From Cultural Frames to Cultural Turn in Translation Studies

This paper is aimed at discussing the cultural turn, which has brought a significant change to how we understand translation. Translation is not a code-switching, rather it is a communication activity between different cultures. Therefore, attention to the context in which translations are produced and consumed is an essential element. The current study draws on the concept of cultural frames proposed by Fillmore to state that understanding of language entails the understanding of culture. The cultural turn in the 1980s stems from the realization that previous approaches have not dealt appropriately with broader issues such as culture, power relations, the roles of translators as social agents for change. Thus, the cultural turn does not see translation as a language-level activity, since translation is the product of various cultural contexts. In this respect, such basic questions as who translates what is affected by social factors such as various agents and ideologies. This paper also suggests that translational strategies, which have been deemed to be adopted on linguistic level, can be controlled by diverse power relations which lie outside the realms of pure language.