The type of translation will depend on the aim of the translation. Here, House gives an explanation about overt translation which is, along with covert translation, one of the two types of translations available. The main difference between overt and covert translations is the perception the receivers have of them. An overt translation is intended to be appreciated as that: a translation. It does not try to become a “second original” and it is closely linked to the source culture.
In today’s multicultural society, it is important to have the ability to adapt to the ideas and customs of new cultures that we are exposed to. Through exposure to these cultures, we need to create an understanding that all cultures have different values and morals, and although not the same to our own it does not mean that they’re wrong. We are challenged with differences in culture, but we must familiarize ourselves to have the ability to adjust and accept others so that we may co-exist. Cultural self-Awareness is important in helping us to understand and develop these skills, which will ultimately lead to cultural intelligence. Cultural self-awareness is described as the sensitivity that one individual possesses regarding another person’s culture.
Equivalent effect seems to be a complex concept which can be applied to different types of texts in a certain degree. In audiovisual translation, which is going to be the subject later on, equivalent effect plays a very important role and is essential to be achieved in order to produce the same response in target audience as it does in source audience. 10 1.1.4. Cultural equivalence Cultural equivalence appears to be another applicable concept to be explained, as it is strongly connected to intertextuality, the main topic of this paper. When talking of cultural equivalence one cannot omit the notion of ‘untranslatability’.
According to Venuti (2008), translation is produced for many reasons: literary, commercial, pedagogical, technical, propagandistic, and diplomatic. The reasons have their special things to be concentrated in order that they can be translated with a good result. One of the most challenging in the reasons of translations is to translate literary work. It is because a translator has to translate metaphor that has exaggerated and beautiful words. Literary work, according to Venuti (2008), is an exploration of human thinking about something.
A translator may subject him-/herself either to the original text, with the norms it has realized, or to the norms active in the target culture, or in that section of it which would host the end product. Translation is a complicated task, during which the meaning of the source-language text should be conveyed to the target-language readers. In other words, translation can be defined as encoding the meaning and form in the target language by means of the decoded meaning and form of the source language. Different theorists state various definitions for translation. The concept of norms in translation theory was
According to these rules, the only way to spell the name王佳彤 should be WANG Jia-tong in academic literature. The Standard, as an alternative and supplement for the National Standard, certainly plays a positive role in solving the troubles of Chinese name translation in academic literature. But due to its inconsistency with National Standard, some writers are still puzzled by the issues of capitalization of letters and the use of dash, which finally leads to the inconformity of
Meaning is determined by the speaker’s intention as well as interpretation. It is undeniable that meaning is directly connected to context and context is remarkably based on culture. As we can see, pragmatics (the study of language in context) plays an essential role in language communication. Likewise Professor J. Cummins, language and its comprehension is undoubtedly linked to interpersonal cues, such as intonation, gestures, and facial expressions (1994). That is why it is necessary an awareness of culture target in teaching a language.
However, one point deserving special attention is that the theory of communicative translation may neglect the response differences among receptors. To put it in another way, people from different cultural backgrounds may respond in different ways as a result of the cultural differences. Another popular theory related to public signs translation is Relevance Theory, which believes that knowledge shared by the speakers and receptors can make the communication easier. Sperber and Wilson (2001) as the representatives of this school illustrate that inferring, as one of the necessary communicative steps, should be mentioned with encoding and decoding. Wang Bo (2010) argues that the adequate relevance should be ensured by the translator to provide the fundamental element of understanding for readers so that the effectiveness of information delivery will be
Linguists have noticed the important role of context and then they make classification of the different definition based on different standards. According to different linguists, the context is the environment where the verbal communication takes place, that is to say, context is the survival of verbal language domain. Translation is an extremely complicated topic. Doing the good translation needs to determine the meaning of words, a process called understanding, which is the core task in translation. Context is the premise of translation, so the translator and the translation teaching should make full use of context to determine the exact meaning of the words.
Hence, pragmatics is usually associated with utterance and speaker meaning. As well, the ability to use language appropriately for comprehend, construct, and convey meaning in the social and cultural circumstances, which requires choose and recognize the forms of utterance in a given context is the pragmatic competence. It is the key to effective communication in a second language (Taguchi, 2009). In other words, it is all about communicating appropriately in context so is the main issue for EFL learners. More recently, pragmatic competence is considered to be “an understanding of the relationship between form and context that enables us, accurately and appropriately, to express and interpret intended meaning” (Murray, 2010, p. 293).