Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)
ALBERT PÉTER VERMES Culture in Translation: Strategies and Operations
98 Albert Péter Vermes Bunkócska te drága , reference to a Russian song well-known in the Hungary of the Communist era.). 5. Conclusions As for the use of the different operations in implementing strategic intentions, the examples seem to justify the assumption that transference and translation proper, motivated by an attempt to preserve the contextual effects of the original, serve as the essential means of foreignising, while substitution and modification basically serve the purposes of domesticating, since their use is sanctioned primarily by the need to optimise the level of processing effort. The foreignising approach is most marked with expressions referring to persons and topographic features which serve to establish the cultured and physical setting for the story and are predominantly transferred, while the domesticating approach is roost apparent in the case of expressions relating to situation schemas, which are almost exclusively substituted, since these are so deeply entrenched in the cognitive environments of readers that any deviation here would probably result in irrelevant effects because of an unwarranted increase in the effort required to process the expressions in question. What a closer look at the examples suggests is that the target text is fairly balanced in the sense that while it reveals a strong overall inclination toward the foreignising strategy, this is not accomplished in a rigid manner and it gives way to domesticating procedures when their use seems more appropriate. Naturally, in a secondary communication situation the ideal of direct translation, which could only be achieved, if at all, though by no means indubitably, through an uncompromising foregnising strategy, is not a realistic aim. It makes a lot more sense to accept that the differences between the cultural contexts will inevitably lead to losses in translation and to try and do the best one can in such a situation: compromise and let go of certain communicative intentions of the original in favour of other more directly relevant ones which can be saved. Sources Esterházy, Péter. 1990. ffrabal könyve. Budapest: Magvető Kiadó. Esterházy, Péter. 1993. The Book of Hrabal. Translated by Judith Sollosy. London: Quartet Books.
