Investigating the Impact of Culture on Literary Translation with Reference to the Sudanese Cultural Context

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the impact of culture on literary translation with reference to the Sudanese context, “The Wedding of Zein” by Altayeb Salih; with focusing on the cultural terms. A descriptive analytical approach was followed in conducting this study. The population of this research was the teachers of Sudan University of Science and Technology (SUST) and University of Khartoum (U of K) in order to reveal the difficulties which face translators in translating literary and cultural works, so that cultures have differences according to religions and beliefs. This study is significantly important because it helps translators to know the impact and importance of culture on literary translation for improving their performance in literary translation through paying more attention to the differences of literary terms among cultures because translation is a kind of activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions. As this statement implies, translators are permanently faced by the problem of how to deal with the cultural aspects implicit in a source text (ST) and of finding the most appropriate technique of successfully conveying these aspects in the target language (TL). The problem of this study emerged from some translators’ inability to translate some cultural terms correctly. Some translators suffered a lot and are still suffering from the problem of translating some cultural terms when they come to translate literary works. These problems may vary in the scope depending on the cultural and linguistic gap between the two or more languages concerned. Language and culture may thus be seen as being closely related and both aspects must be considered for translation. The researcher checked the cultural terms in the novel “The Wedding of Zein” by Altayeb Salih which weren’t translated in an appropriate way according to the culture of the western world countries. The aim of this study was to reveal the impact of culture on literary translation to help translators to know how to deal with literary and cultural terms or translate them in an appropriate way by identifying the suitable theories of translation via the translation of cultural terms and to pay more attention to the differences of literary terms in various cultures. Moreover, it aims to help translators to translate correctly not only in their countries but also in all over the world or world-wide, so that translators should get more information about cultures according to the place of their work. The results obtained indicated the necessity of the getting in touch with cultures because it leads to better performance in literary translation. The thesis is concluded by some recommendations and suggestions to be taken into account.