Agost Translation Strategies: Cultural Adaptation
Agost Strategies in Translation
According to Rosa Agost, cultural references are implied within a certain society or culture.
Agost proposes the following classification of translation strategies:
Cultural Adaptation
This strategy consists of substituting the cultural reference from the original culture for another well-known equivalent in the target culture. With this translation strategy, Agost refers to a complete substitution of the cultural reference. It happens when the translator decides that the cultural reference from the origin culture is not understandable in the target culture. In these cases, the translator looks for a substitute in the target culture that can work as a homologous for the original cultural reference. The ideal substitution should maintain the intended purpose in the origin text.
Explicative Translation
The translator explains the cultural reference to facilitate its comprehension to the target audience. There are some instances where it is impossible to find an acceptable substitute for the cultural reference in the origin text, and a cultural adaptation cannot be done, since there is no similar concept in the target language. This time, Agost suggests the use of an explicative translation of the cultural term, losing some of the cultural value of the term but making it understandable for the target audience.
Referent’s Removal
Whenever the translation of the cultural reference is problematic or impossible, it is also possible to substitute the cultural term for another element.
This strategy is required when the translation of the cultural reference causes so many problems that the translator decides to delete the reference in the target language. It sometimes can be confusing with the explicative translation, as both strategies involve the loss of cultural content. However, in this case, the cultural reference is completely removed, without trying to replace it with an explanatory term or phrase.
Non-Translation/Omission of the Reference
Leave the cultural reference untranslated. These days, due to globalization, this particular translation strategy is more and more used. Places like Burger King or McDonalds are well-known worldwide in most target cultures, despite originally being part of American culture. Apart from cultural references, we can have other problems in the translation process which can hinder the transfer of information between cultures. That is the case of the diversity of languages. Rosa Agost refers to this type of translation problem that the translator may face in one of her articles in the book Traducción Subordinada. El doblaje (2001). As Agost points out, the appearance of a second language in the original text can create different troubles for the translator, which can be overcome with many other solutions as well. She proposes three different methods taking into consideration factors like the movie genre.
- The use of an only arrival language: This option implies the disappearance of the linguistic variation, i.e., second language. In this case, the spectator feels that something is going wrong, causing a “loss of the original cultural richness”.
- To let some sentences untranslated: The intermediate option. The translator leaves some key sentences in the second language, just to reflect some purpose and maintain a little bit of that cultural richness.
- The complete substitution of one of the languages for another: Many English-speaking movies have some Spanish-speaking characters, but from Latin America. Maintaining any of the fragments in Latin American Spanish may sound weird for Spanish-speakers in the Iberian Peninsula. As Agost suggests, when the language contrast is vital for the movie scene, the translator can opt to change the Latin American Spanish from the origin text to another similar language like Italian or Portuguese, aiming to maintain the “likelihood”.