Über translatorische Herausforderungen, die Verflechtung kultureller und subkultureller Referenzrahmen und interkulturelle Missverständnisse: Amanda Gormans virales Inaugurationsgedicht The Hill We Climb
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Britta C. Jung
Abstract
This article examines the role of translation as a site of cultural misunderstandings and explores to what extent the concentration of culture- and subculture-specific elements within a text, along with their aesthetic realisation, poses a particular challenge for translators. Using Amanda Gorman’s viral inaugural poem The Hill We Climb (2021) as a case study, the analysis investigates how linguistic, cultural, and discursive elements of the original have been transformed in the German translation. Special attention is given to the translators’ approach to civil-religious discourse and the jeremiad as a text genre, as well as the resulting sacral-religious tone, which has been significantly reduced or entirely neutralised in the German translation. Furthermore, this article focusses on the translation of subcultural elements of African American literary, cultural, and linguistic traditions, particularly double-voicedness, orality, and signifyin(g), as well as race-based terminology. The analysis reveals that these shifts reflect not only linguistic adaptations but also deeper cultural differences, raising fundamental questions about the translatability of culturally encoded texts.
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