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ELT Journal 2003 57(2):167-174; doi:10.1093/elt/57.2.167
© 2003 by Oxford University Press
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Cultural knowledge in translation

Harald Olk1

1 Canterbury Christ Church University College in the UK. Email: ho1{at}cant.ac.uk

The article describes a study exploring the influence of cultural knowledge on the translation performance of German students of English. The study found that the students often lacked sufficient knowledge about British culture to deal with widely-used cultural concepts. Even though insufficient knowledge affected the students' translation behaviour negatively in several ways, actual renderings often failed to reveal that they were based on deficient knowledge. The findings suggest that factual reference sources have an important role to play in translation activities, and that process-oriented classroom approaches are necessary to detect overtly correct solutions based on insufficient cultural knowledge.

Received January 2002.


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