Key Cultural Texts and Translation as a Creative Act of Cultural Mediation

This research was carried out with reference to AHRC (UK) funded network project “Translating Cultures” 2014-2018.[1] The project aimed to underscore the role of language, rhetoric, and semiotics in both textual and non-textual communication, examining these concepts in their “initial expressions” and through their translations and reinterpretations across different languages and mediums. Translating cultural texts is among the most challenging tasks for a translator, as it involves navigating numerous cultural nuances and differences. Poetry, in particular, is the most challenging genre to translate. This research focuses on Antanas Baranauskas’s lyrical Romantic poem Anykščių Šilelis (En. The Forest of Anykščiai), chosen because (1) it is a key cultural text written in East High Lithuanian dialect that portrays the former beauty of a pine grove near Baranauskas’s village and its destruction under the Russian rule,. symbolising Lithuania’s struggles under the Tsarist regime and, (2) it is one of the most frequently translated Lithuanian works, with versions in 19 languages. The study delves into two English translations by Nadas Rastenis (1956) and Peter Tempest (1985), highlighting the different strategies each translator employed. The results of the study demonstrate that translation is never neutral; each decision made by the translator reflects both the original culture and the target audience’s culture, resulting in a text that serves as a conduit for understanding across linguistic and cultural boundaries. [1] More information is available at https://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/ahrc-funded-research-project-translating-cultures.