TRAVERSING CULTURES THROUGH PROVERBS TRANSLATIONS: RUSSIAN-YORUBA-ENGLISH IN CONTEXT

Abstract

Proverbs as a linguistic structure play significant roles in communicating deeper knowledge of speech among a people and one of the  concepts that defines such a people as a distinctive and peculiar cultural entity.   It is a rare knowledge that it also replicates a valuable source that influences and enhances cultural interactions between societies of cultural diversity, and closes the gaps of cultural bias, misrepresentation and apathy between societies of different origins. In this paper, the author examines proverbs as a medium for cross-cultural communications and an instrument for cultural awareness between societies of different origins. The study employs a Cross-cultural communication theory and  to analyse Russian, Yoruba and English proverbs. Translation serves as a means of facilitating the subject of study as regards the understanding of the cultural awareness between the cultural audience. This paper might have some contents that are etymological in nature, but it is primarily not purposed to examine the etymology of proverbs and neither to discuss methods of translation, but to examine proverbs as the embodiment and custodian of cultures, and translation as a means of navigating across them. The Data for this study elicted from interviews with custodians and legends of Yoruba culture, personal and books on proverbs in the three languages.