Noodles Rock Style: translation and culture

This paper will discuss the concept of culture in relation to translation: as each language/culture enshrines values and prejudices in its own specific way, what happens when this content undergoes the transition to a new constituency? Translators may establish what Toury (1980:17) terms the 'invariant', the essence of the source text, before recoding the message in the target text. Through analysis of practical examples, both historical and more recent (in English, French and Italian), this paper will ask whether we can reach consensus as to what might be classified as the invariant while also taking into account Lecercle's 'remainder' (1990), those textual elements that resist translation and thereby highlight the very act of communication, allowing linguistic/cultural factors ultimately to take on social and political import. Following on from theories of equivalence, the paper will also address Skopos theory (Vermeer in Venuti 2004: 229) and its possible application in the translation of cultural content.