The “Cultural Turn” in Translation Studies

The perennial debate on the place of Translation Studies (TS) within the matrix of scholarly disciplines, which is often seen as a rivalry between two potential “hosts,” i.e. linguistics and literature, abated after some TS scholars, and notably Mary Snell-Hornby in her seminal article on “cultural approach” (1990), successfully argued for a radical move from text to culture as the unit of translation. Defining the “translation unit” in terms of culture rather than in terms of lexicon, morphology or syntax was a step far more revolutionary than an earlier passage from “word” to “text.” As the result, what Snell-Hornby called “linguistic transcoding” has become “cultural transfer,” and the role of the translator came to be seen as that of “mediator between cultures” rather than “code-switcher.” In terms of the translator's professional competence, it was then postulated that, “[s]ince languages express cultures, translators should be bicultural, not bilingual” (Bassnett and Lefevere 1990: 11).

In effect, TS theorists no longer talk about “equivalence” as a measure of faithfulness (or “goodness”) of a translation. Instead, they are inclined to evoke Eugene Nida's classical notion of “functional equivalence,” whereby a particular translation may be called “equivalent” to the original if its functioning in the target culture is the same as the function that the original performs in the source culture. For all practical purposes, the “sameness” is taken here to mean (a certain degree of) “similarity”: “sameness” sensu strict is tantamount to “identity” – a goal unattainable by definition.