摘要：Translation as a process of domesticating something alien is not restricted solely to linguistic domain; on the contrary, it can be extended to other arenas as well. For example, travel writing as an attempt to tame foreign culture and render it accessible for the audience in home culture, can be considered as a kind of cultural translation. When a travel writer enters into a new context (source culture), he encounters with signs which are radically different from those in his home culture. Hence, the travel writer is burdened to deforeignize hitherto unknown signs to render them familiar and consumable for his audience. Since the travel writer carries his cultural baggage which functions as a cultural filter, his cultural translation cannot be objective and free from cultural mistranslations, and as a result, the current article is going to focus on the cultural mistranslations in Arminius Vambery’s Travel to Central Asia. Thus, it argues that the travel writer in question in his journey to Central Asia which is a semi terra incognita in nineteenth century endeavors to translate the exotic aspects (foreign signs) of Central Asian culture; however, his cultural biases give rise to the cultural mistranslations in areas such as diet and religious punishment like stoning.
关键词：translation; travel writing; cultural mistranslation; central Asia
