The impact of religious beliefs on quality translation of medical culture-specific terms: A Xitsonga terminology development approach.

Abstract

Translators draw from their mental lexicons to make conscious efforts to arrive at quality translation products. However, it is easy to reproduce and reinforce the translator’s cultural and religious beliefs in their translation products. The chapter conceptualises the stigma of the so-called ‘deviant’ terms and critiques the influence of a Xitsonga translator’s religious beliefs stance that may exert on medical terminology development processes. Mistranslation or untranslatability has been a topic of much research, usually with a focus on linguistic and external cultural features in isolation. A descriptive translation studies approach is applied to investigate the complex relationship between the translator’s religious beliefs and the quality of a translation product by examining the semantics of the corpus of culture-bound words purposely selected for this study. The study is anchored on a functionalist theory of translation to promote empirical comparison and analysis of a source term and a target term. It is hoped that the study will increase the Xitsonga translators’ awareness of the impact that issues such as religious beliefs may have on their translation products, and consequently overcome potential translation problems. The results indicate that dealing with cultural items in translation requires a sociolinguistic vision for a better understanding of the nature of words in African languages and improving the target readers’ academic proficiency.