'n Kritiese ondersoek na vertaalstrategieë

Abstract

The post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by individuals who speak the same language but nevertheless show significant differences in background knowledge, discourse patterns and phenomena. These differences, particularly in the same language speaking communities, create barriers to effective communication in the translation process, specifically in the public domain. This gives rise to an imbalance in the communication process, which results in an inability on the part of the receivers to communicate, participate in and contribute effectively to their social, political and cultural existence in their respective communities. This study takes the form of an analysis of the problem of non-equivalence and different translation strategies that can empower and make information in the public domain more accessible to our linguistically marginalised communities . . The community translation approach which emerged from a socio-cultural perspective, one in which the aim is above all to give these communities access to the same information and services as the linguistic "elite", forms the basis of this study. Within this approach, the translator uses the discourse patterns and phenomena of the target group to make information more accessible to this group. For this approach, the target audience of the translation is paramount. This study contains both a theoretical and corpus component. The main focus in the former component is the analysis of the problem of non-equivalence and various translating strategies attempting to deal with it. The focus is placed on relevant literature available on community translation. Most of the literature originates from Canada, Australia, Scotland and England, where this approach is considerably more developed, and is of a descriptive nature. This translation approach is still a fairly new and uncharted area in South Africa, although a small amount of literature has been written about it. The corpus component addresses the practical use of these reader-orientated translation strategies as a means to empower the linguistically marginalised communities. It therefore also raises the practical issue of the translator's autonomous role as an intermediary with knowledge of the source and target cultures (languages) and their (non-)overlap. Pragmatic texts (where the primary focus is the informative content) are used to illustrate the above. The reason for choosing these texts is to establish whether there is in fact any difference between the strategies that were used in the past and functional strategies needed for community translation. In other words, what strategies could be used to communicate information effectively to everyone, irrespective of his/her language usage or different social and ethnic background, thus attempting to overcome the barriers to effective communication.