Ch 4

• Culture specific references


  Elements that are typical of a particular culture and do not have precise equivalents in other languages
• Terms used to refer to culture specific references


  • Culture specific
  • Culture bound references/elements/terms/items/expressions
  • Realia
  • Allusion
  • Cultural references
• Culture specific references


  • They stand out from the common lexical context and require reinforcement of attention to be decoded
  • They carry a national, local or historical coloring and don't have precise equivalents in other languages
• Realia


  Words or composed locutions typical of a geographical environment, a culture, the material life, or historical-social peculiarities of a people, nation, country, or tribe
• The boundary between culture-bound terms and non-culture specific vocabulary is fuzzy and depends on a matter of degree
• Culture specific references


  They could be included in the group of untranslatable words as every language has words that another language hasn't judged important for different reasons like ways of life, traditions, beliefs, historical developments
• Cultural reference


  Any reference to a cultural entity which, due to its distance from the target culture, is characterized by a sufficient degree of opacity for the target reader to constitute a problem
• The translation problems of culture specific references may emerge from either the non-existence of the referred item in the target culture or the different intertextual status of the target text with respect to the source text
• The relationship between two cultures can change over time, so translation strategies used at one time may not be appropriate at another
• Culture "bump"


  A small-scale culture shock which may cause problems in finding the right cultural equivalent
• Allusion


  A pre-formed linguistic material used to convey often implicit meaning, which allows the reader to be more involved in the creation of the text
• Readers who recognize a creative allusion realize a stronger understanding of a text, because they are participating in its creation
• Cultural elements in audiovisual translation

  • Specific places of any city or country
  • Aspects related to the history, the art and the customs of a given society and age
  • Very popular characters
  • Mythology
  • Gastronomy
  • Institutions
  • Currencies
  • Systems of weight and measurement
• Extralinguistic culture-bound reference (ECR)


  A culture-related linguistic expression where what is said is understood by the listening audience, as opposed to intralinguistic elements like idioms, proverbs, slang, dialects, concepts and customs, quotations and allusions which are part of the language system
• The subjective, dynamic and relative nature of culture specific references is highlighted by the fact that they create networks of associations specific to the culture in which they are rooted, and cultures are dynamic systems
• Culture specific references


  Entities that are typical of one particular culture, and can be exclusively or predominantly visual, exclusively verbal, or both verbal and visual in nature
• The concept of "cultural embeddedness" is important for audiovisual translation and the translation of culture specific references, as texts belong to a specific context of space and time in which they are best comprehensible
• The task of the translator


  To loosen the "bonds of belonging" of the source text and find strategies to adapt it to the target culture
• Dubbing seems to be the audiovisual translation method that most promotes the technique of loosening the "bonds of belonging", as it deletes the source text linguistic component and replaces it with that of the target text, favoring the acceptability of the new text by the target culture
• Cultural categories for classifying culture specific references

  • Ecology (flora, fauna, geography)
  • Artefacts (food, clothes, houses, towns, transportation)
  • Social culture (work, leisure)
  • Organizations, customs, activities (political, administrative, religious, historical, artistic)
  • Gestures and habits
• Taxonomies for classifying culture specific references cannot be used to determine without ambiguity whether a given element belongs to one particular category or another, but they can be useful to analyse the nature of these references
• Transcultural elements


  Culture specific references that are globally known and accessible from common encyclopedic knowledge of the source and target audiences
• Monocultural elements


  Culture specific references that are less identifiable by the majority of the target audience than by the source audience, due to differences in encyclopedic knowledge
• Microcultural elements


  Culture specific references that are so specific that they are known only to a limited part of even the source audience
• Text-internal references


  Culture specific references that are created ad hoc for the text at hand and do not exist outside of it
• Centrality of reference


  The degree to which a culture specific reference is central to the text, either on a macro or micro level
• Intersemiotic redundancy


  When the information carried by the different channels (e.g. image, soundtrack) overlaps, so that there may be no need to translate verbal information that is also conveyed through other means
• Cotext


  Redundant information contained in the rest of the text, such as repetitions in a dialogue, which may not need to be translated
• Media-specific constraints


  Constraints on the subtitling process, such as lip-synch and isochrony requirements
• Paratextual considerations


  Issues related to the target audience, such as age groups, familiarity with the source culture, etc.
• When analysing markets, a range of assumptions are made about the rationality of economic agents involved in the transactions
• The Wealth of Nations was written

  1776
• Rational


  (in classical economic theory) economic agents are able to consider the outcome of their choices and recognise the net benefits of each one
• Consumers act rationally by


  Maximising their utility
• Producers act rationally by


  Selling goods/services in a way that maximises their profits
• Workers act rationally by


  Balancing welfare at work with consideration of both pay and benefits
• Governments act rationally by


  Placing the interests of the people they serve first in order to maximise their welfare
• Groups assumed to act rationally


  • Consumers
  • Producers
  • Workers
  • Governments
• Rationality in classical economic theory is a flawed assumption as people usually don't act rationally
• A firm increases advertising


  Demand curve shifts right