Language and culture are intrinsically linked. A high-quality translation that is accurate and appropriate from a linguistic and cultural perspective will always involve far more than simply translating content word for word. Therefore, as cross-cultural communication continues to expand, professional translators require expert language skills and a deep understanding of cultural concepts.
The values, beliefs, customs, and traditions shared by a specific culture play a huge role in how we interact with the world. In translation, challenges can arise when cultural concepts do not exist in the target language, or when the translation involves different writing formats and systems, such as Korean, Chinese and Arabic.
Failure to accurately convey meaning and ideas in a cultural context could not only offend your audience but also lead to devastating financial and reputational damage. No one wants to find themselves involved in a major translation failure like the one concerning the poorly translated subtitles in Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’.
But at least one positive outcome from this high-profile translation error has been a lively debate among native Koreans about the need for accurate translations with culturally specific foreign language scripts.
In response to the mistranslations and omissions of subtle cultural references, Vice’s Eileen Cho said: “I can’t recall ever feeling personally attacked by subtitles before Squid Game. How will people learn about our culture if the streamer is mistranslating the language?”
James Chung, a Korean American translator based in Seoul said: “The English subtitle was reasonable for some basic lines, but then there would be glaring issues for culturally specific lines or for portions that were put in for subtle character development.”
Avoiding cultural missteps when translating
Functioning as they do in entertainment, subtitles are a common area for cultural issues to arise in translations. But the lessons they can teach us are universal across all applications, from marketing to technical translation.
Let’s look at what else can cause potential missteps in translating cultural concepts. And because we’ve mentioned Korean, we’ll focus on two of the other most challenging languages – Arabic and Chinese – to see what impact using such different writing formats to English has in translation work.
Tone & style
Professional translators are aware of the cultural nuances in tone and style to avoid serious errors. For example, a grandfather might speak differently to a gangster, so it’s important to use appropriate words, phrases, and sentence structures to accurately convey someone’s age, status, and personality.
Different writing formats
Languages including Arabic and Chinese use different writing formats, keyboards, and some even write from right to left. Negotiating these differences needs to be considered in the broader context of the piece of work being translated as they have implications for layout.
Different dialects
Arabic is the fifth most spoken language in the world, spoken by 313 million native speakers. However, there are many different dialects, which can be confusing. Many speakers prefer to adapt their language when speaking to people with different dialects rather than adopt Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which was introduced to streamline communication in the region. Anecdotally, many Arab speakers are rumoured to dislike MSA as it seems overly formal.
Compound words
Many languages feature compound words, and some are easier to decipher than others. It’s relatively straightforward in English – think ‘tooth’ + ‘brush’ = ‘toothbrush’. However, this is not always the case in Chinese, so context and language knowledge are key. For example:
dōng (东) means ‘east’, and xī (西) means ‘west’. But as a compound, dōng xī (东西) means ‘thing’.
Idioms
Idiomatic expressions exist in many languages. But without high-level cultural and linguistic skills, they can cause havoc in translations, especially if no equivalent or literal meaning exists.
Idioms in Arabic are deeply rooted in history, culture, values, and traditions. So, translators need high-level Arabic language skills and knowledge of cultural concepts to avoid translation errors.
For example, Ala Rasi (على راسي) literally translates as ‘on my head’. Without knowledge of the cultural concepts or specific context, this makes very little sense. But the meaning is conveyed when the context is explained – it is an expression people say to someone who has asked a favour of them. Ala Rasi roughly translates as ‘anything for you’.
There are said to be more than 5,000 Chinese idioms, with many stretching back thousands of years. They too are based on cultural themes and relate to ancient myths, emperors, and poetry. The figurative meaning of the idiom below would be challenging to translate without high-level language skills and in-depth cultural knowledge.
huàshé-tiānzú (画蛇添足)
This literally translates as ‘adding feet when drawing a snake’, which depending on context means to improve something unnecessarily or ruin it by adding something superfluous.
As we’ve seen, a high-quality translation should meet the audience’s language and cultural expectations. You can find more here about the importance of translation, localisation and transcreation.
Our translators are native speakers, language experts, and subject matter experts, so they understand the nuances of translating language and cultural concepts. We’re so confident you’ll be fully satisfied with a Bubbles’ translation that we offer a quality assurance guarantee with every quote.
For fast and accurate language translation services you can rely on, get in touch with our dedicated project managers today. To learn more, explore our translation services.