Abstract:

Translation tasks in the language classroom are effective as well as challenging teaching / learning tool, especially because of translation of some challenging language units or concepts. This especially is related to translation of cultural items and concepts that deal with various problematic cases because of cultural diversities. One of the problems translators face – culture clashes, culture-specific items, culturally bound words, which may not even exist in the target language. Then the right choice has to be made to convey the same meaning. As a part of a language, culture-specific items tend to cause many problems for the translators due to their relation to the source culture. Translators’ main task is to maintain the same idea in the target text, however, due to the non-existent equivalent of the same value, it may become quite challenging. Thus, being aware of such culture as well as language diversities is essential for foreign language learners.

The aim of this research paper is to analyse the translation of culture-specific items in audiovisual texts while employing translation activities as language learning tool for translation students. 25 translation studies students were employed in the research. The students were asked to recognize culturally bound elements in the source texts, classify them, and identify translation strategies applied in the translation of culture-specific items.

Therefore, the analysis in this research paper can be helpful to understand the main peculiarities of cultural realia. The results of the research identify localization translation strategy to be the most popular one when handling the translation of place or personal names. Preservation of content is mostly used in literal translation of personal names, while preservation of form is used to preserve the names of companies and organizations. Other translation strategies of culture specific items include strategies like globalization, transformation, addition and omission. As a result, the paper provides information concerning the translation of culture-bound words with the focus on translation related activities as an effective language learning tool in the language classroom.

Keywords:

Language teaching/learning, translation related language learning tasks, translation of culture specific items, cultural realia in language learning.