A study on translating cultural terms from Sinhala to English with special reference to the 1st Cultural Category introduced by Peter Newmark

Abstract

Cultural issues may arise from differences between cultural references, such as names of food, clothes and cultural connotations, in general. Peter Newmark introduced five cultural categories in his book“A TextBook of Translation", which are perfectly applicable during the process of translating cultural terms. Accordingly, ecology is different from other cultural categories because it is free from political and commercial factors. The Sinhala language has a vast variety of ecological terms compared to the English language. Therefore it generates a wider capacity for misinterpretations and misunderstandings. This has become one of the most critical and common issues that translators face regularly. The objective of this research was to find out the ecological terms used in Sri Lanka and the difficulties found by Sinhala translators while translating those terms from Sinhala to English. Required data consisted of primary and secondary data. Primary data were analyzed through questionnaires and paper articles. Secondary data were collected through Sinhala to English translated novels. Furthermore, it was found that there are few ways of translating these ecological terms successfully and that to accomplish that task, the translator should have a good knowledge of both source and target language cultures. Eventually, this research will pave a path for translating cultural terms successfully.