Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

The cultural model

According to this model, the meaning of a word is derived from its culture, and language itself is nothing but a cultural manifestation the meanings of which are defined in terms of cultural fields (Mehrach 2003: 17). Translating, therefore, is not a matter of replacing SL forms by TL ones but is rather a matter of cultural transfer. Two approaches are identified within this model:

1. 
   The ethnographical semantic method
   
2. 
   The dynamic equivalence method
   

(See section 2. 4. 1. C above for a discussion of these methods)
It should be noted that by encouraging translators to be sensitive to the meanings of the items which are culture-specific, and by resorting to componential analysis and folk taxonomies, the ethnographical semantic method is still focusing on the word and the phrase and not on the text; i.e., it deals with inter-cultural contrasts. A similar observation can be made with regard to the dynamic equivalence method which sought to solve cultural problems in translation by using the technique of cultural transposition (for example, “give us our daily fish” as a translation of “give us our daily bread” for cultures where “bread” is unknown…). However, Chau notes that due to its emphasis on the purpose of individual communication, the dynamic equivalence method shares some of the grounds with the interpretive model, especially sensitivity to context. This is the most significant difference between the ethnographical semantic method and the dynamic equivalence method. More specifically, while the former, like all grammatical methods, concentrates on langue (regarding cultural differences as static), the latter works with parole (finding the closest dynamic equivalent).
In conclusion, both the grammatical and cultural models lay the emphasis on strings of words and/or sentences in a ST and their TL equivalents to the exclusion of the notion of text. Texts are still conceived of as mere linear sequences of sentences (Mehrach 2003: 19).

2.