Cultural Evolution, Memes, and Proper Names

Theoretical Background

The concept of the cultural turn was presaged by the work dealing with polysystems and translation norms by Even-Zohar (1976) and by Toury (1980). They focus on the interaction between translation and culture, inter alia, on the way culture impacts and constrains translation. Toury (1995, p. 26) indicates that translation processes are determined by the norms of the target culture. He also notes that the standards used are unstable and specific to a culture. Toury defined norms as “the translation of general values and ideas shared by a group – as to what is conventionally right and wrong, adequate and inadequate – into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations” (1999, p. 14). For Even-Zohar (1975, p. 43), an adequate translation realizes in the target language the textual relationships of a source text with no breach of its own linguistic system.