Before we discuss the relationship between language and culture, let us first define what language is. According to Chaika (1982:1-2):
Language can be seen as a way to describe and represent human experience and understanding of the world, and members of a language community share systems of beliefs and assumptions which underline their constructions of the world. These constructions, views of objective phenomena, beliefs, and histories are communicated through language, thus establishing a connection between language and the culture of a community.
As the above quotation suggests, language is considered part of culture. There is a very strong relation between language and culture. No culture could have become known or have flourished without a language, since this is the means through which our culture’s norms and heritage are expressed. Culture can only be articulated by a language, and each culture is strongly associated with language. Bassnett draws a scientific analogy for this relationship, stressing that: “Language is the heart within the body of culture, and it is the interaction between the two that results in the continuation of life-energy (1980:14)”.
21
Jiang (2000:328) supports Bassnett’s example, emphasizing that “Language and culture make a living organism; language is flesh, and culture is blood. Without culture, language would be dead”. In fact, many, if not all, scholars of linguistics and translation support the connection between a language and a culture. Chaika links language with culture in another way, defining the term ‘culture’ as ‘society’. In this regard, he postulates:
Language and society are so intertwined that it is impossible to understand one without the other. There is no human society that does not depend upon […] and does not itself shape language. Law, religion, government, education, the family - all carried are on with language […] We use language to reveal or conceal our personal identity, our character, and our background […] we manipulate others with language, and they manipulate us, often without either party being at all aware of the manipulation.
Chaika’s concept of connecting language with society is also apparent in the way we live and use language in our daily lives. That is to say, language is considered to be a tool that enables the other aspects of the culture to be formed and comprehended. Language is the product of a cultural society. When we learn a language in our childhood, it not only gives us a method of communication, but it also sets up the style and the form of the communications we make. The universe is controlled in accordance with the way we name it. A clear example of this claim is that if we say to a member of an Eskimo that “It is snowing”, he/she would think that we are being tremendously vague and unclear. This is because his or her language provides him or her with vocabulary for different types of snow, and each type has its own name. However, in our language register there is only one form of this phenomenon, which
22
is ‘snow’. Alternatively, Western people would regard the Eskimo as vague if he/she made an appointment with them for ‘some time later’. To North Americans, time is a real commodity. They can waste time, spend time, charge for time, kill time, pass time, sell time, and be on time. Therefore, language imitates and strengthens cultural models and systems (Gladstone 1969).
Nida (2001:13) came to the same conclusion as Chaika and Gladstone about language and culture, defining language as: “A set of verbal symbols that are primarily auditory, but secondarily written […] Language also constitutes the most distinctive feature of a culture, which may be described in a simplistic manner as the totality of the beliefs and practices of a society.”
As can be noted from Nida’s definition above, verbal communication and culture cannot be divorced from each other. They are fundamentally related to each other. Language is an observable fact, and it is both a public and individual one. It has a place in human society and our social environment. In addition, it makes it possible for human beings to communicate. Language is not only a fundamental part of culture, but also the major system by which all other cultural apparatuses of a civilization are expressed. We can say that it is also culturally learned. Humans are born with the psychological and neurological ability to speak, but they can only do that when they hear language spoken around them in their home and their society, i.e. the culture in which they live (Kara 1992).
As is apparent from the above statements about language that it is of great importance in understanding the identity, and to provide the character, of a given
23
culture. Culture cannot exist without language, and vice versa. This is also Bassnett’s (1980:14) point of view when she postulates that: “No language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have its center, the structure of natural Language”.
Having discussed a number of scholarly viewpoints, it has emerged that translators and translation students face very sensitive issues when translating from one culture to another. They are the terms which are called “connotation and denotation”. The following paragraphs reviews in detail how culture affects language, and how a word can convey totally different meanings in different cultures due to the influence of culture on language.
In language and culture, we can distinguish between denotative and connotative meaning: denotative is the bilingual dictionary, whereas connotative meaning is the intended meaning that a culture is attempting to convey rather than the language. However, as we are going to see throughout this discussion on language and culture, there are cultural misunderstandings, these misunderstandings are embodied in the use of language within the cultural context. The dictionary meaning of a word becomes very vague and gives no sense of whether this word acquires a new meaning from the culture where it is used. To make the idea clearer, let us consider an example of a word that is used differently in two totally unrelated cultures such as Arabic and English. An owl, for instance, makes a positive impression within English culture: it expresses wisdom. In Arab culture, on the other hand, the owl conveys the idea of a bad omen: if it is perching on a person’s house, many Arabs
24
believe that something negative will happen in that house. Therefore, Arabic words and their equivalents in English sometimes reflect different notions due to ‘culture’.
To further clarify the idea about denotation and connotation, an example from Emily Dickinson will be used to illustrate this. In her poetry she uses words like “rose” or “rosemary” to refer to a definable reality. The meaning of these is denotative if we look them up in a bilingual dictionary, we will find they refer to objects that grow in the real gardens of the real world. On the other hand, the meaning of “rose” and “rosemary” is more than just the plants that are grown in gardens: their meaning is associated with many things. They evoke meanings in the minds of her readers: a rose might be associated with love, passion, and beauty whilst rosemary might be associated with the smell of summer and the preservation of dried herbs. Both words draw these meanings from their connotation (Kramsch 1998).
As Kramsch’s example shows, culture and language are inextricably linked to each other, and language can be much better understood if we take culture into account. Therefore, all languages should be translated in terms of culture. Language and culture are very sensitive issues. People who are members of a specific tribe, culture or state will see the world through their inherited ideology, translation and customs. Some words that have a positive connotation in one culture may have a negative meaning in another. Due to culture, humans refer to different things by using a similar form of expression. For example, when an English person says “lunch”, he/she generally refers to a small, light meal since they are not used to eating a heavy meal for lunch. However, someone from China or the Middle East will normally refer to a heavy meal such as steamed rice in the case of Chinese, and
25
cous-cous, pasta, or rice with meat, in the case of the Arab. Therefore, the term “lunch” embraces all food eaten between 12-2 pm regardless of the kind of food or how heavy the meal is. That is to say, each culture has its own reference to it. Another example to be introduced here is the word “dog”, a term is used in all languages to refer to the same kind of animal. However, in English culture, a “dog” is known as man’s best friend, whereas in Arab culture, a “dog” is considered dirty, and in Chinese, a noisy guard animal. In addition, most Arab people associate “dogs” with being dirty and performing a security function, and a bad person can be criticized by calling him or her a “dog” (Jiang 2000).
In addition, depending on the context of its usage, a word can have one meaning or different meanings. Nida (2001) and Kramsch (1998) provide illustrative examples of this idea. Nida (2001) provides an example of one word that is used to refer to everything made of metal. Language is strongly associated with culture, so when a culture faces a change, language will also be affected by the change. This claim appears in the example of the cattle-raising Anuaks of the Sudan, who had thousands of terms for different colours, shapes, sizes, and ages of cattle, but at one time they had only one word for everything made of metal. Kramsch supports Nida’s argument, arguing that this occurs with many languages in the world. She points out that:
Different signs denote reality by cutting it up in different ways, as Whorf would say. For example, table, Tisch, mesa denote the same object by reference to a piece of furniture, but whereas the English sign “table” denotes all tables […]British English encodes anything south of the diaphragm as “stomach”, whereas in American English a “stomachache” denotes something different from a “bellyache” (Kramsch ibid.: 17).
26
Thus, translators face complexity when they render a language from one culture to another. If translators are unaware of the inextricable link between language and culture, they will not be able to present the accurate connotation of the words as used by native speakers of that language. Translation trainees who look up the meaning in a bilingual dictionary may be more confused. In this regard, Megrab (2002-2003:33) states that:
Arab students mix the term “collaborate” which may connote working with the enemy, with its synonym “cooperate” which does not share this connotative meaning. The word “gay” is understood by some Arab students as well as by most bilingual dictionaries to mean “happy” without their being aware of the new denotation (homosexual) that has accompanied the evolution of this term.
In my case, working on literary texts (i.e. the translation of the MSAPs), connotative meanings actually come before denotative meanings of a word. Newmark (1988: 16) supports this point of view. In this regard, he stresses that: “In a literary text, you have to give precedence to its connotations, since, if it is any good, it is an allegory, a comment on society, at the time and now, as well as on its strict setting”.
Baker (1992:21) also commented on such language and culture concepts, postulating that:
The source-language word may express a concept which is totally unknown to the target culture. The concept in question may be abstract or concrete; it may relate to a religious belief, a social custom, or even a type of food. Such concepts are often referred to as ‘culturally specific.
From what has been discussed above, language and culture play an important, if not crucial, role in the process of translation. Translators and translation trainees should
27
not ignore denotation and connotation in a given language and culture when they translate. This is because, as Snell-Hornby (1995:39) argues: “Language is not seen as an isolated phenomenon suspended in a vacuum but as an integral part of culture”. As part of language and culture, the following section will discuss translation and culture in order to show the reader some difficulties, which arise in the translation of culture. The next section will further extend the problem of translating culture, and I will attempt to determine the most appropriate suggestions that have been made by scholars to overcome such translation difficulties.