Abstract:
Translation is not merely an inter-linguistics activity but also an inter-cultural
activity. Folklore is a vital part in literary texts to institute a cultural system, and its
complexity poses several challenges to the translators. This study aims to investigate
the linguistic and cultural issues faced by the undergraduates of the Department of
Translation Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Jaffna, while translating folklore
material from English to Tamil. The objective of the study was to identify the
techniques and strategies used by the translator to overcome the problems. The
cultural problems were categorized as problems in translating idioms, proverbs and
cultural bound terms. The linguistic problems were categorized as complex sentence
structure, terminological problems and problems caused due to punctuation marks. In
order to overcome the problems, several translation procedures were used by the
students. Accordingly, qualitative methodology and quantitative methodology were
used for the study. Quantitative methodology was used to collect data. In qualitative
methodology, comparative method was used to compare the source text and the
translation whereas descriptive method was used to describe the outcomes of the
study. As the focus was on folkloric material, it draws attention to the requirement of
observing the ethnography of language in trying to reproduce the most exact
approximation of the nuances in the original. The findings of the study could help the
students in translation studies and researches who deal with issues in translating
Folkloric Material from English to Tamil and support finding appropriate ways to
handle such problems.
