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The Translation of Culture-Specific Items: An Analysis of Nadine Gordimer’s English Short Stories and Their Punjabi Translation by Waqar Ahmad Paul

Language, Literature and Culture
Vol.2 , No. 2, Publication Date: Apr. 9, 2019, Page: 31-40

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Authors

[1]	Hafiz Umair Qayyum, Department of English, Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan.
[2]	Imran Ali, Department of English, Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan.

Abstract

Translation of culture-specific items has always been the core issue in translating literary or non-literary pieces of work as these texts are deeply and firmly rooted in the source culture. The various culture-based terms, items and words pose great challenges for a translator. These obstacles have got the engrossment of many theorists and researchers of translation studies and they are carrying out consequential researches in the field of translation studies. The bourn of this research is to identify the culture-specific items in Nadine Gordimer’s English short stories and to scrutinize the translation strategies used by the translator in translating them into Punjabi language. This research is accomplished by using Newmark’s taxonomy, as a framework, of translation strategies for culture-specific items. After the descriptive analysis of the CSIs (culture-specific items) of the SL (source language- English) text and their translated TL (target language- Punjabi) text equivalents, the findings of this research work show that the translator has applied the ‘transference’ strategy the most in translating the CSIs of the SL text. At the second level, the translator has used the strategy ‘shift or transposition’. At the third level, the translator has carried out the strategy ‘synonymy’. After them the other strategies are used respectively.

Keywords

Translation Studies (TS), Culture-Specific Items (CSIs), Source Language (SL), Target Language (TL) and Translation Strategies

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