Culturemes: Difficulties in Cultural Unit Translation: Study on the Works of Hrant Matevosyan

Abstract

The study of literary texts has long been dominated by structuralism. At present, it has entered a new phase, known as discourse. In this article, starting from the mentioned concept, we will focus on translation as an activity that requires not only linguistic skills but also deep cultural knowledge. To consider the size of the phenomenon, we will first study the criteria that need to be taken into account when it comes to translation. The literary text can be considered a way of access to social codes and cultural models because, regardless of its language of expression, it represents the values shared between one culture and another. The attention paid to the intercultural dimension is obvious in the thinking of translators. In our article we will try to show that literature, considered one of the essential biases of intercultural communication, can also lead to an intercultural “conflict”. To that end, we will study and analyse the translation of the works of Hrant Matevosyan Mesrop and Autumn Sun. Indeed, the translator often fails to fill in the gaps, because certain phenomena do not exist in the target language. In the following analysis, we will try to show the translation procedures that the translator of Hrant Matevosyan uses and why certain cultural units remain untranslatable. For the following, we will try to show how a translator can overcome certain cultural obstacles in translation.