It is often considered that reading a novel in the original is better than in translation; however,
there are limiting factors regarding reading in a foreign language. Detecting cultural references
and identifying their referents is problematic for readers whose proficiency in the second
language is not near-native-like and who do not have a good knowledge of the culture(s) in
question. This paper examines the translation into Finnish of cultural references in Terry
Pratchett’s book Jingo. Pratchett’s books not only tell a story, they also illustrate a truth of some
kind: they are satirical as well as amusing. Any loss of cultural references in translation may
affect these purposes.
I present the results of a questionnaire completed by Finnish university students divided into
two groups, one reading the original source text and the other a translation. Categorisation of the
cultural references is done according to a modified version of the systems used by Leppihalme
(1997) and Ruokonen (2010). The results show that although the respondents better understood
references in the original, they also misidentified some. The incidence of ‘culture bumps’ was,
however, low in both texts, and the translations of the references were mostly felt to be coherent
with their cotexts.