CULTURAL MEANING IN TRANSLATION: A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED PUNJABI PROVERBS TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

Abstract

Proverbs are short versions of traditional knowledge that contain moral convictions, guidance, norms, and collective experience. The translation of these is more complicated, however, than lexical substitution, as the meaning of the proverb is often dependent on culture, context, and metaphor. In this study the cultural and pragmatic meanings of selected Punjabi proverbs are analyzed and their representation in English translation is explored. The research design is qualitative, interpretive and comparative and is based on 12 purposively selected Punjabi proverbs with their English translations. The analysis is guided by the theories of Nida's Dynamic Equivalence and Relevance Theory of Sperber and Wilson. Each of the proverb has been analyzed in light of its Punjabi transliteration, literal meaning, cultural, pragmatic, and English translation. The main strategies found in the analysis are metaphorical substitution, cultural adaptation, conceptual equivalence, functional equivalence, and abstraction. The results show that, as a rule, there are translations which maintain the moral or pragmatic thrust of the Punjabi expressions despite the alteration of their imagery. If a source metaphor is translated into a more familiar English expression, however, details that would be culturally significant in the source language might be less so when translated. The study, consequently, posits that proverb-translation from Punjabi to English can be seen as a cultural mediation process, where the translator plays a role between specificity of the source culture and accessibility of the target culture.