LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL TRANSLATION

To comprehend the activity of translation, we need to clarify the relationship between culture and language. But whatever our approach to the analysis of the translatability of a text into another language/culture may be, it is essential to realise that even under the least favourable of conditions – be it cultural and/or linguistic distance, or complexity and heterogeneity of the text - the linguistic tool, i.e. the language of man, is always potentially able to express elements belonging to another language/culture. But translation never succeeds in the pure and absolute sense of the term: it only succeeds in promising success or reconciliation.Translability always requires a discourse that allows for transporting a foreign culture into one’s own. In this way, translation is a labyrinth, a permanent errancy and exile; a love affair not only of two languages, but above all between two tongues