Linguistic Untranslatability Research Articles

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

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.

Theorizing untranslatability: Temporalities and ambivalence in colonial literature of Taiwan and Korea

This paper theorizes and historicizes the ideas of modern language and translation and challenges the imperialist and nationalistic mode of worlding with the notion of ‘untranslatability’ that is embedded in the linguistic and cultural practices of colonial Taiwan and Korea. I redefine the notion of translation as a bordering system – the knowledge-production of boundaries, discrimination, and classification – that simultaneously creates the translatable and the untranslatable (i.e. the equivalence and incommensurability) in asymmetrical power relations. With this, I discuss how this ambivalence is embodied in the experiences of colonial writers Wu Yung-fu and Pak T’aewŏn and their novellas ‘Head and Body’ (1933) and ‘A Day in the life of Kubo the Novelist’ (1934). I illustrate two characteristics of the ambivalent untranslatability embedded in their novellas: the linguistic untranslatability and the experience of ‘unhomeness’. The linguistic untranslatability and unhomeness, I argue, result in the colonized’s dislocation in homogeneous time-space relationships, resulting to the incompletion of the modernization project through colonialism. At the same time untranslatability offers a site to explore the transnational space that crosses linguistic boundaries, and to caution against the legacy of colonialism.

Untranslatability Found in J.K. Rowling’s English Novel Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone and Its Indonesian Version

This research is about the problem of untranslatability in the translation of novel Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. The intention is what are the types of untranslatability, the causes and how the translator solves the problem of untranslatability that happen in this novel. From 27 data, the researcher finds two types of untranslatability in the novel Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling: linguistic untranslatability and cultural untranslatability. Then there are nine causes of untranslatability found in the novel. The cause is dominated by the culture-specific words or phrases which are semantically complex. From the analysis, it is found that the translator tend to use the loan word or loan word plus explanation strategy to solve the problem of untranslatability in this novel.

КОНФЛІКТ ІНТЕРПРЕТАЦІЙ ЛИСТА СКІФІВ ДАРІЮ ПЕРШОМУ

Sum of the things as a short letter of the Scythians to Persian King Darius the First, which were collection of a bird, a frog, a mouse and arrows, contains no intonations, because the Scythians themselves refrained to explain its contents. Pure articulation is silent. That’s why the addressee has to become co-author the Scythian message to intonate it in his way. Actually Darius was forced to intone, on the one hand, his imperious desires, and, on the other hand, the plausible Scythians intentions. Such self-split causes internal conflict and pushes Darius to an impasse. His desire to read the Scythian message as their own recognition of their surrender contradicts with their obviously disobedient behavior. It works as a trap. Darius himself inclines to surrender, because his intonations work as detonations - the secret psychological weapon of the Scythians in the field of symbols. That’s the case when the interpretation demoralizes its own interpreter. The composition of the letter reflects the Scythians cosmological representations and reveals their outlook. When Herodotus, Clement d'Alexandrie, J.-J.Rousseau and others retell and interpret the letter, both their retelling and interpretation reflect their cultural differences and their different worldviews. Only Darius dealt with pure things, while the rest of interpreters dealt with different languages words denoting those things. But in any case this message requires live intonations. The Scythian letter allows you to subtract from it some jokes or mock the same as a demand of surrender or as an open threat etc. Conflict of interpretations can be caused by both linguistic untranslatability either worldview untranslatability of different cultures and political involvement of interpreters. Therefore, the interpretation of the message through things, the same as through words, also depends on its intonation content.

Nijakość w języku i neutralność w literaturze jako sygnał odmienności kulturowej?

<p>W myśl koncepcji „językowego obrazu świata” struktura gramatyczna może podpowiadać określone treści, uwypuklać je i akcentować, sprzyjając powstawaniu swoistego „świato-oglądu” (unikatowego i często nieprzetłumaczalnego). Taką strukturą jest rodzaj nijaki w języku niemieckim, gdyż jego częstsze użycie spowodowane jest brakiem końcówek rodzajowych w formach czasownika, oraz faktem, iż wszystkie zdrobnienia (posiadające końcówkę „-chen”, „-lein”) są z zasady rodzaju nijakiego (stąd chociażby zaskakująca dla polszczyzny gramatyczna nijakość „dziewczyny” w języku niemieckim). Szczególnie istotny jest w tym kontekście zaimek „es”, który nie tylko zastępuje rzeczowniki w rodzaju nijakim, lecz spełnia ponadto szereg istotnych funkcji gramatycznych. Nieprzypadkowo Siegmund Freud wybrał „das Es” jako nazwę dla opisywanej przez siebie kategorii dziecięcości (tłumaczonej na język polski za angielskim przekładem mylnie jako „id”).</p><p>Produktywność i częstotliwość użycia rodzaju nijakiego pozostawia oczywiście ślad. W literaturze pięknej kategoria ta służy nie tylko do wyrażania treści związanych z nijakością/dziecięcością, lecz werbalizuje również zjawiska związane z neutralnością/uniwersalnością, co pokazuję na przykładach zaczerpniętych z baśni braci Grimm i Ernsta Theodora Amadeusa Hoffmana oraz współczesnej literatury dziecięcej (książek Paula Maara). Następnie chciałabym zapytać, co dzieje się z kategorią nijakości w sytuacji przekładu na język polski i czy jej redukcja wiąże się wyłącznie z faktem nieprzekładalności językowej i „terrorem polszczyzny”, czy może być także nieświadomym (a może świadomym) odrzuceniem tej kategorii na rzecz dychotomizacji świata na żywioł męski i żeński.</p>Na przykładzie jednego zjawiska gramatycznego pokazuję, w jaki sposób elementy języka manifestują się w literaturze i czy mogą stanowić barierę kulturową w sytuacji przekładu na inny język.

Transmesis in Viktor Pelevin’s Generation “P” and Andrew Bromfield’s English translation

ABSTRACTViktor Pelevin’s novel Generation “P”, published in 1999 and translated into English by Andrew Bromfield as Homo Zapiens (2002), tells the story of Babylen Tatarsky, a copywriter who adapts American advertisements to the Russian market and eventually heads an organization that simulates reality by controlling the entire television industry. In portraying the process of localization (i.e. cultural and linguistic adaptation of a product to a local market) and by “performing” translation in footnotes and parenthetical explanations, Generation “P” wrestles with cultural and linguistic untranslatability, problematizes the relationship between translation and original, and reiterates the profoundly intertextual and creative nature of any process of translation. After discussing the different types of transmesis (or the fictional portrayal of translation and translators) in the novel and outlining the challenges it poses for the English translator, the article explores the theoretical implications of transmesis to test its potential for reinvigorating translation theory and contributing to translation philosophy.

On the Analysis of Untranslatability of Culture

Translation is not merely a cross-language communication, but more of a cross-cultural communication. When translation confront with both language and cultural barriers, linguistic untranslatability and cultural untranslatability appear. This paper elaborates the relationship between language, culture and translation, and explores the causes of cultural untranslatability and its classification, thus provides some constructive advice to transform untranslatability to translatability.

CULTURAL UNTRANSLATABILITY: A STUDY ON THE RAINBOW TROOPS

The notion of translatability is possibly done with the extent to which meaning can still be adequately conveyed across languages. For this to be feasible, meaning has to be understood not only in terms of what the source text contains, but also in terms of target audience and purpose of translation. In linguistic untranslatability, the functionally relevant features include some which are in fact formal features of the language of the source language text. If the target language has no formally corresponding feature, the text, or the item, is (relatively) untranslatable. What appears to be a quite different problem arises, however, when a situational feature, functionally relevant for the source text, is completely absent in the culture of target language. As culture has something to do with the concept, source language texts and items are more or less translatable rather than absolutely translatableoruntranslatable. An adaptation, then, is a procedure whereby the translator replaces a term with cultural connotations, where those connotations are restricted to readers of the original language text, with a term with corresponding cultural connotations that would be familiar to readers of the translated text. Translating such culturally untranslatable items entails profound knowledge on both source and target cultures. Most cases in this particular work are solved by keepingcultural terms in the source language text, with or without explanation. Ecological, social, and religious culture terms undergo the process most frequently.

Untranslatability and the Method of Compensation

This paper discusses the problem of untranslatability between Chinese and English, including linguistic and cultural untranslatability. English belongs to the Indo-European language family, and Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. The phonemic system, character structure and figure of speech are all completely different, and most of these in one language do not have equivalent in the other language. This causes linguistic untranslatability. But untranslatability is not absolute, we should understand the co-existence of translatability and untranslatability. Based on this, we can use some methods to compensate in order to reduce the barrier in translation and promote language and culture communication.