La traducción del tam-tam: las dificultades de traducir la cultura africana

López Argudo, Elena

La traducción del tam-tam: las dificultades de traducir la cultura africana

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Citation

López Argudo, E. La traducción del tam-tam: las dificultades de traducir la cultura africana. 2017. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/33984

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Abstract

The transferal of cultural traits from a source to a completely different target context and language poses an important challenge for any practicing translator. This project will focus on an analysis of the strategies used along the translation of a certain number of volumes belonging to the collection of African thought entitled Pensée d’hier pour demain, published by Wanafrica Ediciones. The translation of French language publications on African culture into Spanish presents two main difficulties: on the one hand, the translator faces a text which presents a culture that has already been rendered into a foreign language. In this project’s case, the volumes on African culture have undergone an initial phase of adaptation, from the source African languages into the target French, which inevitable entails a partial loss of the original nuances and meanings. On the other hand, this Francophone adaptation of an original text written in various African languages then undergoes a second and final phase of adaptation, from French into Spanish, which further aggravates the loss of the original African essence. This project aims to, on the one hand, demonstrate the untranslatability of certain cultural terms and concepts and, on the other hand, analyse the different translation processes used by foreign languages in order to absorb and acculturate native African concepts and ideas. An entire chapter dedicated to the phraseology of African languages has been included, as it is a clear example of the important relationship between context and language and how it influences the transferal of concepts, ideas and terms from one language to another.