La cultura de los Demonios. La traducción y su relación con la cultura en la novela negra Los Demonios de Berlín.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this work is to focus on the connection between culture and translation. It is not an odd claim: culture influences translation in so many different ways, from understanding to re – elaborating. For this reason we can easily say that the job of a translator is strictly linked to the cultural aspect that becomes a key player on the translation process. As we will show in the study you are going to read about, the translator task is not easy as it may seem even if it has been considered a second-level activity for a long a time. Many linguists, researchers and academic professionals as well, such as Susan Bassnett and Eugene Nida, talked about translation, defining what it is, its development process and describing the task of the leading role involved with it: the translator. Even not in a specific and detailed way, this work sketches out a general view of the translation process as a whole, focusing on the claim that it is not enough to study grammar, structural sentences or linguistic peculiarities to be a good translator, that would be a very shallow attitude and not a professional one at all. As a matter of fact, it is also necessary to have a strong cultural knowledge of the source language, knowing not only its history, social background or literature but also its political assets, costumes, traditions, and so on. In this way it will be possible to catch the linguistic hints of a text, its characteristics, being able to lead the target reader in the world of the source one. Culture is not a static process, is a dynamic one, because culture is busy going on with life passing. We also dealt with this aspect in the following work, showing how it concretely influences the translator job, describing how culture can be defined and the way she can affect a translation. We did all this through examples taken from Los demonios de Berlín, a crime novel set on 1945’s Berlin written by Spanish author Ignacio Del Valle, where fictional murders, mysteries and love mix with real historical events and characters. This historic aspect is one of the most culturally charged one and it forces the translator to know well about that in order to do his job in the better way. We also mentioned some linguistic problems connected with culture the translator may encounter during its working process: neologisms and special culturally charged words called culturemas. It had also worth a mention idiolect and problems linked to translator choices to be adherent to author writing style. Let’s enter the cultural translation world.