Perspectives

Studies in Translatology

ISSN: 0907-676X (Print) 1747-6623 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmps20

Cultural references in translation: a framework for

quantitative translation analysis

Harald Martin Olk

To cite this article: Harald Martin Olk (2013) Cultural references in translation: a
framework for quantitative translation analysis, Perspectives, 21:3, 344-357, DOI:
10.1080/0907676X.2011.646279

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Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 2013
Vol. 21, No. 3, 344
357, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2011.646279

Cultural references in translation: a framework for quantitative

translation analysis
Harald Martin Olk*

Asian and European Languages, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya,
Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia
(Received 9 June 2011; final version received 16 November 2011)

Research into the translation of cultural references (CRs) often focuses on the
analysis of selected CR translations or particular lexical sub-fields such as proper
names or geographical terms. In most cases the procedures the translator has used
are described and labeled, then critically evaluated and/or used to identify
‘foreignization’ or ‘domestication’ tendencies in the translator’s approach to
handling the cultural load of a text. This article argues that selective analysis of
this kind may give undue weight to the selected examples or lexical sub-fields
while ignoring other items. The article will therefore put forward that the validity
of studies, especially those featuring a comparative element, could be enhanced by
complementing selective and focused approaches with more comprehensive
quantitative data. An empirical study which explored CR translation from a
quantitative perspective will be described as an example to suggest a framework
of quantitative analysis in CR translation and issues arising from the study will be
discussed.
Keywords: cultural references; quantitative translation analysis; translation
procedures; foreignization; domestication

1. Introduction
Since the Cultural Turn in Translation Studies much has been written on the
challenges of translating culture embedded in texts, of which culture-specific lexis or
cultural references (CRs) form a prominent part. Translation procedures which can
be applied to tackle this challenge have been expounded in detail (Baker, 1992; Ivir,
1987; Koller, 2004; Mailhac, 1996; Newmark, 1988) and numerous articles
investigate how CR translation has been dealt with, often in literary works, but
also in screen translation (for literary works cf. Davies, 2003; Hagfors, 2003; Inngs,
2003; Teilanyo, 2007; for screen translation cf. Pedersen, 2007; Ramière, 2006;
Tomaszkiewicz, 2010; Valdeón, 2008). Often papers focus on particular lexical items
or sub-fields such as proper names (Fernandes, 2006; Mussche & Willems, 2010) or
geographical terms (Bagajewa, 1992), presumably to avoid the thorny issue of
subjectivity in the identification of CRs, which are not as unambiguously classifiable
as such. Typically, research takes a selective approach by discussing the translations
of individual CRs or the selected lexical sub-fields from the text under investigation,
which are then critically evaluated and/or meant to exemplify the translator’s

*Email: h.olk@web.de

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 345

approach to the text. Where a correlation between CR translations and the

translator’s more general approach on a text level is established, this is usually
done on a scale ranging from ‘foreignization’ to ‘domestication’ in Venuti’s (1998)
terminology (e.g. Jaleniauskienė & Čičelytė, 2009; Vid, 2008). On this scale,
‘foreignization’ is generally viewed as the translator’s attempt to preserve the distinct
qualities of the foreign text, trying to maintain its culture specificity ‘at any cost
the
highest cost being the non-comprehension of the LC2 [target-language] reader’
(Hewson & Martin, 1991, p. 122), while ‘domestication’ describes the translator’s
efforts to move the text as much as possible into the target culture, minimizing its
foreign character by replacing everything ‘exotic’ with something characteristic of
the target culture.
Remarkably, there seem to be very few published studies examining CR
translation comprehensively from a quantitative perspective, which may be due to
several reasons. A first factor could be the significant amount of work involved in the
comprehensive identification of CRs and the classification of their translations in
long texts such as novels. Secondly, one may suspect that the relative lack of
quantitative data is related to the subjectivity inherent in the identification of CRs in
a text on the one hand and in the reliable classification of translation products on the
other. This subjectivity on two levels clearly makes comprehensive quantitative
analysis a fairly difficult endeavor and quantification therefore seems to play a
subordinate role. At the same time it needs to be noted that selective approaches
focused on particular lexical fields or on individual CRs may give undue weight to
some items or lexical fields while ignoring others, in particular as studies have shown
that there is often no consistent treatment of CRs within a text (Davies, 2003;
Desmet, 1999). Thus, it could be argued that comprehensive quantitative analysis of
CR translation could usefully complement more focused research and enhance its
validity.
This article will describe an experiment approaching the issue of CR translation
from a quantitative perspective and pursues two aims: (1) the article intends to
present a model outlining how such an analysis could be conducted, and (2) discuss
some of the issues and limitations in quantitative CR analysis.

2. Description of study
2.1. Text and CR identification
The translation data examined were mainly obtained as part of a larger PhD study in
which different groups of participants were asked to translate in writing a text
containing a high number of British cultural references into German (cf. Olk, 2001).
However, all analytical procedures described in this article were conducted at a later
stage and based on a revised model of the analysis used in the PhD study. For the
translation a text adapted from the British quality newspaper The Observer was
selected,1 which for reasons of practicality and time constraints had been
significantly reduced in length. The text was chosen by the researcher as it presented
CRs from various fields distinguished by Nedergaard-Larsen’s (1993, p. 211)
typology and was therefore hoped to provide a good and varied sample of the
translation problem under investigation. However, as one of the main issues in the
analysis of CR translations lies in the reliable identification of cultural references,
which is to some extent an intuitive and therefore subjective process, in the given
346 H.M. Olk

study the following approach was adopted. To identify CRs in the text four markers,
who held at least a Master’s degree (or equivalent) in English philology, worked as
language teachers or lecturers and had substantial first-hand experience about both
cultures, were given the text and asked to highlight any items which they believed to
comply with the following operational definition of cultural reference:

Cultural references are those lexical items in a source text which, at a given point in
time, refer to objects or concepts which do not exist in a specific target culture or which
deviate in their textual function significantly in denotation or connotation from lexical
equivalents available in the target culture. (Olk, 2001, p. 30)

The markers were also informed that the goal of the activity was to identify culture-
specific lexical items which could pose problems in a translation of the text into
German. All items which were highlighted by at least three of the markers were
considered as cultural references. Items which were only highlighted by two of the
markers were discussed in the group until a joint decision was reached. All other items
were not considered to contain a substantial degree of culture specificity in the given
text. Overall, controversial cases were rare, indicating that despite the subjectivity in
CR identification a fair degree of agreement can be reached. Clearly, this was to some
extent also due to the nature of the text and other tasks may present many more
controversial items. It was felt, however, that the use of several markers and a group
discussion phase could also be a valid instrument in other studies. In total, 23 CRs
were in this way identified in the source text, of which two occurred several times in
the text, raising the total number of investigated CR translations to 32.

2.2. Participants
Three groups of participants were asked to translate the text for publication in the
German news magazine Der Spiegel. Group one consisted of 19 British students who
were either in their final year of a BA in German or had recently completed their
degree at a British university. All of the students were native speakers of English and
had studied German at school/college up to A-level and subsequently at university
for more than three years. In addition, the students had spent the year prior to their
final year in Austria or Germany, either studying or working as foreign language
assistants.
The second group consisted of 19 German students of a German university, who
were preparing for the Staatsexamen2 in English and another subject or had just
completed this course. All of the German students were native speakers of German
and had studied English at school for between six and nine years and at university
for between four and six years. All but two of the students had also spent between
nine and 12 months in Britain, either studying or teaching German as a foreign
language.
Both groups of students had encountered translation classes as part of their
university courses. In these classes, however, translation was primarily used as a
language-learning and sensitization activity and students had not received any
significant instruction in translation skills.
Group three comprised four professional translators, each of whom had more
than 10 years of professional experience and had lived for several years in Germany
and Great Britain. It was therefore assumed that beside their linguistic and
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 347

translational competence they would also bring substantial cultural knowledge to the
task. All participants were provided with an unabridged bilingual English-German,
German-English dictionary as well as monolingual German and English dictionaries
and a dictionary of British cultural terms. These reference sources, which basically
covered all items occurring in the text, were hoped to enable the participants to adopt
the translation procedure they found most adequate. No time limit was set for task
completion. The comparative design with three distinct groups of participants was
considered conducive to testing the quantitative analysis framework as it was
believed that the groups would approach the task in different ways, which would then
become apparent and measurable in the quantitative analysis.

2.3. Analysis
All translated texts were analysed with respect to the CR procedures the participants
had applied. For the analysis the following framework classifying seven translation
procedures was established (cf. section three for a detailed description of the
framework):

 transference of a cultural item

 transference explicitation
 transference explanation
 target-language expression referring to the source culture
 neutral explanation
 omission
 substitution of a CR with a cultural equivalent

Analysis was done by the researcher and another independent marker, who was first
briefed by the researcher about the coding system. Classification coincided in over
90% of the cases, indicating good levels of intercoder reliability. Those cases where
the markers’ assessment did not concur were not included in the final analysis. Those
instances where participants deliberately left a blank were also not taken into
consideration. Depending on the procedure used, every translation was also
attributed a value from [0] to [6], with transference being allocated the lowest value
of [0] and cultural substitution the maximum value of [6]. This allowed the researcher
to calculate an average value representing the mean of cultural transposition with
respect to lexis.
Importantly, it needs to be emphasized that this score system is to some extent
arbitrary (e.g. different values could also have been attributed) and represents a
substantial simplification of the highly complex nature of CR translation and
translation in general. Thus, it is of course impossible to say that an instance of
‘transferenceexplanation’ is twice as ‘exotic’ as an instance of ‘neutral explana-
tion’. The calculated average scores should therefore not be seen as an exact
measurement of mathematical precision. Rather, the scores can only indicate certain
trends which need to be interpreted with great caution.

3. Classifications of CR procedures
Numerous typologies for CR procedures have been put forward in the literature to
categorize, more or less unambiguously, individual CR translations as to what
348 H.M. Olk

procedure the translator has applied. As pointed out by Ramière, ‘most researchers
seem to propose their own classifications of procedures after highlighting incon-
sistencies, overlaps in labels, or the lack of clarity in previous typologies’ (2006,
p. 158). This suggests that there can be no one-size-fits-all classification in CR
analysis, but that every study will need to carefully adjust existing taxonomies to
ensure an adequate fit for the particular translation investigated. The categories
which will be presented in the following section should therefore not be seen as a
general classification of CR translations applicable to any context, but as a
framework which attempts to specifically describe the CR translations in the given
study. The researcher arrived at the coding categories by comparing existing
classifications of CR translations with the actual translations produced by the
participants in the study. As examples should always be seen in context, all examples
have been taken from the text, which the participants in the empirical study were
asked to translate into German (cf. appendix).

3.1. Transference
Instances where a culture-specific item from the source text was transferred into the
target text were categorized as ‘transference’. In the case of transference the distance
between ST expression and TT is basically zero and the source-culture identity is
fully retained. The target reader is treated like the source-text reader and no
additional information is added. Within the category of transference the participants
used a choice of micro-procedures that allowed them to adjust the level of ‘foreign-
ness’ of the transferred CR. As Clyne points out (1995, p. 212), ‘lexical transfers can
be integrated, to a greater or lesser extent, into the grammatical, phonological and
graphemic systems’ of the target language. Thus, nouns such as ‘upper class’ or
‘barrister’ were sometimes capitalized in accordance with German spelling conven-
tions or word endings were ‘germanized’ (e.g. Thatcherism 0 Thatcherismus).
Also categorized as transference were those translations in which participants
replaced the original reference with another source-language term which they
apparently considered to be more acceptable in the target culture. This corresponded
largely to Aixelá’s procedure of ‘limited universalization’ in which translators ‘seek
another reference, also belonging to the source culture, but closer to their readers’
(1996, p. 63).
Example 1:

Like the Victorian factory owners 0 Wie die viktorianischen Fabrikbesitzer

and the hereditary peers [ST] und die englischen Lords [TT]
Like the Victorian factory owners and the
English Lords

3.2. Transferenceexplicitation
As explained by Blum-Kulka, in the case of explicitation translators expand the target
text, ‘building into it a semantic redundancy absent in the original’ (1986, p. 21). In
the given classification, translations were classified as ‘transferenceexplicitation’
whenever a cultural item was transferred into the target text with additional
information that did not, however, explain the CR’s denotation. ‘Transferen-
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 349

ce explicitation’ succeeded transference in that the participants provided informa-

tion that would normally be redundant to a source-culture reader. While ‘transfer-
ence  explicitation’ retains the cultural identity of the item, it also attempts to
accommodate the presumed needs of the target reader. The procedure, however, does
not go as far as to explain the meaning of the CR itself, which would make the
intervention of the translator more visible. Thus, this category corresponded closely
to one of the examples given by Saldanha (2008), in which ‘the translator’s solution
is not to explain the meaning of the item itself but [. . .] to provide a minimum
amount of information that enables them [the readers] to work out the function of the
lexical item even without a clear understanding of its semantic meaning’ (2008, p. 26).
Examples 2 and 3:

ensuring it strong clout with
Whitehall
The lives of the new class revolve
around Harrods and Kensington
0 was ihr großen politischen Einfluss auf
Whitehall sichert
ensuring it strong political clout with
Whitehall
0 Im Leben der neuen Schicht dreht sich alles
um Harrods und das vornehme Kensington
In the lives of the new class everything
revolves around Harrods and the exclusive
Kensington

3.3. Transferenceexplanation
When a cultural item was transferred and had its denotative meaning explained in
the target text this was categorized as ‘transference explanation’. In this procedure
the participants moved the translation further towards the target reader than in
‘transferenceexplicitation’, because the explanation explicitly acknowledged and
underlined the conceptual ‘foreign-ness’ of the item. Explanations (or ‘definitions’ in
Mailhac’s terminology) ranged from a simple generic term (Harrods 0 das
Kaufhaus Harrods [the department-store Harrods]) to long and detailed glosses,
which were integrated to different degrees into the text. Glosses and explanations
took on various forms such as literal translation, generic definition or comparison
with a cultural equivalent.
Examples 4 and 5:

Like the Victorian factory
owners and hereditary peers
Britain beyond the Home
Counties
0 Wie die viktorianischen Fabrikbesitzer und die
Mitglieder des britischen Oberhauses, die Peers
Like the Victorian factory owners and the
members of the British upper house, the peers
0 Großbritannien jenseits der wohlhabenden
Grafschaften um London, den sogenannten
Home Counties
Britain beyond the wealthy counties around
London, the so-called Home Counties

3.4. Target-language (TL) expression referring to the source culture

The category of ‘target-language expression referring to the source culture’
comprised those translations in which a cultural reference was not transferred, but
350 H.M. Olk

replaced by a word or phrase in the target language which was still rooted in the
source culture and marked by a degree of conceptual ‘foreign-ness’. On the scale of
cultural distance between CR and translation, this procedure comes after ‘transfer-
ence  explanation’, because the translator dispenses with the original reference to
the source culture and replaces it with a term or phrase which is more familiar to the
target reader.
Examples 6 and 7:

as do 85% of all QCs 0 wie auch 85% aller Kronanwälte

as do 85% of all *crown-lawyers3
Britain beyond the Home 0 Großbritannien jenseits der Grafschaften um
Counties London
Britain beyond the counties around London

In the above examples the German words ‘Kronanwalt’ and ‘Grafschaften’ are
target-language expressions which do not have a referent in contemporary German
culture and therefore retain to at least some degree the ‘foreign-ness’ of the original
CR.

3.5. Neutral explanation

Those translations in which participants expressed a cultural reference in the target
language in a way that was considered culturally neutral were categorized as ‘neutral
explanation’.
Examples 8 and 9:

ensuring it strong clout with 0 was ihr einen starken Einfluß auf die
Whitehall Regierung sichert
ensuring it strong clout with the government
Britain beyond the Home 0 England jenseits des Londoner Großraums
Counties England beyond the greater London area

Where the procedure of neutral explanation was applied lexical and conceptual
‘foreign-ness’ was largely removed from the text and, hence, all local colour lost.
Instead, the participants emphasized the similarities of source and target culture. On
a scale measuring the extent to which the participants had moved the translation
towards the target culture this procedure could be considered as a ‘cultural
watershed’ since neutral explanation is the first procedure in which lexical culture
specificity is largely deleted. At the same time, the procedure ensures easy readability
for target-language readers, because no culture-specific knowledge is required.

3.6. Omission
Cases where participants deliberately omitted a reference were counted as ‘omission’.
While omission is often associated with a translator admitting defeat in the face of a
word that appears to be untranslatable, Baker rightly remarks that omission can
prove to be the most sensible solution, where ‘the meaning conveyed by a particular
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 351

item or expression is not vital enough to the development of the text to justify
distracting the reader with lengthy explanations’ (1992, p. 40). On the scale
measuring the extent to which the translator has shifted the translation towards
the target culture, omission can be regarded as another procedure that neutralizes the
cultural identity of the text. Where the source text features an element that locates
the text in a specific culture the target text chooses to say nothing, rendering the
target text closer to the target-culture readers’ perspective.
Example 10:

or the City of London with its medieval 0 oder der Londoner City mit dem
Corporation and Lord Mayor regierenden Lord Mayor
or the City of London with its
governing Lord Mayor

3.7. Cultural substitution

Whenever a cultural element in the source text was replaced by a target-language
word or phrase that was considered specific to the target culture and has similar
functions or connotations as the source-text element this rendering was categorized
as a ‘cultural substitution’.
Examples 11 and 12:

as do 85% of all QCs 0 wie auch 85% aller Staatsanwälte

as do 85% of all *state-lawyers [public prosecutors
in Germany]
half to two thirds of all 0 50 bis 65 Prozent aller Notare und Anwälte
solicitors and barristers 50 to 65 percent of all ‘Notare’ and lawyers
[Notare: type of legal profession in Germany]

With the procedure of ‘cultural substitution’ the translator transplants the cultural
setting by converting a foreign reference to a target-culture one. However, it is
noteworthy that in many cases target-text readers may be unaware that an item is
specific to their own culture and does not exist as such in the text’s source culture,
especially where referents ‘are characterised by a low level of cultural markedness’
(Mailhac, 1996, p. 180).

4. Text procedures
Based on the above classification of CR procedures the researcher also attempted to
identify more general text procedures, which could be described as the sum of all
translational shifts occurring in a particular translation task. As mentioned in the
introduction, generally two opposing approaches are distinguished and have been
well documented in the literature, with ‘foreignization’ representing a translator’s
attempt to retain the ‘other-ness’ of the source text as far as possible and, at the
opposite end of the scale, ‘domestication’ representing an approach of rendering ‘the
other’ as familiar as possible to target-culture readers (cf. Venuti, 1998). As has been
pointed out by Hervey, Higgins and Loughridge, these two approaches represent
extremes and, consequently, ‘the translator may have to consider the alternatives
lying between them’ (1995, p. 23). In a similar way, Mailhac (1996) emphasizes the
352 H.M. Olk

existence of an intermediate approach between the two extremes, which in his

terminology are called ‘exoticism with minimum presence of the translator’ (cf.
foreignization) and ‘cultural transplantation’ (cf. domestication). The intermediate
approach between the two extremes is entitled ‘exoticism with maximum presence of
the translator’ and focuses in particular on those procedures which entail the
explanation of transferred items. Mailhac’s model, however, does not account for an
approach which deletes culture-specificity to a large extent. Therefore, building on
Mailhac’s deliberations the following model of four text procedures was applied in
the given study.

 Exoticism: text procedure typically associated with a strong presence of the

procedures ‘transference’ and ‘transference explicitation’;
 Explained exoticism: text procedure typically associated with a strong presence
of the procedures ‘transferenceexplicitation’, ‘transference explanation’
and ‘TL expression referring to the source culture’;
 Neutralization: text procedure typically associated with a strong presence of the
procedures ‘TL expression referring to the source culture’, ‘neutral explana-
tion’ and ‘omission’;
 Cultural transplantation: text procedure typically associated with a strong
presence of the procedures ‘omission’, ‘neutral explanation’ and ‘cultural
substitution’;

This model can now be visualized on a scale which ranks CR and text procedures
according to their degree of cultural transposition (cf. Figure 1). Below the text
procedures are listed the CR procedures which tend to be associated with the above
text procedures. The two overlapping circles represent the two cultural systems
involved in the translation and indicate in what cultural space a CR translation or
text procedure can be located (target culture, source culture or ‘common ground’).

source culture target culture

common ground

explained cultural
exoticism exoticism neutralization transplantation

transference + transference + neutral cultural

transference TL expression omission
explicitation explanation explanation substitution
[0] referring to the [5]
[1] [2] [4] [6]
source culture
[3]

Figure 1. Text procedures and associated CR procedures.

 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 353

As will be outlined in the following sections, this framework was applied to the
analysis of CR translations and allowed the analyst to arrive at more general
hypotheses about the participants’ approach to the ‘cultural identity’ of the source
text.

5. Findings and discussion

In theory, there were 608 CR translations to be analysed for each group of students
(32 CRs times 19 participants) and 128 CR translations of the professional
translators. However, as students occasionally were not able to find a solution
acceptable to them and decided to leave a blank, the actual number was slightly lower
(British students 597; German students 603).
Disagreement about how to classify CR translations occurred mainly with
respect to the categories of ‘TL expression referring to the source culture’ and
‘neutral explanation’ on the one hand and between ‘neutral explanation’ and
‘cultural substitution’ on the other. This disagreement was not unexpected due to the
subjective nature of the question as to whether a particular translation would be
perceived as culturally loaded by a target-culture reader or as having no or a very low
degree of culture specificity. A certain degree of blurring between categories seemed
therefore inevitable. Overall, as can be seen in Table 1, disagreement between the two
markers was rare, indicating that issues of subjectivity and overlapping categories,
though inevitable, did not generally invalidate the classification.
Analysis according to the classification presented in section three showed a
distribution of CR procedures as shown in Table 2.
In all three groups the three procedures of ‘transference’, ‘TL expression referring
to the source culture’ and ‘neutral explanation’ were used most frequently and
accounted for at least 79% of all CR translations. This is a strong indication that the
nature of the task as well as the CRs and their context strongly favoured certain CR
procedures as well as associated text procedures. There were, however, marked
differences in the distribution of the three most frequent procedures. Thus, British
students used ‘transference’ twice as often as the professional translators (32% as
compared to 16%) and at the same time had a significantly lower proportion of
neutral explanations (23% as compared to 35%). Overall, this rendered the British
students’ translations the most ‘exotic’ ones, with an average value of 2.13 while the
professional translators’ approach was the most target-culture oriented one, with a
mean of 2.77. Using the professional translators’ approach as a tentative yardstick,
one may assume that the British students’ approach could be perceived as too exotic
for regular target-culture readers. The British students’ approach may have reflected
their own cultural perspective, on the basis of which they may have identified many

Table 1. Number of CR translations included in the analysis.

British German Professional

Overview students (19) students (19) translators (4)

Total number of CR translations 597 603 128

Disagreement about CR procedure 54 (9%) 48 (8%) 12 (9%)
(not included in analysis)
Total number of analysed CR 543 555 116
translations
354 H.M. Olk

Table 2. Distribution of CR procedures.

British German Professional

CR procedure students students translators

Transference [value0] 173 (32%) 150 (27%) 19 (16%)

Transference  explicitation [value1] 5 (1%) 11 (2%) 10 (9%)
Transference  explanation [value 2] 87 (16%) 55 (10%) 7 (6%)
TL expression referring to the SC 147 (27%) 117 (21%) 32 (28%)
[value 3]
Neutral explanation [value 4] 125 (23%) 216 (39%) 41 (35%)
Omission [value 5] 1 (0%) 0 (0%) 5 (4%)
Cultural substitution [value6] 5 (1%) 6 (1%) 2 (2%)
Average value 2.13 2.46 2.77
Range 0.85
2.54 1.84
2.62 2.59
2.88

of the CRs as ‘typically British’ and hence basically ‘untranslatable’. The relatively
strong source-culture orientation could also reflect a lack of awareness of translation
procedures other than transference in the case of CRs and be indicative of certain
training needs.
Interestingly, even though the professional translators’ approach was overall the
most target-culture oriented, the highest proportion of ‘neutral explanations’ was
found in the group of German students. In 216 cases they decided not to transfer an
item but to replace it by a target-language expression with no or a very low degree of
culture specificity (British group: 125). Apparently, the German students felt a need
to reduce the cultural load of the source text to make it more accessible to German
readers. They also seem to have been less worried about the loss of ‘British-ness’
which the frequent use of neutral explanations entailed, presumably because the
cultural load of the British items carried less meaning for them. Despite the high
number of neutral explanations, their translations were overall still more source-
culture oriented than those of the professional translators. This was due to the
substantially higher occurrence of ‘transference’ and ‘transference explanation’
among the German students. Clearly, the translators were less inclined to simply
transfer CRs or to apply a highly explicit but stylistically often problematic solution
such as ‘transference explanation’.
Both groups of students only made very infrequent use of ‘transferen-
ce explicitation’ as compared to the professional translators, who used this
procedure in 9% of all CR translations (German students 1%, British students 2%).
Instead, students seem to have had a preference for more explicit solutions, explaining
CRs in detail including their denotative meaning. Again, this could be indicative of
certain training needs among the students and highlights as a feature of professional
practice the ability to carefully assess exactly how much (or rather how little)
information needs to be added for the benefit of target-culture readers.
It was noticeable that the professional translators’ CR translations showed a
much smaller deviation from the average then those of the student groups: there
was only a difference of 0.29 between the least and the most target-culture oriented
text (British group 1.69; German group 0.78), even though the professional
translators often treated individual CRs in different ways. This could of course
be due to the much smaller number of participants in the translators’ group. It
 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 355

could, however, also indicate that professional translators tend to take a more
global perspective, assess the overall level of cultural transposition in their texts and
adjust their individual CR translations accordingly, arriving at a similar mean
which they consider suitable for a particular translation task. More research based
on a significantly larger sample would be needed to validate this hypothesis,
however.

6. Conclusion
As the previous sections demonstrated, it was possible to devise a framework for
quantitative CR analysis and to apply it to a text despite inevitable subjectivity issues.
The comparative analysis proved a useful tool

(a) to quantitatively measure the shifts occurring with respect to culture-bound

lexis in the translation; while average values and statistics can clearly say very
little about individual translation problems and their solution, they provided a
more global perspective on the treatment of culture-specific lexis in the
translation task;
(b) to identify differences in the approaches of the three groups, which would not
necessarily have been easily marked in a more impressionistic analysis, and to
make those differences measurable;
(c) to establish a connection between individual, local translation problems and
the more general text procedures that can be seen as the sum of all shifts
occurring in a translation. Even though the treatment of CRs in the given task
was far from consistent, allocating a value from [0] to [6] to every translation
and calculating a mean allowed the researcher to establish a first hypothesis
about the level of cultural transposition.

This suggests that quantitative analysis of CR translations can usefully

complement more selective analysis and hence increase the validity and scope of
studies investigating this phenomenon. Classification issues aside, the main short-
coming of quantitative analysis was felt to be the fact that statistically every CR
translation in the target text was given the same weight in the analysis, irrespective of
its role and status in the text. This meant, for instance, that the transference of a
relatively well-known item such as ‘House of Lords’ was seen as on a par with the
transference of a considerably more obscure phrase like ‘Inns of Court’, even though
the latter could be argued to have a much stronger foreignizing effect. Clearly,
quantitative analysis has its limitations, which can only be balanced by discussing in
detail the translation of central items on a discourse level. Quantitative analysis,
however, has its role to play and could significantly increase the validity and widen
the scope of studies taking a more selective and focused approach.

Notes
1. Adonis, A., and Pollard, S. (1997, September 21). The curse of Blair’s New Britain: The
rise and rise of the Super Class. The Observer, 24.
2. The Staatsexamen qualifies one to teach the subject at secondary level after additional
practical teacher training.
3. Translations marked with an asterisk are literal non-standard renderings.
356 H.M. Olk

Notes on contributor
Harald Olk has studied classical languages and English and taught in universities in the UK,
Ghana and, most recently, Malaysia, where he was a senior lecturer at University Malaya.

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Appendix

Britain’s new super class

Britain has a new upper class: the ‘super class’, a highly-paid elite, which is built
on old professions and institutions. Being British, they have a solid base in
tradition, whether in Oxbridge, Clubland, the Inns of Court, the House of Lords,
or the City of London with its medieval Corporation and Lord Mayor. On the
other hand, the super class is a new phenomenon originating from the reforms
that were a product of Thatcherism in the 1980s. Like the Victorian factory
owners and hereditary peers, this class has come to believe in the justice of its
wealth and status.
The lives of the new class revolve around Harrods and Kensington; the best public
schools; modern art; the Royal Opera; and the high-life in London, where much of
the super class is concentrated. For instance, half to two thirds of all solicitors and
barristers in England and Wales work in London, as do 85 percent of all QCs.
This concentration in London has two main effects. First, most of the elite’s
economic weight is exerted at the heart of the nation, ensuring it strong clout with
Whitehall-regardless of whether the government is Tory or New Labour. Secondly,
it enables the super class to separate itself from most of the country. Britain
beyond the Home Counties barely features on its horizon.