Cover not available
Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 16:1 (2021) ► pp.41–60

Radical cultural specificity in translation

ORCID logo | University of Manchester
Most existing discussions of cultural specificity in translation presume that although translation may be difficult, the meaning of culturally-specific terms is at least known. This article considers the possibility of “radical cultural specificity,” in which the meaning of the item is inaccessible to the reader or translator and no native participant in the source culture is available to advise. Based on the concepts of culturally-specific items from the work of Javier Aixelá and radical translation from the work of W.V.O. Quine, I develop the notion of radical cultural specificity using examples from medieval Celtic literature, highlighting the role of knowledge and lack of knowledge in interpretation and translation. The concept is then briefly applied to science fiction or speculative fiction as well, suggesting that these concerns are not merely the province of scholars of historical literature.
Keywords: culturally-specific items, radical translation, medieval literature, science fiction, cultural knowledge
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • What we know, and what we don’t know
  • On radical specificity and untranslatability
  • What we partly know
  • On strategies
  • What we invent
  • On strange beasts
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.18021.str
References (38)
References
Aixelá, Javier Franco. 1996. “Culture-specific items in translation.” In Translation, Power, Subversion, ed. by Román Álvarez and M. Carmen-África Vidal, 52–78. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Badke, David. 2011. The Medieval Bestiary. [URL]. Last accessed 18 March 2020.
Beebee, Thomas. 2012. Transmesis: Inside Translation’s Black Box. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Birnie, John. 1838. Account of the Families of Birnie and Hamilton of Broomhill, ed. by William B. Turnbull. Edinburgh: Printed for Private Distribution.Google Scholar
Boyd, Matthieu. 2016. “On not eating dog.” In Ollam: Studies in Gaelic and Related Traditions in Honor of Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, ed. by Matthieu Boyd, 35–46. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.Google Scholar
Brambilla, Marco (dir.). 1993. Demolition Man. Warner Brothers. DVD. Distrib. Warner Home Video Española. Region 2. Release date 1 December 2006.Google Scholar
Bromwich, Rachel (ed. and trans.). 2014. Trioedd ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain. 4th edition. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.Google Scholar
Cassin, Barbara (ed.). 2014. Dictionary of Untranslatables. trans. by Stephen Rendall, et al., ed. by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davis, Craig. 2005. “The earliest Arthurian poems in Welsh.” Metamorphosis 13(2): 128–141.Google Scholar
Dictionary of the Scots Language. n.d. [URL]. Last accessed 18 March 2020.
Electronic dictionary of the Irish language. n.d. [URL]. Last accessed 18 March 2020.
Hammond, Dick. 1999. Haunted waters: Tales of the Old Coast. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour.Google Scholar
Haycock, Marged (ed. and trans.). 2007. Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin. Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications.Google Scholar
Henry, P. L. 1982. “Furor heroicus.” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 391: 235–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, James S. 1994a. “The cross-temporal factor in verse translation.” In Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies, 35–44. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
1994b. “Rebuilding the bridge at Bommel: Notes on the limits of translatability.” In Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies, 45–52. 2nd. ed. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Kinsella, Thomas (trans). 1969. The Táin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Leslie, Jhone. 1888. The Historie of Scotland: Wrytten First in Latin by the Most Reuerend and Worthy Jhone Leslie... and Translated in Scottish by Father James Dalrymple... in... 1596. Vol I1. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons.Google Scholar
Loomis, Roger Sherman. 1941. “The Spoils of Annwn: An early Arthurian poem.” PMLA 56(4): 887–936. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mannheim, Bruce. 2015. “All translation is radical translation.” In Translating Worlds: The Epistemological Space of Translation, ed. by William F. Hanks and Carlo Severi, 199–219. Chicago: Hau Books.Google Scholar
Meyer, Kuno (trans.). 1888. “The wooing of Emer.” Archaeological Review 1(1–4): 68–75, 150–155, 231–235, 298–307.Google Scholar
(ed. and trans.). 1890. “The Oldest version of Tochmarc Emire .” Revue celtique 111: 433–57.Google Scholar
(ed. and trans.). 1904. “Death of Conla.” Ériu 11: 113–121. [URL]
Moore, Elizabeth. 2009. “‘In t-indellchró bodba fer talman’: A Reading of Cú Chulainn’s first recension ‘ríastrad.’” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 291: 154–176. [URL]
Mossop, Brian. 1996. “The image of translation in science fiction & astronomy.” The Translator 2(1): 1–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Rahilly, Cecile (ed. and trans.). 1967. Táin Bó Cúailnge from the Book of Leinster. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. 1959. “Meaning and translation.” In On Translation, ed. by Reuben Brower. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 148–172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. 1997. Antony and Cleopatra. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Strachan, John and J. G. O’Keeffe (eds). 1912. The Táin Bó Cúailnge from the Yellow Book of Lecan. Dublin and London: Royal Irish Academy.Google Scholar
Tymockzo, Maria. 1999. Translation in a Postcolonial Context. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Van Hamel, A. G. (ed.). 1978. Compert Con Culainn. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.Google Scholar
van Zanten, Arwen. 2007. “Going berserk: In Old Norse, Old Irish and Anglo-Saxon literature.” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 631: 43–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1992. Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Washbourne, Kelly. 2015. “The outer limits of otherness: Ideologies of human translation in speculative fiction.” Translation Studies 8(3): 284–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Windisch, Ernst (ed.). 1880. Irische Texte mit Wörterbuch. Leipzig: Hirzel.Google Scholar
Wright, Crispin. 2017. “Indeterminacy of translation.” In A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, 2nd ed., ed. by Bob Hale, Crispin Wright, and Alexander Miller. Wiley Online Library. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Tudela, Elisa Sampson Vera
2022. Daniel Alarcón’sLost City Radioand the work of translation. Journal of Romance Studies 22:2 ► pp. 217 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.