Anàlisi dels referents culturals de Bridget Jones’s Diary: les tècniques de traducció en català i castellà

Abstract

Culture and language are topics commonly discussed and a delicate area of translation because it is extremely difficult to be conscious and determine the knowledge of the readers about cultural references. The main aim of this paper is to analyze two different translations of Helen Fielding’s iconic novel Bridget Jones’ Diary into two closely connected languages, Spanish and Catalan, and see how they have dealt with all the cultural references in order to test the following hypothesis: a large amount of cultural references have not been translated and how that can affect the perception of the novel and if it is going to be the same in all the languages analyzed in this paper. In order to do so 151 referents have been analyzed; they have been divided in cultural categories and in procedures of translation comparing both languages as the same time a survey has been taken by X people. Taking into account the different results it is safe to affirm that most of the cultural references in both translations are not adequate to the cultural knowledge of the target. Basically, this study shows the difficulty of determining the readers’ cultural background.