Abstracting Culture in Translation: What gets Lost in Translating "Fêter la Noël" into English and Kolokuma Languages?

Résumé

This article looks at the abstraction of cultural elements in the production and translation of certain words or expressions. It adopts Gideon Toury‘s Target-orientedness approach (within the scope of the Polysystem) which predicates the acceptability of a given translation on its adherence to "norms originating in the target culture". The study focuses on the translation into English and Kolokuma of the French word Noël and expression fêter la Noël which refer to a key religious and festive period marking the birth of Jesus Christ. It lays bare the cultural substrata of the said word and expression as well as that of their equivalent translations in an attempt to explain the translation choices made in accordance to the norms of target languages and cultures. The study found that in translating Noël and fêter la Noël whether in English (an Indo-European language with certain affinities to French) or Kolokuma (a Central-Ijaw dialect which is an African language of Niger-Congo family with no affinity at all to French), the solution still lies in finding words or expressions referring to the same cultural phenomenon but whose distinct cultural underpinnings are abstracted and, therefore, unknown to speakers of the other languages.