On Cultural Awareness In Translation Teaching & Learning

In recent years, the concept of cultural awareness in translation teaching and learning has gained more and more attention with many scholars having reached agreement on its importance. Cultural meanings are intricately woven into the texture of a language. As cultural carrier, language is closely related to culture and is also an important channel for the spreading of cultural information. Unavoidably, when translating one language into another, we will come across a lot of words or sentences with rich cultural connotation. Different nations have different cultural backgrounds, with differences ranging from history, ethnics, and religions to conventions, manners and ways of thinking, etc.. That is why to understand culture is so important to translation. The differences in cultural aspects also include the differences in language aspect. One of the major ways in which culture manifests itself is through language. As is stated by the famous American linguist, Benjamin Lee Whorf, language not only influences thought, but also determines thought. On the other hand, the differences in the ways of thinking also lead to the differences in the ways of language expressing. Syntactically, English is a synthetic language, with ample variations in terms of tense, aspect, number and case. English pays much more attention to its sentence structure, while Chinese focuses on the meaning or notion, with a loose sentence structure, so it is considered analytical. Chinese is a language of parataxis (意合), while English is a language of hypotaxis (形合). English is rich in sentences of passive voice, but sentences of active voice are more ample in Chinese. Viewing from cultural connotation, each of the two languages has its own idioms, proverbs and literary quotations, etc, so without enough cultural knowledge, or without strong culture awareness, one can hardly handle translation problems associated with cultural connotation. Translation is absolutely not a simple matter of the symbolic transferring from one language into another, not a matter concerned only with the intra-linguistic world such as the sophistication in grammar and words accumulation. That is to say, we have to pay more attention to developing and enhancing cultural awareness in translation work, since rich cultural knowledge is a basic foundation for doing translation work well.Then how to cultivate and enhance people's cultural awareness is worthy of our attention. Considering the present translation teaching and learning in China, many people, both teachers and students, do not pay enough attention to the training and forming of cultural awareness in translation activities. Many students throw more efforts on the learning of translation skills, but neglect cultural elements in it. At the same time, teachers emphasize theoretical explanation and skills training, with far less attention on the delivering of cultural information. They seldom analyze cultural phenomena and put them to the translation practice. When looking into the typical problems occurring in students' translation work, it is easy for us to see that most of the problems are resulted from improper handling of cultural elements.Certainly there are various aspects which can account for students' lack of cultural awareness in translation. First of all, teachers themselves lack cultural awareness, and with no long-term strategy in mind, they may feel it hard to help students form cultural awareness, let alone help them build up cultural competence. Teachers play a leading role in the teaching process. Most students consider teachers to be their most important learning resources. Teachers' knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about the nature of culture and cultural diversity may profoundly impact their instructional and methodological choices. Thus it is critically important for the teacher, within or outside of the classroom, to explicitly take on the role of culture educator and deliberately assist students with their process of cultural analysis. The directing of teachers are very impor...