Presenting Sinhalese Cultural Words in English: A Study Based on Leonard Woolfs "The Village in the Jungle"

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.