A
cultural term is usually marked by special characteristics. Every language
in the
world has its
own words, phrases, or expressions that marked by
special characteristics. Culture
is also as complex things, including religion system and politic, custom, language,
tool, cloth, building and artistic things.
One
aspect of culture is language (Risna, 2016, p. 382). She stated that language
is part of culture. In the point, translation is relating with language and
culture. Sutrisno (2005, p. 133) stated that language and culture is relating
and there are interrelationship between language and culture. He also defines
language as expression of culture and person of native speaker, and then
automatically language will influence the speaker.
Discuss
about nature, culture and language, these term are relating each other. One way
thinking about culture is to contrast it with nature. Kramsch (1998, p. 4)
stated that nature refers to what is born and grows organically (from Latin nascere : to be born). Meanwhile, culture
refers to what has been grown and groomed (from the Latin colere: to cultivate). Kramsch (1998, p. 5) added that language and
culture impose on nature correspond to various form of socialization or
acculturation. The use of written language is also shaped and socialized
through culture.
There are various definitions of culture. Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian
dictionary) defines culture as follow; 1)
though; 2) custom, 3) something relating to developed culture
(civilized); 4) something
has become a habit. Meanwhile, oxford dictionary define culture as customs,
beliefs, art, way of life, etc of particular country or group. Newmark (1998,
p. 94) define culture as the
way of life
and its manifestations that
are peculiar to a
community that uses a particular language as its means of expression.
More
specifically, Newmark (1998, p. 94) distinguish ‘cultural’ from ‘universal’ and
‘personal language’. Newmark gives
example; ‘Die’, ‘live’, ‘star’, ‘swim’ and even almost virtually ubiquitous
artifacts like ‘mirror’ and ‘table’ are universals. In this case, usually there
is no translation problem there. In other words, ‘Monsoon’, ‘steppe’, ‘dacha’,
‘tagliatelle’ are cultural words – there will be a translation problem unless
there is cultural overlap between the source and the target language (and its readership).
Newmark added the more specific a language becomes for natural phenomena (e.g.,
flora and fauna) the more it becomes embedded in cultural features, and
therefore creates translation problems. Which is worrying, since it is
notorious that the translation of the most general words (particularly of
morals and feelings) - love, temperance, temper right, wrong - is usually
harder than that of specific words.
Newmark (1988, p. 95) discusses the
translation of foreign cultural words in the narrow sense. He classifies
culture-specific terms into five categories. They are; (1) Ecology: fauna, flora, and geographical
features, (2) Material culture: clothes,
food, houses/city, transports, and traditional weapons, (3) Social culture:
work, leisure, names and terms of address, and kinship,
(4) Social Organization: social organization, social
administration, religion, artistic things and craft, and (5) Habits and
Gesture.
Reference;
- Risna, Sulfah. (2016). Peran Ideologi Penerjemahan Dalam Pemertahanan Budaya Bangsa. Proceding of National Seminar and Nationality Dialogue, Cultural Science Faculty, Hasanuddin Univeristy. 381 – 394
- Sutrisno, M. (2005). Teori – Teori Kebudayaan. Yogyakarta : Kanisius.
- Kramsch, Claire. (1998). Language and Culture. New York : Oxford University Press.
- Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia.(2010). KBBI offline versi 1.1. http://ebsoft.web.id.
- Newmark, P,. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. Hertfordshire: Prentice hall.
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