Domestication as Strategy in Translating Religious Cultural Elements into English

Abstract

People with different beliefs and religions around the world discovered that Quran enlightens the way of life. Therefore, it results in emergence of progressive efforts of translating this sacred text into many languages that has been carried out particularly in 20th century. However, translating sacred text is far more difficult than other type of texts. There are religious culture-specific-items that carry peculiar meaning and must be translated into appropriate equivalent in target culture. Thus, the meaning encompassed in that equivalent, and the description that characterized the meaning will be compatible with its original. Moreover, translating these items by applying domestication strategy will bring the text close to the target reader. It is because the equivalent provided in target language is familiar and well-known to the readership. Yet, this strategy puts the cultural gap to its intended meaning, especially when the text is related to the religious culture-specific-item, which is only known to the source readership. Therefore, the present article aims to investigate the domestication strategy in translating religious cultural elements into English. This study is qualitative, and the data are analyzed descriptively using document analysis. Disclosing the meaning of domesticated equivalent, the study adopts componential analysis by Newmark (1988). The study contributes to enhancing the procedure of componential analysis by validating the cultural element categorization with experts and referring exegesis as main source in identifying the characteristic of meaning. It is found that domestication strategy can only provide the adequate meaning to the closest when it comes together with compensation strategy.