Abstract:
The students of literary translation as well as the writers who are interested in
writing about alien cultures in their native language, encounter problems in
presenting cultural words of that particular community. As the elements in one
culture might be absent in another culture, cultural words in one language might
not be in another language as well. The aim of this study is to ascertain the
methodology used by Leonard Woolf in his novel, "The Village in the Jungle"
in replacing the cultural terms appeared in Sinhalese into English. In order to
collect data, ten cultural words from the text have been selected and was
observed the way that these terms have been presented and explained. The
findings highlight the way how Leonard Woolf has employed several methods
to present the terms in his novel that are unique to Sinhalese. Among them,
inserting the Sinhalese pronunciation in English letters in the paragraph and
explaining the meaning of the particular term in the paragraph itself or at the
bottom of the page using footnotes are prominent. Apart from that, applying
Sinhalese terms in English alphabet, without any explanation was also observed.
In conclusion, this research will guide the students of literary translation and the
authors who are interested in writing unfamiliar culture related texts in their own
mother tongue, to understand the methods of translating and presenting cultural
words, to be used in their future writings.
