Literary translation: a significant cultural bridge

The Cultural Turn

Speakers of each language have their own devices to express their ideologies, values and culture. When words travel from one country to another through translation, they wear the hats of the receptive language as the translated texts “nearly always contain attempts to naturalize the different culture to make it conform more to what the reader of the translation is used to.

Retention of Sound Devices

One of the main distinctions between literary translation and translation of other genera is that the former focuses on transferring sense and sound from one language and cultural context to another. Generally speaking, one of the requirements of translation, according to Savory, is that it should not only reflect the meaning of the original but also the style. Therefore, the original translation should retain the basic features of the original work, linguistic or extra-linguistic.

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a type of word that sounds like the object it describes. For example, the word “bang” copies the sound produced through explosion or firing. This is a universal linguistic phenomenon. Let us have a look at the following excerpt form Al-Kharrat’ Novel, Turabuha Zafaran, translated by Liardet (1989: 104-5):

وألوان البحر قد أخذت تتخطط، أمام عيني بنفسجية وزرقاء وبيضاء فضية مشعة تحت سحاب أبيض تختفي الشمس وراءه، وتضيئه باحمرار سائل مشاع وهدوء البحر عميق صفحته مبسوطة لا تكاد تترجرج، ووشوشة الموج الذي يترقرق على مهل ناعمة، أسمع صوت الصمت المطبق تطرزه وتنمنمه، فجأة زقزقة العصافير التي تتواثب على الرمل الطري، وتنقر العشب اللزج والودع والصدف الحي بمناقيرها الصغيرة السريعة ترابها زعفران (124-125).

The colours of the sea began to shift and striate before my eyes- violet and blue and shining, silvery-white, beneath clouds which hide the sun, and which the sun suffused with redness; and the sea was of a bottomless calm, the surface flat and still, hardly rippling. There was a soft, leisurely hiss of the waves; but the silence remained absolute, mainly rimmed and embroidered by the chatter of birds which hopped about on the soft sand to pick with their small, darting beaks at the damp seaweed and live clams and shells.

Literary translation and Style

The major differences between literary and non-literary language are style and aesthetic forms. This can be noticed in the unusual style of literary writers who try to select words and sentences carefully to make the familiar unfamiliar or to make strange the object described.

Conclusion

In literary translation, the translator should try to imitate the original writer in selecting similar words, phrases, and sentences that make his work as fathomable and appreciated to the target reader as the original.