Taboo avoidance strategies: the case of isiNdebele health terms

Abstract

After 1994, it became necessary for documents to be translated into all African languages, including isiNdebele. It has been shown that translation is not an easy task, particularly when translating terms for language specific purposes. It remains a challenge even though the translator possesses knowledge of both the source and target languages. This is even harder when translating terms that are deemed to be taboo. The purpose of this article is to examine the taboo avoidance strategies that have been implemented by isiNdebele translators when encountering health terms that are deemed to be taboo in a society. This means that the translator always has to take culture into consideration so that terms which seem unpalatable in isiNdebele culture are avoided. The finding of this article is that the isiNdebele translators resorted to euphemisms as a taboo avoidance strategy. To analyse data, the theory of politeness was used in this study. Through this theory, the researcher was able to establish the effectiveness of euphemisms in dealing with the message of the source text. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used, and both open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were utilised as tools for data collection.