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In:Aproximación a la traducción de referentes culturales en el ámbito audiovisual y literario / Approach to the translation of cultural references in the audiovisual and literary fields
Editado por Pedro Mogorrón Huerta, Lucía Navarro-Brotons y Iván Martínez-Blasco
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 45] 2025
► pp. 123–141

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Cultural awareness across time

A diachronic study of the use of cultural references in a corpus of translated novels

 | Universidad de Cantabria
Published online: 13 May 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.45.08mat
Abstract
This paper aims to describe diachronically the use of foreign words as a specific type of cultural references representing linguistic culture in a corpus of novels translated between 2000 and 2014. The adopted corpus-based methodology consists in identifying foreign words of three semantic fields particularly related to culture, assessing their cultural impact, determining the translation techniques used for their transposition and the corresponding translators’ behaviour (maintenance, loss or adaptation of the foreign items). The results show a peak of cultural awareness in the novels translated between 2005 and 2009, characterized by items with the greatest cultural impact mostly maintained during the translation process, offering interesting points of departure for further research from a conceptual and a methodological perspective.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical frame
    • 2.1Cultural references
    • 2.2Foreign words
  • 3.Methodological frame
    • 3.1Analysed material
    • 3.2Methodology
  • 4.Results and discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • References
  • Analysed novels
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Analysed novels
Corpus 2000–2004
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Corpus 2005–2009
Auster, Paul. 2005. The Brooklyn follies. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
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Corpus 2010–2014
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