Cultural Problems of English- Kurdish Translation (original) (raw)

This thesis focuses on cultural words, items and expressions which require some amount of cultural background to be understood appropriately. It is intended to examine the difficulties and problems raised by cultural items and the range of translation procedures employed to explain the meaning of the problematic terms through the analysis of the lexis from such English cultural domains as Ecology, Material culture, Social culture- work and leisure, and organizations, customs, activities, procedures, concepts, political and administrative, religious, and artistic concepts and finally gestures and habits. The problem addressed in the process of translation through the cultural dimension is how far and to what extent the translated text should integrate in the target culture and how much it should retain of the source culture. To examine and tackle these problems, the thesis covers the following: Chapter one tackles the introduction which highlights the aim, the hypothesis, the procedures, and the data of the study. Chapter two explains translation and its definitions, kinds, translation as process and product, equivalence, methods, procedures, and theories of translation. Chapter three deals with culture, its definitions, characteristics, and also components of culture are included. It also deals with the relation between language and thought, and language and culture. Chapter four which is the core of the study covers the categories of culture and for each category more than one text is selected as example, and in each text the words that are problematic are underlined, and their meanings with the procedures adopted to solve the problems are discussed. Chapter five covers the summary, conclusions of the study and suggestions for further studies. Throughout the study, the percentages of the procedures that are used to overcome the problems are referred to. Among the most important conclusions we have drawn from the study are: since translation is culture- bound, the translator plays the role of mediator in the task of translating the problematic words to help the Kurdish reader to arrive at the exact meaning, and the transference strategy is the most prominent way to solve and control most of the problems and obstacles.