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Abstract

This dissertation takes the form of a translation and commentary and it explores the issues involved in translating a US English website into German. The central question that will be examined is to what extent cultural difference parameters may contribute to the creation of a translated website text that meets the needs and cultural expectations of the target audience. For this purpose, five cultural difference parameters that are based on Hofstede and Hall‘s work and were further explored by Singh and Perreira (2012) to develop a framework specifically for the customization of websites are used which are Individualism-Collectivism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity-Femininity and High-Low Context. The United States and Germany differ most in terms of uncertainty avoidance; while the United States shows no pronounced tendencies with regard to this parameter, Germany exhibits a high degree of uncertainty avoidance. According to Singh and Perreira, cultures with pronounced uncertainty avoidance combined with individualism (as in the case of Germany) show a preference for a straightforward, structured and explicit communication style. Thus it may seem surprising that the number of translation decisions in which the intended meaning was expressed more implicitly predominated, but I attribute this largely to the decision to use an even more sensitive language in references to people for the German website. Furthermore, I found that Singh and Perreira‘s framework can support final decision-making in a foreignisation–domestication situation in the absence of other determining factors. However, when considering the utility of Singh and Perreira‘s framework for website translation in light of the findings of this dissertation, it has to be recognised, in addition to the qualitative nature of this work, that the cultural gap between the United States and Germany is relatively small (as both countries belong to the ‘Western world‘) and that the source text does not contain all the stereotypical problems that can occur in website translation.

Course: Translation Studies - MA/PGD - C0680

Date Deposited: 2024-02-06

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14365.html