1.1.5. Learning Culture
The translator's required cultural knowledge takes, then, huge
proportions. A study of culture that depends on random exposure to relevant
documents sounds insufficient. For this reason, there stands the need to
systematically and deeply study the culture in question (Mounin, 1962,
Chastain, 1976).
Therefore, if we consider the ways of acquiring cultural
knowledge, we can find, among other things, the following:
a relatively long stay in the country of the language (Mounin,
1962);
a long and systematic exposure (Mounin, 1962) to all types of
authentic material like films in the original version, novels reflecting as
authentically as possible everyday life and discourse, and nonfiction documents
sharing the same characteristics.
Chastain (1976) advances that in an academic context, for
example a language class, teaching the culture of the language must be a
fundamental and systematic component of the curriculum. The
objectives should be made clear to learners, and material acquisition should be
tested rigorously, just as the linguistic material is (pp. 388, 509). Because
the language and its culture are interdependent, the culture of the language
should be given a similar importance to that of the language itself, and be
taught in relation to the corresponding linguistic items (p. 388). It follows
that:
"Ideally, at the end of their studies, the students will
have a functional knowledge of the second culture system as they have of the
second language system"
(Chastain, 1976, p. 388)
All the literature summed up thus far leads to believe that,
in translator training, two conclusions can be drawn. First, learning to
mediate between two languages and cultures whose boundaries are not yet clear
in one's mind seems to be of a questionable value.
Second, such a deep and subtle knowledge appears to be hard to
achieve in such a relatively short time as a four-year translation course. This
suggests that unnecessary loss of time should, as far as possible, be avoided.
This makes sense when we know that the course should include a number of other
subjects to study and other competences to acquire. This is the subject matter
of the following sections.
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