Abstract:
A variety of languages with different cultures has created a great demand for the translation
in the current diversified society. Translation, according to Marianne Lederer, is a process of
reading, understanding of a source language text and rewriting it in a target language. We
create a similar situation in foreign language. Therefore, the translation plays an important
role on crossing through different cultures and communication. Thus, the translators are
always in the risk of finding the terms for their translations as they have to fully comprehend
the idea and the environment of the source text. There are idioms, colloquial terms,
borrowings, special terminologies in the domain and cultural expressions which make the
task of a translator more complicate.
This paper provides an insight to the strategies used by the Sinahala translators, who translate
directly from French, to portray the source French culture in Sinahala. Encompassing the
theory of source oriented or target oriented by Jean-Rene Ladmiral, it explicates the methods
of two Sinhala translators who have translated the novel : L‘etranger by a great French
novelist Albert Camus. To be more specific on the methodology, which is a descriptive
analysis, the author depicts how these translators have presented the French cultural aspects
which include the behavior, courtship, morals, customs, clothing, institutions, and beliefs etc.
in their Sinhala translation.
Having acknowledged the content of the translations, and vividly analyzing the strategies, it
is evident that each translator has his own method of presenting the cultural aspects. One can
use transcoding process not only focusing on the language but also on the cultural
transposition. Thus, he can either contemplate on the reader of the target text or source text.
Moreover, he can develop his own adaptation.
