Lingua- cultural problems of translation

CHAPTER TWO. LINGUA-CULTURAL PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION 1Practical realities: strategies used to translate cultural terms Adaptation
There is an interesting saying between translations theorists around the world says that translation is like a woman: if it is faithful, it is not beautiful, if it is beautiful, it is not faithful. Of course the faithfulness-beauty trend cannot be achieved 100% in translation an interpretation as well, that is why both translators and interpreters coerce to use the technique of adaptation.
This paper attempts to investigate why adaptation is frequently needed and also it enumerates the types of adaptation translators and interpreters make in their work.
Adaptation as a Means of Translation
I define adaptation as a type of translation which involves a number of changes to be made so that the target text produced be in harmony with the spirit of the source text. These changes are of various types. They are: deletion, addition, explanation, illustration and exemplification.
For example, Newmark in his definition focuses on translating the author’s intention. He defines translation as “rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text”. But Nida and Taber (1982) in their definition focus on the meaning and style and use the term “reproduction” to indicate to the process of translation. To quote them: “Translation is the reproduction in a receptor language of the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning, and secondly in terms of style. Shi (2003) a Chinese translation theorist, assures that communicative translation needs what he calls “accommodation” which involves making a number of changes that are needed for the target text in order to be in line with the essence of the source text. To quote him: “We believe translation is not merely linguistic conversion or transformation between languages but it involves accommodation in scope of culture, politics, aesthetics and many other factors”. Though each previous definition refers to the process of translation from a different dilemma, all of them agree that the process, by one way or another, involves a number of changes. These changes have to be in harmony with the target text culture provided it does not maim or distort the meaning of the source language since it must be the main goal.