Cultural Translation

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language conditions thought and that language and thought is bound up with the individual culture of the given community would mean that translation is impossible. We cannot translate one's thought which is affected by and stated in language specific for a certain community to another different language because the system of thought in the two languages (cultures) must be different. Each language is unique. If it influences the thought and, therefore, the culture, it would mean that ultimate translation is impossible.
Another point of view, however, asserts the opposite. Ironically this also goes back to Humboldt's idea bout inner and outer forms of language. Later it is developed into the concepts of deep structure and surface structure by …show more content…

This relates the ST and TT to their function in their respective linguistic and cultural context. The translator is once again the key player in the process of intercultural communication and production of the translatum because of the purpose of the …show more content…

A clue to the new sense in which the term translation is here being used is suggested by a remark made by Rushdie himself (which Bhabha incidentally does not cite) in which he said of himself and other diasporic postcolonial writers: “we are translated men” (Rushdie 16). Rushdie was here exploiting the etymology of the word “translation,” which means to carry or bear across, and what he meant, therefore, was that because he had been borne across, presumably by an aeroplane, from India and Pakistan to the United Kingdom, he was therefore a translated man. He neglected to tell us as to whether, before he became a translated man, he was at any stage also an original man.But a second and overriding sense in which too Rushdie claimed to be a translated man is precisely what is expounded by HomiBhabha in his essay, with specific reference to The Satanic Verses.

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