Cultural translation

Kyle Conway

Table of contents

Cultural translation is a concept with competing definitions coming from two broad fields, anthropology/ethnography and cultural/postcolonial studies. In anthropology, it usually refers to the act of describing for members of one cultural community how members of another interpret the world and their place in it. In cultural studies, it usually refers to the different forms of negotiation that people engage in when they are displaced from one cultural community into another, or it refers to the displacement itself. In both cases, scholars have typically explained the term's use by pointing out that “translation” derives from the Latin translātus, the past participle of transferre, meaning “to carry across.” (Scholars who cite non-Latin etymologies are exceedingly rare.) What is “carried across,” however, varies by field. For anthropologists, foreign cultures are “carried across” to domestic readers in textual form, as described in articles and books, while for cultural studies scholars, what is “carried across” is not so much culture as it is the people who leave their place of origin and enter a new locale, bearing their culture with them.

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price.

References

Asad, Talal
1986“The concept of cultural translation in British cultural anthropology.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Clifford James & George E. Marcus (eds), 141–164. Berkeley: University of California Press.  TSBGoogle Scholar
Buden, Boris & Nowotny, Stefan
2009“Cultural translation: An introduction to the problem.” Translation Studies 2 (2): 196–208. DOI logo  TSBGoogle Scholar
Gellner, Ernest
1970“Concepts and society.” In Rationality, Bryan R. Wilson (ed.), 18–49. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim
1993“The art of translation in a continuous world.” In Beyond Boundaries: Understanding, Translation, and Anthropological Discourse, Gísli Pálsson (ed.), 210–230. Providence: Berg.Google Scholar
Jordan, Shirley Ann
2002“Ethnographic encounters: The processes of cultural translation.” Language and Intercultural Communication 2 (2): 96–110. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Lienhardt, Godfrey
1954“Modes of thought.” In The Institutions of Primitive Society: A Series of Broadcast Talks, E.E. Evans-Pritchard (eds), 95–107. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Longinovic, Tomislav
2002“Fearful asymmetries: a manifesto of cultural translation.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 35 (2): 5–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pym, Anthony
2010“On Empiricism and Bad Philosophy in Translation Studies.”www​.tinet​.cat​/∼apym​/on​-line​/research​_methods​/2009​_lille​.pdf[Accessed 28 January 2012].Google Scholar
Trivedi, Harish
2007“Translating culture vs. cultural translation.” In In Translation—Reflections, Refractions, Transformations, Paul St-Pierre & Prafulla C. Kar (eds), 277–287. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins  BoP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
2003“Translating Derrida on translation: Relevance and disciplinary resistance.” Yale Journal of Criticism 16 (2): 237–262. DOI logo  TSBGoogle Scholar

Further essential reading

Bhabha, Homi
1994The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Conway, Kyle
2012“A Conceptual and Empirical Approach to Cultural Translation.” Translation Studies 5 (3): 264–279. DOI logo  TSBGoogle Scholar
Geertz, Clifford
1973The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Readings. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Papastergiadis, Nikos
2012Cosmopolitanism and Culture. London: Polity.Google Scholar
Translation Studies forum on cultural translation
vols. 2 (2) in 2009 and 3 (1) and 3 (3) in 2010.