terms of domestication and foreignization and presents an analysis of an extensive corpus of English-Polish translations in two genres: voiceover and news articles. The findings demonstrate a marked dominance of highly foreignizing procedures in the translation of culture-specific items, a trend which in the majority of cases cannot be attributed to formal or genre-related restrictions, audience design, or lack of competence on the part of translators. In addition, the article provides an overview of the effects of the Polish cultural transition on translation practices and suggests ways in which a cotext-and context-sensitive analysis of individual translations can be accommodated within a quantitative study.