Caracterització tèrmica

Culture has been defined in different ways by different writers. I will consider a few representative definitions in the following paragraphs. According to Taylor (1958: 1), the term 'culture' addresses the following categories of human activity: the 'personal,' where people think and function; the 'collective, which functions in a social context; and the 'expressive,' where society is involved. Taylor (1958:1) defines culture as the complex whole, which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities or habits acquired by man as a member of a society.

According to the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1931: 78-81), culture deals with the totality of behavior patterns which are arrived by patterns which are carried by tradition and lodged in the group. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ''culture" in the statement sense as ''the training and refinement of mind, tastes and maners; the condition of being thus trained and refined; the intellectual side of civilization'. Other sense of 'culture' in the Oxford English Dictionary varies from descriptions of the "Arts" to plant and bacteria cultivation and include a wide range of intermediary aspects. Culture is in fact a term of wide application. It

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deals with all human life. It covers all inherited human characters, learning, manners, customs, religious beliefs, conventions and traditions.

Sapir (1949: 808) argues that 'culture' is used in three main senses or groups of senses. In the first one, culture is technically used by the ethnologist and culture historian to embody any socially inherited element in the life of man, material and spiritual. Culture so defined is coterminous with man himself, for even the lowest savages live in a social world characterized by a complex network of traditionally conserved habits, usages, and attitudes. The second application of the term refers to a rather conventional ideal of individual refinement, built up on a certain modicum of assimilated knowledge and experience but made up chiefly of a set of typical reactions that have the sanction of a class and a tradition of long standing.

'Culture' in the third sense shares with the first, technical, conception an emphasis on the spiritual possessions of the group rather than of the individual and with the second one it shares a stressing of selected factors out of the vast whole of the ethnologist's stream of culture as intrinsically more valuable, more characteristic, more significant in a spiritual sense than the rest.

Accordingly, social values, traditions, knowledge and habits acquired by a person in the society shape most of culture which is transmitted from one epoch to another and from one society to another through the use of it by people.

There is a close relation between language and culture. Language is an integral part of culture because the vocabulary drives its meaning from its culture. Language and culture may thus be seen as intimately linked and both aspects must be considered for translation. “Translation is a kind of activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions" (Toury 1978: 200). As this statement implies, translators are permanently faced with the problem of how to treat the cultural aspects implicit in a source text (ST) and of finding the most appropriate technique for successfully conveying these aspects in the target language (TL). These problems may vary in scope depending on the cultural and linguistic gap between the two (or more) languages concerned (Nida 1964: 130).

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Dickins et al (2002: 29) point out that general cultural differences are sometimes in fact bigger obstacles to successful translation than linguistic differences. There are cultural gaps relating to different aspects of societies, that lead to linguistic gaps. Kussmaul (1995:70) explains that translators have to be aware of the fact that readers' expectations, their norms and values, are influenced by their culture and that their comprehension of utterances is to a large extent determined by these expectations, norms and values.

When considering the translation of cultural words and notions, Newmark proposes two opposing methods: transference and componential analysis (Newmark, 1988a: 96). Transference is the process of transferring an SL word to a TL text, and includes transliteration. Componential analysis means “comparing an SL word with a TL word which has a similar meaning but is not an obvious one-to-one equivalent, by demonstrating first their common and then their differing sense components” (Newmark, 1988a:114). As Newmark mentions, transference gives "local colour," keeping cultural names and concepts. Although placing the emphasis on culture, meaningful to initiated readers, he claims this method may cause problems for the general readership and limit the comprehension of certain aspects. Newmark goes on to propose componential analysis, which he describes as "the most accurate translation procedure, which excludes the culture and highlights the "message" (Newmark, 1988a: 96).

To some extent developing Newmark’s ideas, Dickins et al (2002: 29) use the term ‘cultural transposition’ for the main types and degree of departure from literal translation that one may resort to in the process of transferring the contents of an ST from one culture to another. And any degree of cultural transposition involves the addressing features with their roots in the source culture. They visualize the various degrees of culture transposition as points along a scale between the extremes of exoticism and culture transplantation as follows;

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Figure 3.8

Source-cultural bias Target-cultural bais

Exoticism and Calque Cultural borrowing Communication translation Cultural transplantation

Nida (1964: 91) divides cultural features into political, social, religious, material and ecological. Islamic banking, the subject of the following section, can be regarded as belonging to social and religious culture.

3.5.1 Islamic Banking from a cultural perspective

Haq and Smithson (2003) stress the influence of culture and religion on Islamic Banking, quoting Robertson (1996):

Culture is an important ingredient of the global field. Every community or institution has a culture. Culture has been defined as everything that people have, think and do as members of the community. It can be described as the order of life in which humans construct meaning through practices of symbolic representation or it can be seen as a concept individuals, groups and societies produce and acquire in order to function effectively. Thus culture in the democratic anthropological sense describes a ‘whole way of life’; it is not an exclusive property of the privileged but inclusive of all manner of everyday practices. It is ordinary in every society and in every mind. Culture’s significance varies considerably in a society’s history, as well as across societies and civilizations (Robertson 1996).

They go on to explain, quoting Haynes (1999), that:

‘religion as, a key element of culture, can be described as a cluster of beliefs, which are used in day-today activities. It is more than ecology of themes for social communication rather it is a specific way of communicating. It is not just cultural arbitrariness, but it is also systemic. Religion does not just lie in its capacity for

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differentiation (of people), it also lies in its ability to structure and lend meaning to the everyday, to the local world of interaction’ (Haynes 1999).

In Islam one of the most important aspects of living in the Muslim society is the kind of the relationships which develop between its members. These relations can be seen in the love, care, affection, friendliness and consideration among the people which lead to one community. All rules and laws of Islamic banking are deep rooted to strengthen the relationship between members of the society. These rules and laws become like a cultural heritage. A Muslim needs to take care of his needy brothers and sisters whoever they are through offering and extending charitable donations. This is partly achieved through Zakah, which can be seen either as an act of worship since it is the third pillar of Islam or as an obligatory right of the poor over the rich gives the social life of the society more friendly relations and makes the society more healthy. Zakāt, which is obligatory on every adult Muslim who completely owns a certain amount of wealth باصن (niṣāb) represents a good chance for poor people to have their needs provided for by wealthy people. Beside Zakah there is charity هقدص ṣadaqah which can also help to strengthen the bonds of friendship in a society. There are many aspects that help to make a cohesive society in the field of Islamic banking. One of the important risks that is crucial to modern economics is interest which is the fee charged for the opportunity of borrowing money. Financial instruments in contemporary financial markets are based on interest, which is prohibited in Islam. Interest spurs economic efficiency and creates wealth through the increase of money given by borrowers to lenders without right. These deeds are deep rooted in western society and culture. In contrast Islam does not have this feature. Islam goes for financial intermediation. This involves bringing together those who have spare money with those who are in need of money. Accordingly, the surplus and deficit units are required to cooperate for efficient use of resources. This was clear from the very beginning of Islam when the mechanism of financial intermediation was practiced through methods of financial markets such as mušārakah and murābaḥah, as mentioned in chapter two.