Do you speak "Culture"?

Abstract

Translation plays a major part in nowadays society and not only. Ever since Antiquity, translation has represented a way in which cultures have merged and different mentalities and civilization aspects have been brought together. Yet this science did not always enjoy the status that it has now. There were beliefs according to which a translated text was only a degraded form of the original and, therefore, reading it was not encouraged. Translators’ work was regarded with skepticism, as a mere imitation of the actual books. This paper aims at highlighting the importance of the cultural component in a translation. Many translators pay little attention to this dimension and the resulting texts seem to confuse the readers.