MAINTAINING CULTURAL IDENTITY: TRANSLATING RIFFIAN-AMAZIGH PROVERBS INTO ENGLISH

Resumen

The present paper seeks to shed light on the cultural transfer of Riffian-Amazigh (RA) proverbs to English as a translational process foregrounding different aspects of Riffian-Amazigh cultural identity. Certainly, oral culture is the ideal environment where proverbs are born. In addition to denoting cultural signs of oral tradition, proverbs also trace back the cultural history of a nation. These oral expressions are the outcome of different events throughout the history of nations. Bearing in mind the huge cultural and cross-cultural specificities such as traditions, customs, idioms, modes of address etc, a translator of these cultural expressions often comes across proverbs that include proper names and refer to historical, religious, cultural, social etc events which gave birth to this type of popular expression. The translator’s task, then, lies in identifying the RA cultural elements and trying as much as they can to transfer them into the target language (TL) without having to lose the spirit of the SL proverb. Cultural literacy in the TL is of paramount importance for the translator. That is, they need to know about the cultural intricacies and peculiarities of the TL since subtle aspects of culture may play a key role in understanding the gist of the proverb. Finally, the study is based on a mixed methodological approach to data analysis, i.e. quantitative and qualitative methods.