The strategies used by the translators to depict the French cultural aspects into Sinhala

Abstract

A variety of languages with different cultures has created a great demand for the translation in the current diversified society. Translation, according to Marianne Lederer, is a process of reading, understanding of a source language text and rewriting it in a target language. We create a similar situation in foreign language. Therefore, the translation plays an important role on crossing through different cultures and communication. Thus, the translators are always in the risk of finding the terms for their translations as they have to fully comprehend the idea and the environment of the source text. There are idioms, colloquial terms, borrowings, special terminologies in the domain and cultural expressions which make the task of a translator more complicate. This paper provides an insight to the strategies used by the Sinahala translators, who translate directly from French, to portray the source French culture in Sinahala. Encompassing the theory of source oriented or target oriented by Jean-Rene Ladmiral, it explicates the methods of two Sinhala translators who have translated the novel : L‘etranger by a great French novelist Albert Camus. To be more specific on the methodology, which is a descriptive analysis, the author depicts how these translators have presented the French cultural aspects which include the behavior, courtship, morals, customs, clothing, institutions, and beliefs etc. in their Sinhala translation. Having acknowledged the content of the translations, and vividly analyzing the strategies, it is evident that each translator has his own method of presenting the cultural aspects. One can use transcoding process not only focusing on the language but also on the cultural transposition. Thus, he can either contemplate on the reader of the target text or source text. Moreover, he can develop his own adaptation.