Craig Santos Perez's poetic series from Unincorporated Territory describes and decries the U.S. militarization, colonization, and environmental degradation of Guam in the Western Pacific through multilingual, excerpted, and series-long poems. Perez's writing style requires slow, careful reading with translations sometimes appearing on the same page, various pages later, or not at all. I describe this kind of elongated translation as slow translation, recalling translation theorist Michael Cronin's "Slow Language" movement. This thesis invites readers, especially multispecies ethnographers, to slow down the translation of nonhuman species and their stories by paying attention to moments of untranslatability in multispecies literature and interactions. In modeling how to think-with untranslatability, I call upon translation scholars Barbara Cassin and Cronin, who describe untranslatability in temporal and agentic terms, and environmental humanist Donna Haraway, whose tentacular thinking model and multispecies approaches have slowed our tendencies towards linear and assumptive modes of thinking. In conjunction with these thinkers, my multispecies reading of from Unincorporated Territory proposes slow translation as a model for resisting easy or colonizing translations that homogenize the Other. Perez's multilingual, fractured poems create moments of untranslatability, especially when describing nonhuman species or environments, that are difficult to immediately understand due to nontranslations or delayed translations. This thesis pays special attention to such moments as opportunities for slowing down and staying with difference. Thus, moments of untranslatability offer an ethnographic and interactive mode for engaging with difference through slow translation, valuing the process and experience of translation, the agency of the subjects in translation, and the incomprehensibility or unknown nature of the nonhuman and Othered world.

This essay treats some of the problems that often arise when a translator translates texts which could be characterized as "culturally coloured" texts. Some people think that these kind of texts are not translatable. We want to show that, on the contrary, they are possible to translate into another language, even if it is not possible to translate them literally, word for word. First we present the material that our own translations are based on, and we discuss different terms relating to "untranslatable" words. Then we analyse and discuss different theories and approaches to translation, approaches that help us to find an acceptable translation of cultural words. Finally we present and analyse words that caused us problems in our efforts to translate from French into Swedish.

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This paper analyses the translation methods used in translating a colloquial, culture-specific text containing allusions and informal language. The analysis focuses on the difficulties arising in the translation of culture-specific phenomena and aspects such as slang and cultural references as well as allusions and language play. The theoretical framework used for structuring the analysis is supported by the theories of Newmark (1988), Nida (1964), Schröter (2005), Reiss (1989), Pym (2010) and Leppihalme (1994), among others. The results indicate that the translation of culturally and connotatively charged words require knowledge and understanding of languages and cultures alike. Further, the results indicate that concept of a word or concept being ‘untranslatable’ may originate from such lack of understanding or knowledge and that further research on the subject is needed.

The study focused on the translation and interpretation of cultural concepts from Xitsonga into English. The main aim of the study was to formulate strategies and methods as well as techniques of translating cultural concepts from Xitsonga into English with the view towards bridging the gap between the two cultures. The study used a mixed method approach combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches. It examined the research problem by selecting respondents who deal with translation issues on a day-to-day basis and also observed how cultural concepts are presented in the bilingual dictionaries. This was done by comparing three languages i.e. Xitsonga, Northern-Sotho and Tshivenda. The researcher had to identify the afore-mentioned cultural concepts and to find if they were properly described or translated into English. The observation focused on the translation of both Xitsonga, Northern-Sotho and Tshivenda cultural fixed expressions which were given to translation studies students to translate into English. The aim was to find if they are able to give proper explanations or translation to the given expressions. Quantitatively, 24 out of the 30 questionnaires that were sent out to respondents, were returned to the researcher for presentation, analysis and interpretation. The study found that translating cultural concepts is very challenging. These challenges are presented by lack of equivalence and not recognising the cultural concepts in the source text. The study however found that employing the right strategies, methods and techniques can assist in bridging the gap between the languages and cultures. The translator also needs to have an in-depth knowledge of the two cultures: Xitsonga and English. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

Переводы, не учитывающие культурные особенности, оказываются слабыми и мало отражающими писательский замысел. Самую большую трудность вызывают не языковые различия, но элементы культуры, представляющие внеязыковую реальность, связанную с внутренними проявлениями культуры. Существующая концепция принципиальной непереводимости и вовсе говорит о том, что невозможно перевести что-либо с одного языка на другой из-за существующих лингвистических и культурных различий. Данная работа направлена на то, чтобы показать возможность адекватной передачи культурного контекста в переводе на примере публикаций произведений Н. В. Гоголя в Японии. / Translations, which are not culturally sensitive, are weak and little reflect the writer's intent. The greatest challenge is not only the language differences, but elements of culture, which represents extra-linguistic reality associated with the internal’s manifestations of culture. The concept of principled untranslatability suggests that it is impossible to translate anything from one language to another because of linguistic and cultural differences. This work is going to demonstrate the possibility of an adequate cultural context transfer in translation using the example of N.V. Gogol’s publications in Japan.