14
Consistent with the source model of translation, which views translation as
a technical exercise by which a source text is „correctly‟ rendered from one
language to another, this approach assumes „a clear and unambiguous
relationship between language and empirical reality and translation equals
the transfer of objective information‟ (Tietze, 2008: 215), and thus
takes
for granted that it is possible to achieve a directly equivalent translation
between languages. A language strategy coming from a mechanical
perspective is likely to encourage adoption of a lingua franca. As
translation is viewed as
a straightforward matter, MNCs adopting this
approach may use their own staff rather than professional translators.
Cultural perspective
The target model in translation studies emphasises the importance of the
target audience and of the need to recognise the cultural dimension of
language. In this model the translator‟s detailed knowledge of language is
not sufficient; s/he will also need some understanding of culture. This
encourages a cultural perspective on language use, and leads
to strategy
which is more respecting of the diversity of native languages spoken
within the MNC and views translators as „mediators between different
cultural meaning systems‟ (Janssens et al, 2004: 422).
The requirement
for knowledge of both language and culture leads to a preference for
15
native speakers as they are conversant with, and able to adjust texts for,
the target culture. This would appear to place constraints on the
translator‟s range of practice – for example, an American fluent in English
and Spanish who has worked in Mexico would seem to be an obvious
choice to act as an interpreter for business
meetings between Mexican
and American executives, but is s/he equally competent to provide
interpretation for a meeting of Spanish and Australian executives? The
fact that such questions rarely arise, even in situations where appropriate
translation would seem of supreme importance, underlines that the
mechanical perspective remains the dominant paradigm in terms of
language strategy in international management (Welch, Welch and
Piekkari, 2005).
Political perspective
Building upon the cultural perspective, the political perspective
acknowledges the importance of recognising different linguistic-cultural
meaning systems but emphasises the issues of power associated with
decisions on language use. The selection of a lingua franca is perhaps
the most obvious example of such a decision – a merger of two MNCs
from different countries may seem less a merger and more a takeover if
the language of one country is chosen as the merged company‟s lingua
16
franca – see Charles (2007) for an extended discussion of such issues.
Other decisions might include what gets translated, and who gets to
decide this. The political perspective leads
to language strategy which
recognises the potential power dynamics of decisions on language use,
and the role of translators in this perspective is as „negotiators between
competing value systems‟ (Janssens et al, 2004: 426).
The different perspectives
are not mutually exclusive, and in this article we
examine an issue which can be seen to relate to all of them – the issue of
„untranslatable‟ words. This might seem a problem only for language
strategy based on a mechanical perspective, but we suggest the inability
to render a clear mechanical translation leads to issues around how to
translate the word so as to convey the meaning to the target culture. In
addition, the process of deciding whether the inability to translate the word
is a matter of any importance is clearly an issue which can be viewed from
the political perspective. In order to explore this issue we have chosen as
an exemplar the Farsi word,
tarouf
, an important cultural
concept in Iran
for which there is no directly equivalent word (or concept) in English.
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