An Analysis of Cultural Identity in the English Translation of Selected Literary Works by Lithuanian Authors

Inga Janaviciene, Vytautas Magnus university, Lithuania, ID LLCE2018-365;       Abstract: The presentation aims to discuss the rendering of cultural identity, as per Stuart Hall’s (1996) definition of the term, as ‘those aspects of our identities which arise from our “belonging” to distinctive ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, and, above all, national cultures’ in the English translation of selected literary works, two literary essays, by contemporary Lithuanian women writers, Giedra Radvilavičiūtė and Birutė Jonuškaitė. The analysis places itself at the intersection of cultural and translation studies. One of the foci of analysis is the probing into the meanings of cultural identity re-presented in the source texts. Another is investigation of the target text for strategies employed in rendering the constituents of cultural identity signified by the source text. For the discussion of the latter aspect, the paper draws on Hatim and Mason’s (1990) work on the relationship between translation and ideology both as the ideological perspective recreated in the target text and the status of authors of the source texts. As a side focus, the presentation will daw attention to the generic specificty of the essay genre in the source language literary tradition.

Stuart Hall, 1996, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, in Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies, eds. Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert, and Kenneth Thompson (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 596.

Key words: cultural identity, translation, ideology, genre.