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contexts. According to this view, translation is more a translation of
cultures than of words or sentences. Casagrande (1954, p338) puts it
more explicitly when he states that, "In effect, one does not translate
languages; one translates cultures." Cultural translation is not
irrelevant to Halliday's theory of language, a theory which views
language from a social-semiotic perspective. Halliday maintains that
language has three general functions: an ideational function, an
interpersonal function, and a textual function; - all are unmistakably
culture-bound. Studying language from a social-semiotic perspective
commits Halliday to a functional view of language - to the belief that
language is not simply a formal system, but rather a system that
exists to satisfy the communicative requirements of its users, and in
so doing, reflects their unique culture. Cross-cultural translation
preoccupies itself with the communicative aspect of language at the
expense of the pragmatic and the linguistic ones.
Chau suggests two methods for accomplishing cultural translation:
the ethnographical-semantic method and the dynamic-equivalence method.
Ethnographical semanticists, unlike formal grammarians, confront the
problem of 'meaning' from an ethnographical point of view on the
assumption that meaning is indisputably culture-bound. Translators are
advised to be sensitive to the culture-bound elements inherent in
lexical items in both SL and TL texts. No two persons think equally
alike, nor have their thoughts equally deeply rooted in one and the
same language. Between any two languages, even if they belong to the
same family, the cultural gap is inevitable, formidable and sometimes,
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