When you depend only on translations you run a big risk. More when large group of people is involved and not an individual reader. What is the effect of a widespread translation on culture?
“Como unculcar valores a sus hijas (How to inculcate values upon your children.),” is the Spanish translation of: “Children learn what they live.” This is a translation of a book title.
Changing the title is also what you see over and over in the Spanish cinemas. There are only a few film subtitled and the translator thinks partially for the viewer. Title are rarely left intact.
Primeval (the movie) is translated as: "Crocodile. A serial killer."
The first question is: “why does a translator change the meaning?”
Could it be that a translator wants to add additional value beyond that of the translation itself.
But doing so, the viewer will be deprived of an important function of language processing, the elaboration of meaning. Perhaps the best translation of the previous mentioned book is indeed "how to inculcate values upon your children," but shouldn’t you find that out for your self? When starting the book (in the original language), you are only directed with the message: “children learn what they live.” It is still very neutral.
A culture where movies are dubbed, (foreign) television without subtitles (thus dubbed) and translated books, without a significant market for original text, will impact on the country’s culture.
Such a culture will foment acceptance and dependence. It will incentive people to accept to the formal authority and not think for themselves.
In case of the movie it is possible that primeval does not call too much attention to the Spanish viewers. Do they need more explicit information about the film – to read that it is about a lethal crocodile?
“Going to the source,” means that you want autonomy over the information gathering process, you do not get told by others what something means. You can think for yourself. In case of a translation, accepting the extra step in the process of gaining meaning, you are less autonomous.
Of course there are benefits of translation: You cannot know and learn everything for yourself. In this way you stay focused on what your good at. Difficult books are better read in translation, but something as simple as a title of a film is better in original language, it offers some more language exposure.
The other end of the dimension also gives trouble. In the Netherlands there is hardly a dutch equivalent for a foreign imported word. Unlike in Belgium (and of course Spain) where people are more proud of their native language and where they always try to find a matching term in their own language. But that is another topic.
Over-exposure to translations indeed shapes a country's culture.
© 2007 Hans Bool