Cultural Problems in Translation

Abstract – This paper deals with several instances where translation becomes difficult in the cultural context, with special reference to translating the Telugu novel, Repati Velugu (1965?, Reprint 2010), written by Dwivedula Visalakshi, into English. One of the major problems in translation is the dissimilarity in the cultures of the source language and target language makes it very difficult to find a proper translation equivalent. The English culture, which gives the freedom to call any elder member of a family or a stranger by their names, is quite in contrast to the Indian traditional context. The honorific, usually attached to an ‘Indian’ address of an elderly person or one unacquainted, is missing in English. As such, it is not possible to use any rough equivalent with the status of a near equivalent. The quest for finding a perfect word is successful sometimes, but it also fails at many other times. This paper focuses on some of the crucial situations where one gets into a fix, not able to find proper translation equivalents.