Cultural Issue in Translation, Problems of Equivalence and Untranslatability in Translation

Cultural Issues in Translation

1. Religious Sensitivity

Religious words and expressions often carry spiritual, historical, emotional, and cultural meanings that cannot be completely transferred through literal translation.

Example:

Ram Rajya → “Ideal Kingdom” / “Ideal Rule”

Although this translation gives the basic idea, Ram Rajya has deeper associations with Lord Rama, righteousness, justice, morality, peace, and ideal governance.

Another example:

Prasad → “Religious offering”

The word prasad also suggests divine blessing and sharing after a religious ritual, which is not fully conveyed by “offering.”

Key issue: A translator must decide whether to translate, retain, or explain the religious term.

2. Food and Rituals

Food is not simply a collection of ingredients. It can represent regional identity, tradition, religion, family, memory, and social relationships.

Example:

Idli–Sambar → “Rice cakes with lentil soup”

This translation describes the food but loses its connection with South Indian culture, traditional cuisine, family meals, and regional identity.

Another example:

Langar → “Community meal”

The translation is understandable, but it does not fully communicate the cultural and religious ideas of equality, service, and communal sharing associated with langar.

Key issue: Translators should preserve the cultural identity of food, not merely describe its ingredients.

3. Kinship Terms

Different cultures organize family relationships differently. Some languages have very specific kinship terms, while English often uses broader terms.

Example:

• Chacha → Father’s younger brother
• Tau → Father’s elder brother
• Mama → Mother’s brother

• In English, all may simply become “uncle.”

What is lost?

The exact family relationship, age distinction, and position within the family.

Another cultural issue: In Indian English, “Uncle” and “Aunty” may also be used for non-relatives as a form of familiarity or respect. This usage may need contextual translation.

Key issue: Kinship translation can result in the loss of social and familial information.

4. Forms of Respect

Languages use different linguistic forms to indicate respect, intimacy, age, status, and social distance.

Example:

Hindi uses tu, tum, and aap, while Gujarati uses forms such as tu and tame.

• English generally uses only “you.”

Another issue: This difference can become especially important in literary dialogues, because the way one character addresses another can reveal their relationship.

Key issue: Translation may lose the social relationship between speakers even when the basic meaning remains correct.

5. Festivals and Rituals

Festival names often represent a combination of religion, history, rituals, emotions, family relationships, and community traditions.

Example:

Raksha Bandhan → “Brother-Sister Festival”

This gives a general idea but does not fully communicate:

• the tying of the rakhi
• blessings and gifts
• the sibling relationship
• the ritual significance
• the cultural tradition behind the celebration

Another example:

Navratri → “Nine Nights”

This is literally correct, but it does not communicate the festival's religious practices, fasting, worship, Garba, Dandiya, and regional variations.

Key issue: Sometimes the best strategy is to retain the original cultural term and provide a short explanation rather than replace it with an inadequate English equivalent.

Expanded Definition of Equivalence

Core Concept: Equivalence is the idea that a translation should convey the same meaning and impact on the target audience as the original text had on the source audience.

Complex Process: Achieving true equivalence is not a simple word-swap; it requires the translator to navigate complex linguistic, cultural, and contextual factors to ensure the source text is faithfully represented.

Deepening Nida’s Equivalence Theory

Dynamic Equivalence (Equivalent Effect): Eugene Nida, a noted Bible translator, argued that the relationship between the receptor and the message should be substantially the same as that between the original receptors and the message. This approach prioritizes meaning first and style second, often adapting sentence structures and wording to ensure the translation feels natural to the new audience.

Formal Equivalence (Gloss Translation): This focuses strictly on the message's form and content, aiming for a "gloss translation" that stays as close as possible to the source structure (e.g., concept-to-concept or sentence-to-sentence) so the reader can understand the original context.

Popovič’s Technical Definitions of Equivalence

Linguistic Equivalence: Homogeneity on the linguistic level, typically resulting in word-for-word translation.

Paradigmatic Equivalence: Equivalence of grammatical elements, which Popovič considers a higher category than mere lexical (word) matching.

Stylistic (Translational) Equivalence: A functional equivalence aimed at creating an "expressive identity" between texts while maintaining a core of identical meaning.

Textual (Syntagmatic) Equivalence: Equivalence found in the structuring, form, and shape of the text.

Neubert’s Semiotic Hierarchy

Equivalence as a Semiotic Category: Albrecht Neubert suggests that equivalence is a sign system consisting of three hierarchical components:

• Semantic Equivalence: This takes top priority as it deals with the core meaning.
• Syntactic Equivalence: Deals with sentence structure.
• Pragmatic Equivalence: This conditions and modifies the other two elements, as it focuses on how signs are used by people in a specific culture (e.g., matching the "shock value" of a curse word rather than its literal meaning).

Jakobson’s "Inevitability of Loss"

No Full Equivalence: Roman Jakobson argues that "ordinarily there is no full equivalence through translation" because messages are interpretations, not exact copies.

Connotation Gaps: Even apparent synonyms (like "perfect" and "ideal") are not truly equivalent because every word carries unique, non-transferable associations and connotations.

Creative Transposition: Because complete equivalence is impossible in poetry, Jakobson claims that only "creative transposition"—essentially a creative recreation of the text—is possible.

Extra-Linguistic Criteria (Bassnett and the "Butter" Example)

Associative Fields: Susan Bassnett emphasizes that translation belongs to semiotics and must account for "extra-linguistic criteria".

Cultural Perception: A word like "butter" and the Italian "burro" may refer to the same dairy product, but they lack true equivalence because their cultural "weight" differs: in Britain, butter is a high-status food for spreading, whereas in Italy, it is primarily a functional ingredient for cooking.

The Invariant Core and the Rejection of "Sameness"

The Invariant Core: Popovič notes that while twelve different translators will produce twelve different versions of a poem, they will all share an "invariant core" of stable, basic semantic elements.

Equivalence ≠ Sameness: Scholars argue that equivalence should not be approached as a search for "sameness," as true sameness cannot even exist between two different translations of the same text in the same language.