Browsing by Author "Dayarathne, P.N.N.D."

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The influence of culture on literary translation of Japanese Language into Sinhala
(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Dayarathne, P.N.N.D.
Language and culture are two inter-related fields. One cannot learn a language without its culture. It comes automatically with language studies. Therefore, learning a language is not the mere learning of letters, words and sentence patterns but learning a way of thinking, living, eating, dressing and all other cultural aspects of the native speakers. Language invariably becomes the medium of effective communication as people use language for sharing ideas. With the development of the field of applied linguistics, translation has become a very popular area in the world. The field of translation has number of categories such as technical translation, religious translation, legal translation, science translation and literary translation. Every such category of translation uses language and the translator should be competent enough to handle both source and target languages. However, when it comes to literary translations, the translator should be well equipped with the language and the cultural background of that particular language, because literature is not only the language but also encompasses culture. Therefore, knowing the grammar of a language is not a qualification to become a literary translator. In a literarypiece of work, we found culture-bound terms (cultural words) which are very unique to that particular language. If there is a cultural word found in the source text the translator needs to find an equivalent for this word in the target language, or to find any other way of representing the meaning of that word without misleading the readers of the target language. It is not an easy task as culture differs from one to another. This research study is about the difficulties faced by the literary translators in translating the cultural words with special reference to the translated Japanese novels to Sinhala. Sinhala translators of Japanese literature have used three main techniques to translate the cultural words, namely, cultural equivalence, word to word translation and word substitution.
A Linguistic Study on the Japanese Translation of “Viragaya”
(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Dayarathne, P.N.N.D.
This research discusses the possible cultural influences on translation with special reference to the cultural words found in Professor Tadash Noguchi‟s Japanese translation of the Sinhalese novel “Viragaya” by Martin Wickramasinghe. The aim of this research is to find out how the culture influences translation and how the problems created by cultural words in translation can be solved using the appropriate strategies which suite both surface and contextual meaning of the particular cultural word. The cultural data related to the cultural words from the original text and its translation was categorised according to several sub topics such as religious terms, units of measuring, foods and beverages, clothing items, proper nouns etc. The categorised data was analysed based on the translation strategies used by the translator. The data analysis proved that the cultural words which appear in SL text have been greatly influenced by the Theravada Buddhism where the translator sometimes have found it difficult to translate the concepts to the TL as most of the TL readers are from Mahayana background. Moreover, the translator had to face problems in translating beliefs, traditions and customs appearing in the SL text as they are totally different from that of the target culture. To overcome the aroused problems regarding the cultural words translation, the translator has used three main strategies as; borrowing the words from SL, use of cultural equivalent and creation. This research points out that a literary translator should have sufficient knowledge in both source language and target language along with their respective cultures, aiming a more successful translation which paves the path to the TL readers to touch an untouched culture smoothly.