Appreciation Of Translations: A Cross-cultural Perspective

With ever-increasing cooperation and communication between nations, the issue of cross-cultural communication is gaining more and more attention throughout the world by people of all circles. And through enthusiastic discussions and studies, many people have realized that culture is all-inclusive and that language, the main means of communication, is closely related to culture. Besides, scholars have realized that translation, whose working object is language, is also a form of communication and is also closely related to culture.Then how on earth translation is related to language and culture? Is it possible to appreciate a translation from a cross-cultural perspective? And if possible, how?These questions are the main concerns of this paper. To be more specific, Chapter One analyzes the process of translating from an information-transmitting perspective, and illustrates the degree of information-representation in this process. Chapter Two deals with the issue of evaluating a translation, focusing on analyzing the object of evaluation, subject of evaluation, measure of evaluation and method to achieve an objective evaluation. Realizing the subjectivity of evaluation, the author prefers the idea of appreciating a translation, which is the main topic of Chapter Three. Among the many aspects, the author chooses a cultural perspective of appreciating a translation. Thus the following chapters deal with the appreciation of translations from a cross-cultural perspective. Chapter Four is developed round the issues of culture, language and their relationship. Chapter Five is devoted to meaning and culture. Chapter Six investigates the relationship between translating and culture. While chapters 1 to 6 serve as theoretical bases paving the way for the discussion of appreciating a translation from a cross-cultural perspective, Chapter Seven is the application of these theories in practice. It compares and appreciates five English translations of Yi Jing from a cross-cultural perspective.By analyzing the process of translating from an information-transmitting perspective, the relationship between language and culture and that between translating and culture, the author expounds the meaning, possibility, methods as well as principles of appreciating a translation from a cross-cultural perspective. Then, via discussing the appreciating of five representative English translations of the profound Chinese classic Yi Jing, the author demonstrates how to appreciate translations from a cross-cultural perspective, providing a specific angle for the study of Yi Jing and its translations.