Kultūros problematika grožinės literatūros vertimuose ; Cultural issues in the translation of fiction

Abstract

The purpose of this masters' thesis is to analyze the possible issues who appears when translating literature. The goals of this masters' thesis is to clear out if foreigner readers adequate understand the meaning found in the translated text with theat in original fiction novels. Thesis deals with cultural factor in translation who are also undeniable if not so obvious. No communication is possible unless the message transmitted through texts is well understood by the communicants. But this understanding can be achieved only if the information contained in language units is supplemented by background knowledge of facts referred to in the message. People belonging to the same linguistic community are members of a certain type of culture. They share many traditions, habits, ways of doing and saying things. They have much common knowledge about their country, its geography, history, climate, its political, economic, social and cultural institutions, accepted morals, taboos and many other things. All this information is the basis of the communicants presuppositions which enable them to produce and to understand messages in their linguistic form. The core of the translation theory is the general theory of translation which is concerned with the fundamental aspects of translation inherent in the nature of interlingual communication and therefore common to all translation events, irrespective of what languages are involved or what kind of text and under what circumstances is translated. Basically, replacement of the source text by the target text of the same communicative value is possible because both texts are produced in human speech governed by the same rules and involving the same relationships between language, reality and the human mind. All languages are means of communication, each language is used to externalize and shape human thinking, all language units are meaningful entities related to nonlingualistic realities, all speech units convey information to the communicants. In each language communication is achieved through a complicated interpretation of the speech units by the communications, involving an assessment of the meaning of the language units against the background information derived from the contextual situation, general knowledge, previous experience, various associations and other factors. The general theory of translation deals, so to speak, with translation universais and is the basis for all other theoretical studies in this field, since it describes what translation is and what makes it possible. To sum up. The linguistic and cultural aspects of translation need not be opposed for they are complementary. Cultural translation problems can usually be reformulated as language problems and incorporated in the original text. However bias between original text and it's translation always exists.