Cultural elements in texts
“A key question is what are cultural elements and how are they visible in texts?
Cultural elements are a background of knowledge which is generally relevant for adequate communication within a society. Culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behaviour, or emotions. It is rather an organization of these things. It is the forms of things that people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating, and otherwise interpreting them (Goodenough 1964: 36). [Stolze, 2009: 125-].
Culture determines how people speak and write and perceive each other. Consequently, cultural elements, therefore, must be present explicitly in texts, but as a background feature they are implicit. This becomes crucial in translation, when a translator from a different culture may not be able to adequately interpret the implicit cultural traces, or even misinterprets them”.
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“Technical translation requires the formulation of communicatively adequate technical texts in the other language. This includes clarity, precision and linguistic economy, as the key function of technical and scientific texts is the specification, condensation and anonymity of the propositions (Gläser 1998: 206). Cultural elements in texts might be deemed (=considered) superfluous here, but they are always there, if only (пусть дажеи) implicitly”.
“Cultural traces in texts certainly have a specific linguistic form. <…> This ranges from the word level and syntactic structures to the style on the text level, and its pragmatic social function”.
Various linguistic manifestations of culture in texts.
Culture in terminological concepts.
In technical translation the terminology must be checked conscientiously. Of course no cultural differences are prevalent in internationally standardised terminology, e.g. words listed in relevant databases with the mark (CE or DIN or) ISO. However, this type of terminology is very much in the minority. Terminology is intelligible within a scientific or technical domain, as “terms in a text presuppose memorized contexts and practical situations both for their usage and for their comprehension” (Kalverkämper 1983: 154, translation by Stolze).
Understanding of terminology – which is essential for correct translation – is not fully guaranteed by the consultation of dictionaries and databases, because new terms are constantly being created that partly even carry inherent conceptual differences. Schmitt (1999: 228ff) presents some impressive examples of an inter-cultural incongruence of concepts, where comparable terms are not equivalent because the concepts they designate are different for cultural reasons. There are for instance varying standards for the steelmaking between the U.S.A. and Germany: carbon steel (углеродистая сталь: отличается повышенной прочностью и высокой твердостью) is not equivalent toKohlenstoffstahl (as is indicated in many dictionaries), rather it is Baustahl, a less brittle (хрупкий) type of steel.
Problems of equivalence vary among the languages. <…>
Sometimes, new technical terms are created by means of metaphorical terminology referring to similarities in the function, form, or position of an object. But even if the concrete form of an object might lead to a similar cognitive concept in various cultures, this is not necessarily always the case. Problems in translation can arise when the metaphors are not identical between languages and translators are not aware of this possibility, for example:
dogleg (собачья лапа) – коленце – значение: резкое искривление ствола скважины; резкий изгиб
Culture in the language form
There are langue-specific forms of word compounding, to be recognised and applied in technical translation. For example, English and German terms are mostly construed by a combination of several nouns, or of an adjective with a noun, in a similar sequence. On the contrary, in Romance languages the word compounding goes in the reverse order and is realised by particles
Culture in the syntax
Syntactic forms concern the way in which the elements in a sentence are combined. Whereas the languages in literature demonstrate a great variety of creative linguistic forms, technical communication uses a purposeful reduction of stylistic forms where the content-oriented nature of technical communication means that short assertive sentences, a linear theme-rheme organisation, and a dense syntactic compression are prevalent. However, there are differences between languages, beyond technical and scientific writing styles.
Culture in the text structure
The culture-specific use of language is closely linked with the communicative situation, and frequently recurring situations lead to the creation of specific text types. A fixed structure of texts enhances intelligibility (ясность, чёткость, разборчивость) for the communication partners within their culture. Linguistic research has grouped text types in various text genres, both for literary (Werlich 1975: 71) and for specialist communication (Göpferich 1995).
The text structure as a reflection of cultural norms is most clearly visible in texts which are totally standardised for their situation rooted in a culture, i.e. medical certificates, weather reports, tax declarations, school certificates and employment references, court sentences, bills, business letters, balance sheets, menus, crossword puzzles, cooking recipes, tourist information, etc. Such texts are each time standardised within their cultural background, and a possible translation may either focus on a literal and formal re-presentation or on a target-specific transformation, depending on the purpose.
German CVs, for example, generally begin with birth and present the whole development of the person from schooling to studies up to work experience. In other countries the tradition is to focus on the present situation, adding information on the past.
Informative text types on a higher level – possibly with an international perspective –, such as user manuals, patent specifications, patient package inserts (инструкция по применению лекарственного препарата), scientific papers, monographs, court sentences, articles of law, sales contracts, among others, are based as a text type on a specific communicative situation, and in their content they focus on a specific technical object. And still there are traces of culture left in such texts which have not yet been standardised on an international level.
Culture in pragmatics
Pragmatics refers to senders and receivers of a text message and, therefore, is also part of the text itself. It is particularly in this respect that we find traces of the cultural background which is implicitly mentioned.
Cultural differences include varying ideas of politeness, stereotypes of foreign people, and special images of a society in another area. Such features tend to reflect on the text level and any literal translation will sound strange in the target culture.