The Concept of Culture in the Translation Studies Coursework

The Concept of Culture in the Translation Studies - Coursework Example Each approach to translation attempts to trace in detail the actual process of translation and to describe how translators actually translate. One of the most important methods to emerge today in translation studies is the cultural approach. This paper will explore the merit of this method in translation studies. It was the Romans who first introduced the use of the concept of culture as an indispensable aspect in translation studies. According to Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet, during their period translation meant incorporating subject matters of foreign culture into the language of one’s own culture. For critics, this could mean looting those elements from Greek culture that would enhance the aesthetic dimensions of the Roman culture. However, as what Cicero proclaimed, he was translating ideas and their forms and was therefore setting the word-for-word rendering of the original-language text secondary or of no import at all. Culture, hence, was pivotal here even if its a spects were used to enhance another. Saint Jerome, the famous translator of the Greek Bible into Latin, favoured this method, arguing that translation meant expropriating ideas and insights from another culture to enrich one’s own language. Saint Jerome in fact improved on this, contributing to the definition of the history of the discipline. One of the authors who would credit Saint Jerome as their influence is Rufinus of Aquilea, one of the most important translators of Greek texts into Latin in late antiquity.