Matthew B. McDonald

Intercultural communication can help bridge the gap between cultures. This is a tautological definition. But there is some truth in it.

Bridging the gap is not necessarily straightforward.

Bridging the gap means that there is some degree of uniformity among cultures. This is easily disputable. Cultures differ in a myriad of ways.

Translation endeavors must have both target and source culture in mind, as well as both languages that pertain to those cultures (if there are only two). Culture, consequently, is not translated automatically. We could suppose, as a thought experiment, that there is some sort of automatic culture translator. Someone walks through a portal, and instantaneously, after emerging from the portal, they are transformed into a different person with a cultural background that is not their original one. Does that sound plausible at all?

Words are not automatically translated either, but the fact that there could be an automatic translator of either words or culture presents an interesting puzzle. Some people assume that translation involves only translating the words on a page. As certain theorists explain, there is an iceberg of culture. What is on the surface has a deep bottom (located below the surface). Cultural theorists refer to what is part of the iceberg but below the surface of the water as pertaining to values.

Therefore, should translation aim to transfer the same values of the source culture to the target culture? That is a debate I would rather not enter (it would create some nasty cultural problems such as uniformity among cultures). However, since the values between varying cultures differ, there will inevitably be some mistranslation of culture. Perhaps we do not have to call it mistranslation, per se. But the question becomes how to translate culture effectively.

All of this seems to suggest that there is more to translation than text alone. If it were a matter of converting one language to another, the fact is that this practice (which does not exist in reality) would make translation much easier. It would perhaps eliminate the need for translators altogether, given the advent of technological services that are often employed to conduct quick translations.

In this post, I hope to have shown some of the dilemmas involved in translating culture from one source text to a target text.