Non translatibility of lexis with dominant cultural allusions

Abstract

Is an excellent knowledge of a foreign language sufficient to seize all the allusions that characterize the French culture and civilization, and which are contained in a book with primarily cultural connotations, such as the Asterix series? While studying, on the basis of the album Asterix in Corsica, the exact meaning of proper names of people and places invented by the author, we will inquire whether it is possible to transmit into a non-French text all the linguistic, sociological and cultural messages included in the Asterix Album, and whether the translation from French into Polish clearly and accurately transmits the entire message of these proper names. We will compare the role of the translator to that of an actor playing a theatrical part, and we will perceive the classical role of the translator, the comical role which will enable him to freely express his inventiveness, and, finally, the tragic role in which he finds himself facing an idiomatic expression or a cultural reality that is either impossible to understand or difficult to translate. Thus, we will suggest that translations of this type be realized by two translators, where one would be a native speaker of the source language, and the other – of the target language.