Cultural Words in Slovenian Translations of the Works of Juan Rulfo and Carlos Fuentes

Abstract

The paper, based on the author´s thesis entitled Kulturno besedje v slovenskih prevodih del Juana Rulfa in Carlosa Fuentesa, discusses cultural words in the Slovenian translations of the novel Pedro Páramo, some of the stories of The Plain in Flames by Juan Rulfo published in the same volume and the novel The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes. In the analyzed texts there are a number of terms (also including cultural words which denote animals, plants, dishes, clothes and geographical surroundings of Mexico) that may be unknown even to the Spanish speaking readers who are not familiar with the wider Hispanic environment, and Mexican in particular. Cultural words have no exact equivalents in other languages and cultures, therefore, they most commonly indicate that we are reading a translated text. These are also the elements that contribute to the foreignization of the target text and show us the textual world as exotic and unknown. The translator of the studied texts, Alenka Bole Vrabec, tends to choose the transfer of the cultural words in order to retain some local colour, even when she could find equivalents in the Slovenian or, at least, adapt the words to the writing in accordance with the rules of the Slovenian language. These decisions accentuate the foreignizing character of her translations.