1 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2020
    1. Culture-specific lexis refers to those items in a text which are deemed to be unique to a particular culture, and may pose problems for translation from the source text (ST) into target text (TT). These items are a challenging area for translation as the way these are dealt with directly affects the finished product; potential problems could be, for example, what Venuti (1998Venuti, L. (1998). Strategies of translation. In M. Baker (Ed.), Routledge encyclopaedia of translation studies (pp. 240–244). London, UK: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) calls the foreignization, when the characteristics of a text unique to the source text culture are preserved as much as possible at the sake of readability, or on the opposite side, domestication of a text. A problem translators face is the question of how to deal with cultural aspects which are contained in a source text, and finding the most appropriate way to successfully convey these in the target text. Culture-specific lexis can include those culture references which may be part of a culture’s daily life, within the society of which that culture’s members share a set of values, beliefs, ideas and knowledge, and which they have direct access to. Examples would be places or shop names, such as Waitrose or Kensington in the UK, Kangnam in South Korea, or Ginza in Japan. These place names carry connotations or feelings which members of society share.