On The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words And Expressions In Wild: A Communicative Approach

Literary works are reflections of a culture whereas translation of these works iscommunication between cultures. In the course of communication, culturaldifferences are never evitable. Translators, the mediator in between, as a result, haveto gain their mastery in dealing with such problem, hence facilitating an effective andamicable communication between the two peoples.Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Stayed’ memoir, hasrevealed to readers how the author have managed to finish her1,100-mile hike on thePacific Crest Trail,“a continuous wilderness trail that went from the Mexican borderin California to just beyond the Canadian border along the crest of nine mountainranges”, all on her own in three months with an aim to rebuild her shattered life afteryears of miserable indulgence in her mother’s death. In her book, Cheryl leads readersinto her culture in her own way: truthfully, sentimentally and wildly.When translating the non-fiction, the translator has struggled to deal with itsculture-loaded words and expressions in order to make the translation natural fortarget readers. The report, consequently, would focus on discussing translation in thisrespect with a communicative approach which is mainly concerned with theacceptability of target readers and the readability of the translated text. Just as whatPeter Newmark remarks,“Translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace awritten message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/orstatement in another language.” In communicative translation, translators are lessconfined to linguistic forms than to the content. Based on this approach, the reportwould further undertake to classify culture-loaded words and expressions according tothe five elements of culture Samovar has mentioned in his book CommunicationBetween Cultures, namely the historical, the religious, the values-based, the social,and the linguistic. Afterwards, the thesis will proceed to discuss the translationstrategies of CWEs. In translating those terms, such strategies have been adopted as transliteration with annotation, cultural substitution, paraphrase and amplification.Translators, as cultural go-betweens, are required not only to gain proficiency inlanguages, but also to maintain comprehensive understanding of two different cultures.With the absence of either requirement, they can never achieve an effective andsuccessful intercultural communication.