跨文化交际翻译练习

Translate the following paragraphs into Chinese.

1. People in Paris eat snails, but people in San Diego put poison on them. Why? People in Tabriz or Tehran sit on the floor and pray five times each day, but people in Las V egas stand up all night in front of slot machines. Why? Some people speak Tagalog, others speak English. Why? Some people paint and decorate their entire bodies, but others spend millions of dollars painting and decorating only their faces. Why? The general answer to these questions is the same. People learn to think, feel, believe, and strive for what their culture considers proper. People respond to the world through the messages they receive, but it is culture that determines, to a large extent, the form, pattern, and content of those messages. Culture also determines the content and conformation of the messages we send. This omnipresent quality of culture leads Hall to conclude that “there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture.” In many ways, Hall is correct: culture is everything and everywhere. And more importantly, at least for our purposes, culture and communication work in tandem. In fact , they are inseparable: it is often difficult to decide which is the voice and which the echo.

2. There are six barriers to communication----anxiety, assuming similarities instead of differences, ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice, nonverbal misinterpretations and language problems. Anxiety is feeling nervous, which can affect communication when you focus so much on your own feelings that you do not pay attention to what other people are telling you. If you are speaking to someone in your second language, you may worry that the other person may speak too fast or will use words you do not understand. Anxiety may also affect your ability to communicate your ideas to others. If you are in a situation where you feel very nervous, such as talking to your boss, you may find yourself saying awkward things or even making mistakes in grammar that you never do when talking with your friends.

Individualism-oriented cultures hold individual interests and goals as most important while in collectivism-oriented cultures group interests and goals precede over those of the individual. Most Western countries value individualism and people strive hard to achieve individual identity in terms of possessions and achievement in their professions. Many eastern countries place high value on the collective. Sometimes individuals have to sacrifice their own interests to achieve what is good for the group.

3. When studying stereotypes, prejudice, and racism, you may be struck with the role that communication can play in either spreading the beliefs or stopping their spread. Prejudice and racism are commonly viewed as being rooted in the child’s early socialization and fostered in communication with other people who are prejudiced or racist.

4. Here is an important point to bear in mind. Chinese learners of English tend to assume that when it is their turn to speak, they must speak accurately, completely, fluently and without any hesitation. If they cannot do so, they begin to blush and lose confidence. In actual fact they have made a unreasonable demand on themselves. In natural conversation, it is quite common that native speakers of English make grammatical mistakes, hesitate a lot, make a false start, use words or expressions that they regret using them later. The point you should bear in mind is that when you are engaged in spontaneous conversation (i. e. natural conversation), your goal is to get your ideas across. Do not worry about hesitation, misuse of words, too many pauses, etc. Nobody, not even a native speaker, is free from these flaws. Y ou can use those meaningless but useful syllables to gain time.