The translator as a cultural mediator in the translation of Mthembu’s UMamazane into English

Abstract

A text rich in culture often poses a challenge to the translator. The translator normally has to be well acquainted with both source and target culture in order to render a comprehensible and reader-friendly translation for the target readership. Some scholars have devised strategies and procedures that a translator can utilise in dealing with the hurdle of translating culture-specific items. The present study seeks to investigate the effectiveness of the translation strategies and procedures used by Cope and Mzolo in their translation of culture-specific items in the isiZulu novel UMamazane by R.H. Mthembu. The research is conducted within Venuti’s and Baker’s pragmatic approaches to the translation of culture-specific items. The cultural aspects (the basis for comparison or the tertium comparationis) which form the focus of the present study, are proper names, cultural artefacts/terms, cultural practices, ideophones, idioms and proverbs. In terms of the translation strategy, the findings reveal that the translation of UMamazane is predominantly domesticated. Furthermore, they show that domestication has been very effective in the translation of this novel. In the case of translation procedures, the findings show that Cope and Mzolo use the procedures: translation by a more general word, translation by cultural substitution, translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation, compensation, translation by paraphrase using a related word, translation by paraphrase using unrelated words, translation using an idiom of similar meaning and form, borrowing the source language idiom, and translation by paraphrase. Moreover, they reveal that most of these procedures were effective in the translation of the novel, while some were not.