Culture-Specific Items (CSI) and their Translation Strategies in Martin Lindstrom’s Brand Sense
Culture-Specific Items (CSI) and their Translation Strategies in Martin Lindstrom’s Brand Sense

Summary/Abstract: Cultural references in source texts are recognized as probably the most troublesome elements of a translation, raising not only the question of the proper selection of a particular lexical unit but also the issue of the cultural competence. Many researchers, linguists, and scientists deal with definition, recognition, classification and translation matters of culture-specific items, yet the consensus cannot be reached. Different definitions, interpretations, and even classifications, which strongly rely upon similar criteria, are offered. Therefore, the analysis of translation strategies used to render culture-specific items in popular science literature are very important and relevant to the overall analysis of cultural realia. Aiming to research translation strategies of CSI in the genre of popular science, Martin Lindstrom’s book Brand Sense: build powerful brands through touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound” (2005) and its Lithuanian translation Prekės ženklo jausmas, accomplished by Lina Krutulytė, was chosen. The analysis presented in this article is restricted to the group of common expressions denoting CSI, as translation of proper nouns follow the recommendations provided by the Lithuanian Language State Commission and were found to be less problematic as compared to the group of common expressions. For the analysis of translation strategies used to render culture-specific items, categorization of Davies (2003) was followed. To accomplish the research goals, descriptive, comparative and quantitative analysis was employed. The obtained results indicate that prevailing translation strategies used to render common expressions in the popular science book by Martin Lindstrom Brand Sense were literal translation, localization, preservation, and addition. No examples of omission or creation were observed. The analysis has revealed that the usage of translation strategies was inconsistent – homogenous and semantically similar CSI were rendered differently, using different translation strategies, thus the target text lacks cohesion and logical approach.

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