Cultural Untranslatability Leading to Cultural Inconsistency and Mistranslation: A Case Study of the Translations of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora and Hasan Azizul Huq’s Sabitri Upakhyan

This study investigates the challenges of translating Bangla novels into English, focusing on cultural untranslatability that often leads to cultural inconsistencies and mistranslations. Using Tagore’s Gora and Hasan Azizul Huq’s Sabitri Upakhyan as case studies, this research adopts a corpus-based qualitative approach, employing content analysis. It incorporates Nida’s (1945) categorization of culture-specific items—ecology, material culture, social culture, religious culture, and linguistic culture—along with Newmark’s (1988) translation techniques. Despite meticulous efforts to find suitable equivalents for untranslatable elements, the findings reveal significant difficulties faced by foreign translators in accurately conveying culture-specific elements, often due to misconceptions about Bengali culture and heritage. The study suggests that contextual translation, cross-cultural training, and collaboration with native speakers can significantly enhance the accuracy and cultural fidelity of translated works. This study emphasizes the importance of addressing cultural untranslatability to improve translation practices and preserve the original texts’ cultural integrity.