Questions for demo lesson

Divide the questions between group members and get ready for the questions (learn by heart, if it is necessary)

The commission will be present during the class

What factors does successful intercultural communication involve?

Successful intercultural communication is very difficult to achieve, as it involves a great number of factors, e.g. language (verbal communication), body gesture (non-verbal communication), the use of time, space and silence, etc., which differ from culture to culture. For all of these reasons, bridging the gap between two people or groups of people who employ an interpreter ‘simply’ because they do not speak the same language is a very delicate task.

How important is impartiality for interpreters?

Admittedly, impartiality is one of the major ethical requirements for interpreters, which means that, as a rule, an interpreter is not allowed to give his/her opinion, or to alter in any way what a speaker expresses through his/her language: “The formulation of the message is the responsibility of the other parties; the interpreter’s responsibility is to interpret” (Gentile, Ozolinis and Vasilakakos 1996, p. 48). However, Taft (1981, p. 59) states that “… mediation between cultures requires the communication of ideas and information from one cultural context to the other. This is analogous to the process involved in linguistic translation, even though there is more to mediation than mere translation” (emphasis added). Given that literal translation is generally not considered advisable (Schäffner, 1996; Katan, 1999), it is essential to find out the extent to which an interpreter can ‘mediate’ rather than merely ‘translate’ in order to improve the communication flow.

What is the interrelation of culture and translation?

Translation is not only a linguistic act; it's also a cultural one, an act of communication across cultures. Translation always involves both language and culture simply because the two cannot be separated. Language is culturally embedded: it both expresses and shapes cultural reality, and the meaning of linguistic items can only be understood when considered together with the cultural context in which the linguistic items are used. Translators should pay great attention to differences in kind and degree of conventionalization in the source and target cultures when transferring a text from one culture to another. One of the main characteristics of translation is its 'double-bind situation', where the translator has to link the source text in its cultural context to the target communicative-cultural condition.

Can translation be viewed as a means of intercultural communication?

The view of translation as of a means of intercultural communication follows from the idea of language as a culture component, and culture - as an aggregate of material and spiritual achievements of the society, including all the varied historical, social and psychological features of the ethnos, its traditions, views, values, institutions, behavior, living conditions – in short, all the sides of its life and consciousness, including language [4].

The concept of translation is central in the translation studies. It is important to mention that the concept of translation is polysemantic. Firstly, it refers to translation as an intellectual activity, that is a process, secondly – to translation as the result of this process, a product of translational activity, in other words, the text of translation created by the translator.

How does V. Komissarov consider translation?

V. Komissarov considers that “translation is a complicated and many-sided kind of human activity. Though usually people speak about translation “from one language on another”, actually, it is not simply a replacement of one language with another. The different cultures, people, ways of thinking, literatures epochs, levels of development, traditions and world views clash with each other in translation”

What are M. Brandes and L. Barkhudarov’s opinions about translation?

According to M. Brandes, “translation is a kind of language mediation where the content of the foreign text (original) is transferred to other language by way of creating a communicatively equivalent text in this language” [6].

In L. Barkhudarov’s opinion, “translation is a process of transformation of a speech product in one language into a speech product in another language, the invariable meaning being preserved” [7].

How do G. Toury and A.D. Schweitzer view translation in the context of culture?

G. Toury believes that “translation is kind of activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions” [8].

Serving as a means of communication between people of various ethnic groups, translation is a means of interlingual and intercultural communication. According to A.D. Schweitzer, “translation can be defined as a unidirectional and two-phase process of interlingual and intercultural communication, where a secondary text (metatext) text is created on the basis of the primary text subjected to purposeful (“translational”) analysis, the secondary text replacing the primary one in another language and cultural environment” [9].