Culture in

Terminological
Concepts
 In technical translation the terminology must be
checked conscientiously.
 Internationally standardised terminology has no
cultural differences. They are a minority. E.g. CE
(Eureopean Conformity), DIN (German Institute of
Standardization) or ISO (International Organization for
Standardization).
 Dictionaries and DB are not enough for consultation of
terminology, because new terms are constantly being
created and carry conceptual differences.
 Due to climatic variations, the safety and construction
rules may be different in countries, even if the terms
designating the respective object are apparently the
same.
 From a linguistic perspective we are faced with ‘false
friends’.
 Problems of equivalence vary among the languages.
 Sometimes, new technical terms are created by
means of metaphorical terminology referring to
similarities in the function, form, or position of an
object. (Adaptation to different contexts).
 In metaphors, problems in translation can arise, since
they are not identical between languages and,
translators are not aware of this possibility. (aware of
culture).
 Translators will have to be critical and possess the
relevant knowledge in order to be able to select the
right expressions.
Differences between
terminological conceptualisation:

Sciences Humanities
- Exact definitions - Academic convention
- Methodical deduction and interpretation of
(general to particular) concepts agreed among
- Every term has its scholars.
hierarchical place.
- Not always cultural
differences in the
concepts.
 Recognition of the relevant terminology and its
distinction from general language forms is important,
in order to prevent naïve understanding of a specialist
text.
Culture in the
language form
 Languages are the main expression of cultural differences
developed in history.
 There are language-specific forms of word compounding,
to be recognised and applied in technical translation. E.g.:
 English terms are mostly contrued by a combination of
several nouns, or of an adjective with a noun, in a similar
sequence.
 On the contrary, in Romance languages the word
compounding goes in the reverse order and is realised by
particles.
Translate: brake failure warning lamp=
 Sometimes the analysis of very long compounds
requires special knowledge.
 Technical expressions in Spanish take more words in
translation. English versions use to take less words.
 Due to the language economy, the use of this
linguistic concentration is developing fast in many
European languages.
 Linguistic differences based on culture are not limited
to the word level but also include syntactic structures.
(verb tenses or parts of speech).
Translation and
Culture
 Introduction
Culture: Human communication.
Terminology
Text type
Function
Category of attention
Understanding
Pragmatics
 Language for specific purposes – LSP
 Scientific writing/ Technical writing
 Message = subject relevant information + implicit cutural background
of the autor.
 One same topic can be expressed in different ways according to the
person explaining. Sender/Receiver.
When translating, the translator can/cannot belong to one of the
cultures.
 Understanding =Translation problem.
 Hermeneutics: comprehension as a cognitive revelation of meaning to
the interested receptive reader.
Hermeneutic circle: individual experience and knowledge of every
human. It may be extended by learning.
 You can only understand something when a bridge of knowledge
already exists.
Reading will improve this bridge of knowledge.
 Detecting cultural elements in texts therefore is decisive for
translation.
 Cultural elements in texts
What are cultural elements and how are they visible in texts?
Cultural elements: (not strange terms) background of knowledge which
is generally relevant for adequate communication within society.
Culture: forms of things that people have in mind, their models for
perceiving, relating, and interpreting them.
Translators sometimes are not able to interpret the implicit cultural
traces or misinterpret them.
So, modulations or adaptations are options as “cultural shifts”.
When foreign elements are not adapted, the result will be an: overt
translation.
Technical translation requires the formulation of communicatively
adequate technical texts in the other language, including clarity,
precision and linguistic economy.
Cultural elements: terminology, language form, syntax, text structure
and pragmatics.
 The Effect of Culture on Language
pp. (210-222)

Assist. Prof. Enas Subhi Amer

Department of English-College of Education for Women
Baghdad University

Abstract
It is believed that culture plays an important role in the ELF classroom activities (Al- Mutawa, & Kilani,
1989:87). It is important for the teacher to recognize potential negative (culturally based) perceptions of their
learners. In Iraq, for instance, it is not.
Uncommon to meet silent expressionless students that arc supposedly English language learners. It is
possible for the beginner to interpret this negatively as a lack of interest in the study of English. This
interpretation may play a harmful role in the classroom methodology. An instructor has to be intercultural
competent to be an effective teacher. It will be more effective if the instructor adopts a consistent style of
instruction to allow learners to adapt within the bounds of their own personalities without being forced to behave
outside their own cultural values.
that may result from poor grammatical structure and from misinterpretation because of contextual ambiguity and
cultural unawareness.
Lyons (1968: 122) stresses that prefect knowledge of FL implies not only the knowledge of its grammar
rules and vocabulary, but also an ability to employ a large variety of spoken and written registers. Speaking and
FL is a skill that has to be supported and nourished throughout the learner
assumption that what the FL learners pursue, is a mythical native speakers-like linguistic competence. Many
would agree that it will also involve such skills as the ability to recognize allusions, understand jokes or decode
newspaper headlines.
Chapter one
Culture
What is culture?

T rests upon the classical conception of what constitutes in art , literature , manners and
social institutions . This classical conception emphasized that culture should be related to the
human history as a progress and self-development.
According to anthropological sen
beliefs , attitudes , customs , behavior and social habits own culture, and different subgroup
with in a society may have their own distinctive subculture .
Culture may be described technically as acquired knowledge. I.e. as the knowledge
that someone has by virtue of his being a member of a particular society.
(John Lyons , language linguistics , p301-302)
Culture as a sociology is often a set in contrast to
accepted by the majority of the individuals of a nation .
Man can be created by contemporary circumstances and lead to the adoption of certain
modes of behavior as well as implicated by modes of living accepted by the members of the
community.
The idea that language is deeply embedded in culture is an unusual concept for some
people because they believe that language is the key to the cultural heritage of another people
or that knowledge of another language enables individuals to increase their personal culture
through contact with great minds and works of literature. They would prefer to define culture
se of

skills , p3 )

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 The culture of a people is certainly the result of training but training in all aspects of
shared life in a community. The child growing up in a social group, learns ways of doing
things, ways of expressing himself, ways of looking at things, what things he should value
and what things he should despise or avoid, what is expected of him and what he may expect
from others. All these attitudes, reactions and unspoken assumptions will be expressed in his
action, in his social relationships, in his mind, in his moral convictions, in his attractions and
f
life.

Mathew Arnold:
He claims that culture is not a set of rules or collection of facts which we
memorize, culture. Culture is an activity if the mind makes a person lives, feels and thinks in
a tree and valuable way. The same values he sets for people, he also sets for literary criticism
without it becomes unfruitful way of passing time.
T.s.Eliot:

individuals, whether poets or none. To that culture the poet must subordinate himself because
Eliot understand it in every brood sense the poet should have on awareness of history an
awareness of past achievements in order to understand his role not as an individual is separate
from others, but as a continuing that tradition. (Adnan k. Abdulla, History of literary
criticism, p257, 265, 1988).
Culture or Civilization:

and literary achievements, political, educational and religious institution, accomplishments in

the sciences, and major philosophical concepts basic to the operation of the society. These
represent the aspects of the culture.
ages includes previous aspect. But

beliefs and prejudices they share with their fellows with in their linguistics and social groups,
with due attention to inter a group differences of ( Social class, for instance ).
Smaller groups within that community. This is true of all peoples and all languages; it is a
universal fact about language.
Anthropologists peak of the relations between languages and culture. It is indeed,

being used as it is throughout this article, anthropological sense, to refer all aspects of human
life in so far as they are determined or conditional by membership in a society. The fact that a
man eats or drinks is not itself culture; it is a biological necessity that he does so far the
preservation of life. That he eats particular food and refrains from eating other substances,
though they may be perfectly and nourishing and that they or he eats and drinks at particular

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 lish
anthropologist sir Edward Burnett Taylor. As thus defined, culture covers a very wide area of
human life and behavior & language is manifestly apart, probably the most important part of
it.
Although the faculty of language acquisition & language use is innate and inherited,
and there is legitirnal debate over the extent of this innateness , every individuals language is

ich he is brought up, society and language are mutually

indispensable, language can have developed only in social setting however this may been
structured, and human society in any from even remotely resembling what is known today or
is recorded in history could be maintained only among people speaking and understanding
language in common use.
Language is a fool of the society that employs it, and the ways in which language is used
reflects the culture of that society. This relationship between language and culture forms an
important part of the acquisition of a second language because if involves the way in which
member of a culture view the world. Thus a language is a part of culture (betty Wallace).
The influence of culture on a language:
Culture shapes language and its turn language expresses culture. This relationships can help
in the design of the curriculum. Effective teaching starts with the familiar, and everyday
language by definition talks about everyday matters. If we are not certain of the concerns and
priorities of our learners. we may discover these simply by listening to their conversation. Just
as modern curricula prescribe that children should start their study of science through
observation of familiar features of their environment, surfe
the exploration of familiar language.
Language & Culture
The definition of language:
From a certain physiological point of view it is basically a vocal behavior that takes place
as a response to certain stimuli. Since language involves communication among individuals, it
is also some kind of social behavior.

is different from other types of behavior such as walking. The latter does not involve a body

outside it.
From a physical point of view, language is essentially set of sound patterns to which the
speakers have arbitrarily assigned meaning or reference on which they implicitly agree.
Language changes historically over the passage of time, geographically from place to
place, socially from one social class to another and individually from person to person at the
same time, in the same locality and social class.

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 In addition to that, language also manifests a certain degree of unity in the form of a

Thus languages ire defined as a set of vocal patterns to which arbitrary meanings are
assigned used for the purpose of communication among individuals as a social group and
manifesting a standard from and a variety of sub form.
(Idelt Journal 16, p8-9, 1980)
Language is central to learning and a prerequisite for most human communication. The
way in which languages serve those universe function varies from country to country, from
culture to culture. A language develop to enable people to talk about things important to them.
If we look at a vocabulary of a language, or at usage in a particular region, we find that a large
and precise vocabulary will have developed to enable extensive communication on what is
most important to the culture. For example, the Eskimo who discusses snow with precision is
not a usual specialist her which vocabulary is common to all the people of her culture. If a
foreigner starts to chat with her abo
observations vague, puzzling or even meaningless.
There is a hard and fast rule in sociolinguistics which advocates the following principle
of language could. Whenever there is a cultural of any form, there must be a linguistic contact
as a result. After all language is a system of human communication and the words and ideas
of one language can spread through time and space in extremely curious ways.
The influence can be direct as happened during the expansion of the Islamic Empire in
many parts of the Ancient world. In Asia, we find for instance, Persia and India coming under
the Islamic rule; in Europe, we find Spain and Sicily; in Africa we find the Arabic speaking
country and some countries south of the Sahara such as Kenya and Nigeria. The linguistic
influence, on the other hand, can be indirect as is the case with English and some modern
European languages which borrowed Arabic vocabulary through another language. As
linguistics, we can maintain that there are no pure languages in the world.
To linguists, all languages are equal and one language is as important as another in
forms of its grammatical and semantic structures. Therefore, languages can influence each
other in unidirectional or bidirectional ways.
Eventually language is a fool of communication. Like any fool when used in various
fields if acquires sharpness and flexibility thing than is to decide to use the language, not
whether the language is usable or not.
Language is a part of culture:
Language is an important social factor. Anthropologists agree on the fact that language is an essential
Like culture, languages acquired
through the learning of broad behavioral patterns on the basic of which deleted and minute events can be
explained. Also language and culture are subject to change as a result of the tremendous accumulation of
experiences that the nation undergoes. A nation also needs a language to facilitate the process of culture
growth.
Language cannot be separated completely from culture because it is deeply embedded in.
Foreign language are the key to the cultural heritage of another people, and that knowledge of

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a foreign language enables an individual to increase his personal culture through contact with
great minds and the great works of literature.
It has been seen that language is much more than the external expression and
communication of internal thoughts formulated independently of their verbalization. In
demonstrating the inadequacy and in appropriateness of such a view of language, attention

of details relate

country with a common language. In freirian literacy group a set of key words is used to teach
people to read. Between them, the words represent all the common syllables in Portuguese as
each number learns new syllables, he can combine and recombine them to make new words.
The key words are chosen because they are important to the learner and therefore more easily
remembered.
The native language is learned along with the ways and attitudes of the social group in
which one grows up, and these ways & attitudes find expression through the language. In this
way the language is an integral part of the functioning social system. The psychologist as

word for an individuals is the result of the sum total of experiences which he has had with that
word in the cultural environment in which he has grown up. As the members of the group
have similar experiences, this meaning is shared by them all, but May fifer in certain respects
from meaning the word has for certain other groups. It is became of this inter relationship of
language and culture that one to one equivalences can rarely be established between words
and expressions in two languages, once one has passed beyond the stage of physical
identification.
The lines of linguistic penetration are not altogether physical, but cultural as well. A
cultural that enjoys high prestige can make itself felt as desirable without recourse to force of
arms while material arteries of language-land and seas-lake on a new element, the air, the
language ways of the spirit and the mind acquire new force, derived from a variety of sources-

The belief that there is a very close relationship between language and culture has long
been held by anthropologist and American linguistic with strong interest in non-European
language. Like Edward Sapir, have emphasized the interplay between language and culture, it
reflects, there is strong support among linguistic for statements like the following from Sapir.
uage does not exist a part from culture, that is from the socially inherited assemblage of
practices and beliefs that determines the texture of our lives.
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone nor alone in the world of social
activity as ordinarily understood but are very much at the mercy of the particular language

is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group

hear otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our
community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

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 Ervin-Tripp reported on an experiment with Japanese & English speakers to test her
hypothesis t
women were asked to complete statements that they heard and read in both languages.
The responses of one woman, which were typically of the others were as follows:
When my wishes
(Japanese) it is a time of great unhappiness.
(English) I do what I want

(Japanese) A house wife.

(English) a teacher.

(Japanese) help each other.

(English) be very frank.
In this study the specific language employed seemed to mirror a particular
cultural view since the content of what was said varied with the language being used.
Tradgill provides another kind of example of the effect of the social or cultural
environment on language. He points out that distinctions are important in the culture,
are reflected in the lexicon of the language of that society. He says for example that
the distinction between maternal and paternal aunt is not significant in English
speaking culture; therefore, no special term is required as may be in other culture.
Charles C. Fries was wanted to use modes as an example of the way in which
language and culture internal in the social situation. The word breakfast is fairly easy

fully understands that word unless one knows what the meal consists of, where it is
eaten, with whom and what time. Is it a large mail like that served in England? Is it
prepared by one person or does each person in the family prepare his or her own. The
full meaning of a given linguistic item will not be grasped unless it is associated with
the situation in which if occurs.
Education and culture:
Effective education demands an understanding of the culture we need to start by looking
at surface level feature of a culture. If we identify and reproduce in our material accepted
conversations of behavior, people will be more likely to take the materials seriously.
Educators need to respect the ways people in anyone culture communicate with each other,
taking account of conventions of greetings, of conversational structure and features of non-
verbal behavior, such points matter in pictures as well as speech; in one country a poster
showing a man taking his pay packet in one hand lost its impact since in that culture gifts are
normally taken in both hands together.

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