Proverb commonalities in different languages and its application to Asian Pacific communication

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Vladimir Manakin

This article surveys the idea of commonalities in cross-cultural communication through examining potential semantic universals in languages, particularly in their proverbs — the smallest verbal folklore genre that vividly reflects the mentality and culture of any nation. At the proverb level, it is possible to identify, (1) basic cognitive universal mechanisms that lead to the creativity of metaphorical thinking; (2) principles of verbalization of common human values in different languages; and (3) statements of affability, translatability, and as a result, mutual understanding between nations. At the global level, diverse human languages and cultures exist and are interconnected in a dialectical unity reflecting both its universal/common and specific features. Based on the idea of Noosphere, i.e., the latent planetary source of any kind of intellectual and spiritual information, this metaphysical perspective enables us to identify human universality in all its forms.

Author(s):  
Algis Mickunas

Mass media are global and involve numerous and varied cultures whose customs, languages, beliefs, and arts are different. The differences require bridges for mutual understanding, and such bridges are offered as cross-cultural communication. The latter point raises a question of translation and interpretation, showing how cultures are suppressed, absorbed by other cultures, or how they survive. Historical examples will be provided to form basic canons for an understanding of cross-cultural interpretation. The analyses of interpretation suggest that cultures belong to civilizations with more fundamental and more encompassing structures, capable of providing frameworks for their own cultures. At this level, cultures become symbolic designs of a given civilization. With this turn, cross-cultural communication is shifted toward comparative civilizations and their capacity to offer more fundamental frameworks of cross-cultural communication. Moving through major theories of comparative civilization, the critical questions are as follows: Does a specific theory favor the structure of one civilization over others, and does it contain features that do not belong to other civilizations? In brief, do scholars of civilizations assume the concepts of their civilization and contextualize all other civilizations in one context? In spite of these questions, civilizations, by virtue of their cultures as symbolic designs, offer phenomena that allow the formation of basic rules available in all civilizations. By comparing such rules, it is possible to decipher the way that such rules form the communicative ground at the level of cultural symbolic designs as interpretations of the broader structures—civilizations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Lara Burazer

The main focus of modern Translation Studies seems to be the ever changing challenges of successful cross–cultural communication. With globalisation of society, limitations in mutual understanding are surfacing, which are usually followed by the communicator’s failure to meet the other party’s expectations. Such expectations are not only linguistically, but culturally embedded and might prove difficult to grasp for those who are not closely connected to the particular culture. Mastering linguistic abilities is an inevitable requirement and represents an important aspect of cross–cultural communication, but achieving a high level of acceptability of (translated) texts proves to be just as important, while not always directly related to the traditional linguistic aspects of the text. It requires meeting the expectations of the target audience which exceed the scope of grammar and vocabulary. Prior cultural and discoursal experience with relevant texts proves to play an important role in producing translations which meet the target audience’s expectations in terms of linguistic, but more importantly in terms of discoursal characteristics.


Author(s):  
Nadia Pozhydaieva

The article tackles the problem of finding translation matches in order to render the idea and save the emotional content of the source advertisement text in the target text, thus preserving its preciseness. It also highlights the aspect of cross-cultural communication involved, which requires on part of its participants realizing inevitable cultural differences and overcoming cultural barriers to achieve mutual understanding and respect. With globalization of all spheres of life it is natural to assume that we are becoming part of world web media which will contribute to forming new thought patterns mainly because more and more bilingual people use English as a second language. Now that this tendency is overwhelming, we can look at the problem of translation anew. Effective cross-cultural communication takes place under the condition that all the communicants possess certain similar thought patterns. If communicants have different thought patterns, it can cause misunderstanding and cross-cultural conflict. So, the mediators in cross-cultural communication have to be not only bi-lingual, but also bi-cultural. The effectiveness of cross-cultural communication can be achieved via equivalent thought and speech patterns. With translation of advertisement texts the principle of dynamic equivalence helps to obtain the most adequate translation where the unity of the form and the content is preserved with the help of text adaptation. The target text creates a certain final effect, which determines the set of lexical, grammatical and stylistic units of the translation language with the translator’s imagination. The article also gives examples of translation of advertising texts that were marked as the best at various advertising festivals. The dynamic development of media linguistics contributes to the research in the sphere of translation of advertising texts.


1971 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. K. Eric Gunderson ◽  
Lorand B. Szalay ◽  
Prescott Eaton

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-80
Author(s):  
Irina Stanislavova ◽  
Galina Solovyova

The article is devoted to the study of issues related to the problem of “intercultural com-munication”.The complexity and relevance of this problem for the modern stage of cultur-al development is shown. Modernism is seen as an element of erosion of the functional integrity and balance of the dominant cultural system. Based on this research, a number of conclusions are made.


Author(s):  
Svitlana Gruschko

In the article the phenomenon of translation is regarded as mental interpretation activity not only in linguistics, but also in literary criticism. The literary work and its translation are most vivid guides to mental and cultural life of people, an example of intercultural communication. An adequate perception of non-native culture depends on communicators’ general fund of knowledge. The essential part of such fund of knowledge is native language, and translation, being a mediator, is a means of cross-language and cross-cultural communication. Mastering another language through literature, a person is mastering new world and its culture. The process of literary texts’ translation requires language creativity of the translator, who becomes so-called “co-author” of the work. Translation activity is a result of the interpreter’s creativity and a sort of language activity: language units are being selected according to language units of the original text. This kind of approach actualizes linguistic researching of real translation facts: balance between language and speech units of the translated work (i.e. translationinterpretation, author’s made-up words, or revised language peculiarities of the characters). The process of literary translation by itself should be considered within the dimension of a dialogue between cultures. Such a dialogue takes place in the frame of different national stereotypes of thinking and communicational behavior, which influences mutual understanding between the communicators with the help of literary work being a mediator. So, modern linguistics actualizes the research of language activities during the process of literary work’s creating. This problem has to be studied furthermore, it can be considered as one of the central ones to be under consideration while dealing with cultural dimension of the translation process, including the process of solving the problems of cross-cultural communication.


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