Cultural Translation Bhabha Summary

A little later Bhabha says: “Translation is the performative nature of cultural communication” (Bhabha 228), and he goes on, in another new figurative equation, to speak of the residual cultural unassimilability of the migrant as an instance of what Benjamin called “untranslatability.”

Here, as indeed at numerous other places, one may get the feeling that one is still trying to catch Bhabha’s shadow while already living in it. What is nevertheless clear and indisputable in Bhabha’s formulations of what he calls cultural translation is, firstly, that he does not at all by this term mean literary translation involving two texts from two different languages and cultures, and secondly, that what he means by translation instead is the process and

According to him translation can and should be recognized as a social phenomenon, a cultural practice. He said that we bring to translation both cognitive and normative expectations, which are continually being negotiated, confirmed, adjusted, and modified by practicing translators and by all who deal with translation. These expectations result from the communication within the translation system, for instance, between actual translations and statements about translation, and between the translation system and other social systems.

In 2002, regarding cultural translation Hervey and Higgins believed in cultural translation rather than literal one. According to them accepting literal translation means that there’s no cultural translation operation. But obviously there are some obstacles bigger than linguistic ones. They are cultural obstacles and here a transposition in culture is needed.

It can be summarized that this definition suggests three things: (a) culture seen as a totality of knowledge and model for perceiving things, (b) immediate connection between culture and behavior and events, and (c) culture 's dependence on norms. It should be noted also that some other definitions claim that both knowledge and material things are parts of culture. See, for example, Koentjaraningrat (1996: 80-81) and Hoijer (1967: