Treating cultural references in translation: The Wedding of Zein as an example

Abstract

Several shifts related to cultural references take place during the translation process. The ‎current article deals with the attempts the translator Denys Johnson-Davies takes in ‎order to address the rich cultural references in The Wedding of Zein by the Sudanese ‎writer Tayeb Salih. These attempts are the target of the current study. This paper focuses ‎on how theories of translation attempt to explain the rationale behind the translator’s ‎decisions and actions, specifically when dealing with culture-specific references. This ‎article demonstrates that the target reader (TR) is the centre of Johnson-Davies’ ‎translation of the source text (ST). The paper shows that translators do not follow one ‎single approach when rendering a text but rather a plethora of techniques to help the ‎reader digest the literature in their hands. ‎