FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH CULTURAL AWARENESS: ASSIGNMENTS OF CULTURE SPECIFIC ITEMS’ TRANSLATION IN AUDIOVISUAL MODE

Learning a foreign language requires not just linguistic and inter-linguistic knowledge such as grammatical or semantical structures but also the knowledge of the culture of the target language. Rendering of culture specific items is one of the most problematic issues among foreign language learners since they need a deep understanding of a language as well as culture. As noted by Mikutyte (2005), culture-specific items are very important in the context, they may cause understanding issues (Baker, 1992); moreover, they do not have only one correct way to be expressed: the same culture-specific item can be rendered diversely by different translators (Maasoum, 2011). When learning a foreign language such issues might be difficult to overcome for learners as well as diminish their motivation to learn a foreign language.
The students (N-40) majoring in translation studies were asked to analyse texts in the target language with the focus on rendering culture specific items from English to Lithuanian as well as identify the translation procedure used. The research methodology focuses on Espindola and Vasconcellos’ (2006) classification of culture specific items with further analysis of translation strategies by Davies (2003). The research paper analyses the translation of culture-specific items in audiovisual mode, the significance of correct understanding of culture-specific items in the process of language learning and, thus, emphasises the relevance of cultural awareness in foreign language learning.
The results of the research demonstrate that during the translation of culture-specific items the students confront difficulties because of the differences between cultures and languages. The students identified that the genre of the texts correlate with the types of culture specific items found in a particular text. The results of the analysis disclosed that the most frequent translation strategies applied were preservation and localisation. Moreover, students noted that there were cases when the meaning of a culture specific item was lost in the target text due to poor translation. Overall, it can be argued that translation assignments may be an effective foreign language learning method as the native language and the language being learned naturally intermingle through grammatical constructions, vocabulary and meaning (Leonardi, 2010). Translation assignments require flexibility and creativity in the process of language learning as well as awareness of peculiarities of languages and cultures. Thus, translation tasks help language learners to avoid culture-bound misunderstandings which might lead to critical communication problems.