1.1.4. The Translator's Cultural Knowledge
Culture is thus what explains and clarifies almost every
mystery in a foreign language text, including its language and its author. In
other words, both the language learner and the translator need cultural
knowledge to understand. Schank and Abelson (1977) support this,
saying that: "understanding is knowledge based". Chastain (1976)
states that:
"The ability to interact with speakers of another language
depends not only on language skills but also on comprehension of cultural
habits and expectations. Understanding a second language does not insure
understanding the speaker's actions."
Mounin (1962) claims that:
"Le traducteur ne doit pas se contenter d'être un bon
linguiste, il doit être un excellent ethnographe: ce qui revient à
demander non seulement qu'il sache tout de la langue qu'il traduit, mais aussi
du peuple qui se sert de cette langue."
(p. 50)
(see translation 12, Appendix B)
Therefore, cultural knowledge refers to the knowledge of the way
of life of a linguistic community. This includes every aspect of life: habits,
worldviews, social system, religion, humor, good manners, clothing, etc.
(Chastain, 1976, 389-92).
Given the particular relationship between culture and
language, cultural knowledge is the way for the translator to deeply know the
language. Indeed, culture reveals the language's mode of functioning
Schleiermacher (1813) thinks that it is not acceptable to work on and with
language in an arbitrary way. The authentic meaning of language should be
gradually discovered through history, science and art. This assumption adds
another dimension to the required cultural knowledge of the translator. It is
the intellectual production written in the language in question, and which
contributes, in his view, to the formation of the language (ibid.).
Cultural knowledge does not only help understand a text's
content. It also, as a logical consequence, shows the way in which a particular
foreign reader is best addressed. It provides, hence, access to the first and
the last translation operations, which Schleiermacher (1813) advocated:
understanding and communicating.
So far, we have emphasised the necessity of cultural knowledge
for understanding and communicating. Another facet of this necessity concerns
translating, that is Schleiermacher's thinking. It is the cultural
component of the already presented concept of controlled or separate knowledge.
Incompatibility between cultures should be studied as well. De Pedro (1999)
affirms that: " Translators have to be aware of these gaps, in order to
produce a satisfactory target text" (p.548). In her paper about textual
competence mentioned earlier, Nord (1999) insists on what she calls the
translator's contrastive text competence. In this competence she
highlights the ability to compare and be aware of cultural specificities. She
states that it:
"[...] consists of the ability to analyse the
culture-specificities of textual and other communicative conventions in both
linguacultures, [and] identify culture-bound function markers in texts of
various text types."
Another point cannot be disregarded. It is known that English,
French and even Arabic, like many other languages, may be used by people of
other cultures to produce all types of texts, especially in literature. African
literature written in English and the North African one written in French are
two illustrating examples. Here, the translator is faced with a specific
language embedded in a different culture, which entails a specific task of
analysis based on relevant knowledge. As a result, cultures directly related to
the languages in question are not the only cultures the translator should be
familiar with (Osimo, 2001).
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