Cultural Aspect in Language Translation in the Post-Colonial Era

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Cultural Aspect in Language Translation in the Post-Colonial Era
The use and the interpretation of literary text across different cultures has often been an issue of interest among different scholars. Most Western scholars and Russian scholars have emphasized the importance of viewing language from the perspective of Pre-Translation Text Analysis (PTA) that consists of various factors for people to have a clear understanding of language (Bassnett 301). Most of these authors suggest that it is important to carry out a consideration of the external factors surrounding the translation of a literary text, get to know the genre and style of the text and designating the type of information that has been presented in any literary text. One thing that perhaps stands out from the views of these authors is that culture often influences the way a language is read and interpreted. In a post-colonial era, most of the societies across the world use language as a tool of communication. Most of the literary texts used in most of these societies have been translated from one language to another. Most of the societies particularly in Africa, the Middle East, and some Indian sub-continents are struggling with their identity due to colonization. Some African authors such as Ngugi wa Thiongo do argue that language is indeed an expression of culture and it is not good for African communities to abandon their languages and embrace the language of the Western countries. As Ngugi puts it, it is a 'new form of colonization'. Perhaps as a response to Ngugi's suggestions, several Western literary texts have been translated into the African languages. However, these texts often fail to be popular among the people since they do not take into consideration the external factors surrounding the community that will use the translation. In his 1921 essay The Task of the Translator, Walter Benjamin argues that translation should be viewed from the perspective of an art rather than a secondary derivative of any literary text (Benjamin 258). Translating Western literary text with Benjamin's arguments in mind can play a great role in understanding among local communities. This paper utilizes the post-colonialism theory of literature by relying on Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature.
One of the popular approaches put forward by theorists in the translation of language is the functional approach. The approach emphasizes that for a literary text to be well translated, it must take into account the established parts related to the communication aspects of the target culture or group (Ayupova 215). As a translator of the language, there is no need for you to strain yourself with an understanding of the original meaning of the text. Instead, you should try to carry out a thorough analysis of the intended receivers of the message by looking at several factors such as culture. In line with this, Walter Benjamin argues that the task of the translator should be "to serve the purpose of expressing the innermost relationship of languages to one another” (Benjamin p. 255). He further discusses that the relationship that exists between two different languages can be referred to a...