Challenges of Translating Somali Ecological Cultural Terms Into English

Abstract

This study identifies and discusses the primary problems that face Somali–English translators depending on the assumption that translating ecological cultural terms from Somali into English is a problematic issue. Moreover, it aims to evaluate the main strategies used in translating ecological culture bound terms in order to judge their accuracy and faithfulness. The study is based on textual analysis of the corpus that includes 12 texts of fauna, flora and weather in Somalia and England. Two Somali texts are compared with their English translations while one English text is compared with its Somali translation and alternative translations being proposed where necessary and suitable. The findings show that the main challenges of translating culture bound terms are related to fauna, flora, and weather. It also reveals that four strategies are used in translating ecological cultural terms from Somali to English. Meanwhile, the most frequent strategy of source –oriented translation is borrowing (transliteration) and the most frequent strategy of target oriented one is descriptive strategy (explanation). The examination of the strategies proves that each strategy has positive or negative interpretations depending on the context of use. Finally, the research concludes that the careful reading of the source text and the good knowledge of cultural aspects of ecology will serve to address the challenges of translating cultural terms of ecology and to produce accurate target texts free from misleading and weak renditions. Building recommendations on these conclusions, the researcher hopes, will improve the process of translating cultural terms of ecology by opening the doors for advanced research in this field from different dimensions.