OS CULTUREMAS PERTENCENTES AO AMBIENTE NATURAL NA TRADUÇÃO ROMENA DE CHIQUINHO

Abstract

Culturemes Pertaining to the Natural Environment in the Romanian Translation of Chiquinho. The present study attempts to examine the translation of culturally charged words related to the natural environment of the Cape Verde archipelago in the Romanian version of the novel Chiquinho (1947), written by Baltasar Lopes and translated by Mioara Caragea in 1981. The techniques applied in the translation of 37 culturemes pertaining to the semantic fields of climate, landscape, flora and fauna are analysed according to the theoretical framework developed by Lucía Molina (2006). The findings reveal a preference for oblique translation, given that adaptation is the most commonly used technique, followed by reduction, discursive creation and generalization, while direct translation techniques such as calque, borrowing and literal translation are almost entirely absent. This approach can be motivated by the difficulty of establishing exact equivalences, especially regarding the names of plants unfamiliar to Romanian readers. Overall, the translation favours a naturalizing strategy aiming to make the text more accessible to the target audience.

Article history: Received 06 April 2026; Revised 15 July 2026; Accepted 01 August 2026; Available online 30 September 2026; Available print 30 September 2026.