Portrayal of Sinhalese Culture through Translation: A Comparative Study of the Socio-cultural Terms Used in the Sinhalese First Translation and the Retranslation of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Abstract

Translation is the conversion of an idea in one language to another language. When this process is considered in depth, one clear thing is that it is not merely a linguistic process, but acts as a medium for exchanging culture-related facts. If the translation is done between two heterogeneous cultures, the translator encounters a challenge i.e.the non-availability of equivalent socio-cultural terms when translating a text (belonging to the Western culture) that is originally in English into Sinhalese while presenting with closeness to the Sinhalese reader. This research aimed to identify which translation presents the socio-cultural terms closer to the target language culture when the source text has been translated twice into the same target language. Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations has been translated into Sinhalese by several translators from time to time. When its’ Sinhalese first Translation, Romāgē Vāsanāva by E. R. Erathne (1944/2016) and retranslationUdāraApēkṣā (2001/2011) by Chandra Anagirathne are taken into consideration, it is observed that the presentation of socio-cultural terms in the source text to target reader community has been done in ways different from each other. This research has been conducted using a comparative analysis under a qualitative methodology, having selected the extracts with sociocultural terms from the source text and their corresponding first translation and retranslation. The analysis depicted that, through the strategy of domestication, the translation has been done with closeness to the Sinhalese culture rather than retranslation.