The translation of food-related culture-specific items in the Valencian Corpus of Translated Literature (COVALT) corpus: a study of techniques and factors

ABSTRACT

This article aims to analyse the translation of food-related culture-specific items (CSI) in the English–Catalan subcorpus of the Valencian Corpus of Translated Literature (COVALT). This general aim can be broken down into two specific aims: to find out what techniques prevail in the translation of these cultural items, and to determine what factors influence the choice of specific techniques. Corpus analysis is carried out by means of the Corpus Query Processor. The theoretical framework deals with the definition and scope of the concept of CSI, the classifications of techniques put forward in the literature for the translation of CSI, and the position of food- and drink-related elements within the broader category of CSI. Analysis of the results yielded by the corpus shows that neutralising techniques prevail over foreignising and domesticating ones, with the latter coming last in descending order. The most prominent factors identified are non-existence of the source text (ST) item in the target culture, different degrees of institutionalisation, the ST item having been imported into the target culture, and different degrees of granularity. Correlations between techniques and factors are never very strong, but some are strong enough to deserve further attention.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture-specific item
• food and drink
• literary translation
• translation techniques
• factors
• COVALT corpus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Josep Marco is currently professor of literary translation and translation studies at Universitat Jaume I (Castelló, Spain). His main research interests lie in the areas of the translation of style, corpus-based translation studies, translator education and the history of literary translation into Catalan. He is a member of the COVALT research group. He is also a practising literary translator into Catalan and Spanish.

ORCID

Josep Marco http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0277-3889

Notes

1 I would like to make it clear from the start that the term correlation is not used in this article in a statistical sense, as no statistical test is performed in that respect. It merely hints at a possible cause–effect relationship between factors and techniques, no matter how weak it seems. This point will be taken up in Section 4.

2 Other classifications of techniques for the translation of CSI (e.g. Franco Aixelá, 1996; Davies, 2003) include creation, i.e. insertion of a culture-related item in the TT at a point where there was none in the ST. It is not included here because no instances of creation could possibly have been found in my corpus, since analysis was carried out exclusively from the ST component. Even so, its inclusion in the classification would be fully justified on theoretical grounds.

3 Unless otherwise stated, all translations from languages other than English are my own.

4 This corpus, as well as the other subcorpora making up COVALT (English–Spanish, German–Catalan, German–Spanish, French–Catalan, French–Spanish), can be accessed for research purposes upon request (http://www.covalt.uji.es).

5 Items not belonging to the three main categories are not numerous and include the following: pint, gallon and quart – all of them units of capacity.

6 However, one ST + TT segment pair was excluded from the counts, as the translation solution was so peculiar that I was unable to ascribe it to any translation technique. That is why the total number of segment pairs accounted for is 251.

7 These percentages do not include combinations of techniques (e.g. pure borrowing + amplification), which are not very prominent anyway and whose status is ambiguous, as they aim to reach a sort of compromise between the opposite demands of respect for ST configuration and target reader expectations.

8 This does not purport to be a thorough account of all possible factors impinging on translators’ decisions as regards CSI, as it was drawn inductively from a specific set of corpus data. Moreover, all these factors are inherent to the nature of CSI as a translation problem; they are all problem-internal, so to speak, whereas a translator's behaviour is conditioned to a large extent by external circumstances of all kinds, beyond the text itself and the textual problems it raises.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [FFI2015–68867–P]; Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación.