Abstract
No matter which languages a literary translator handles, he or she is bound to encounter words that represent objects or concepts specific to the source language culture. In most instances, such an element will be unknown in the target language, and thus pose a difficulty for the translator. When confronted with this dilemma, the translator is forced to make a choice: preserve the culture-specific element and bring readers closer to the source language culture, or utilize cultural context adaptation techniques within the translation in order to diminish the cultural differences between the source and the target languages. The strategy of preservation represents what translation studies scholar Lawrence Venuti calls the foreignizing approach, while the strategy of removing cultural differences constitutes the opposite way of thinking – the domesticating approach. In this study, I have looked at how five different literary translators have dealt with such culture-specific elements when translating from Japanese to English.