ITI Cultural Adaptation & Localization 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which term describes the process of adapting a translated text so that it feels natural and familiar to the target culture, even at the expense of source-culture flavor?
- Foreignization
- Domestication (Correct answer)
- Transcreation
- Calquing
Correct answer: Domestication
Domestication, as theorized by Lawrence Venuti, adapts the text to the norms and expectations of the target culture, making it feel as if it were originally written in that culture.
Question 2: A translator rendering a French text for a US audience changes 'le baccalauréat' to 'high school diploma.' This is an example of:
- Transliteration
- Cultural substitution (Correct answer)
- Borrowing
- Calque
Correct answer: Cultural substitution
Cultural substitution replaces a source-culture concept with a functionally equivalent target-culture concept, helping the target reader grasp the intended meaning.
Question 3: What is a 'cultureme' in translation studies?
- A unit of meaning unique to a specific culture with no direct equivalent elsewhere (Correct answer)
- A phonological unit used in machine translation
- A footnote explaining a source-language term
- A synonym for a false friend
Correct answer: A unit of meaning unique to a specific culture with no direct equivalent elsewhere
A cultureme is a culture-specific phenomenon — an item, concept, or practice so embedded in a particular culture that it lacks a straightforward equivalent in other languages.
Question 4: In localization, 'locale' refers to:
- The physical location of the translation agency
- A combination of language and regional settings such as date format, currency, and conventions (Correct answer)
- The source document's country of origin
- A glossary of regional dialects
Correct answer: A combination of language and regional settings such as date format, currency, and conventions
A locale specifies both the language and regional preferences (e.g., en-US vs. en-GB), governing how elements like dates, numbers, and currency are formatted for a target market.
Question 5: Which strategy is Lawrence Venuti most associated with advocating for literary translation?
- Domestication
- Foreignization (Correct answer)
- Literal translation
- Paraphrase
Correct answer: Foreignization
Venuti advocates foreignization, which preserves the strangeness of the source text to resist the cultural dominance of the target language and make the translator's work visible.
Question 6: A translator working on a US marketing campaign converts all metric measurements in a French source text to imperial units. This is an example of:
- Lexical borrowing
- Localization (Correct answer)
- Back-translation
- Terminological consistency
Correct answer: Localization
Localization adapts a product or text to the linguistic and cultural norms of a specific target market, including measurement systems, currencies, and other regional conventions.
Question 7: What does 'transcreation' involve that distinguishes it from standard translation?
- Word-for-word rendering of the source text
- Creative adaptation of content to evoke the same emotional impact in the target culture, often diverging significantly from the source (Correct answer)
- Automatic post-editing of machine translation output
- Substitution of all culture-specific items with generic terms
Correct answer: Creative adaptation of content to evoke the same emotional impact in the target culture, often diverging significantly from the source
Transcreation (used heavily in marketing and advertising) prioritizes recreating the emotional and persuasive effect of the original, allowing significant divergence from the source text's wording.
ITI Cultural Adaptation & Localization 1
Which term describes the process of adapting a translated text so that it feels natural and familiar to the target culture, even at the expense of source-culture flavor?