A Study On Cultural Empathy In Cross-cultural Communication

As we all know, famous English novel “Moment in Peking” written by Lin Yutang is a panoramic view of the outline at the end of Qing dynasty in China. Since its creation appraised by the Chinese and foreign readers, it is known as China’s epic by many commentators. It concerns about a lot of Chinese cultural bound terms, which describe daily life of that time, such as clothes, tradition and customs, food, housing, beliefs, values and so on.It is noted that famous English novel “Moment in Peking” written by Lin Yutang is a translation from Chinese to English itself. CBTs are rooted in a particular culture and confined to a particular culture, and the conversion process during translation need to be carefully studied. According to Nida’s categorization of cultural elements, the thesis concludes and analyzes CBTs in Book Two of Moment in Peking, which not only helps readers learn about the translation contraction from Chinese to English but typical cultures at the end of Qing dynasty thoroughly.The author analyzes the typical sentences and phrases of book two in Moment in Peking and concludes the translating strategy is foreignization translation with the supplementation of domestication translation. And foreignizaion makes readers close to source text, preserves the features of source text and shows fully typical cultural features at the end of Qing dynasty while domestication uses the phases and expressions to which readers are familiar to reflect source text. To the source language, foreignization making audiences close to the source text, and familiar to foreign culture. While domestication aims to the target culture and uses the phases and expressions to which readers are familiar, making the translation recognizable and familiar.Recently, although many scholars have researched the work’s cultural value and historical significance from different perspectives. yet the text is worth to note the thought process and translation strategy of CBTs from Chinese to English and from cultural empathy in cross cultural communication experience the contribution that Mr Lin yutang makes Chinese culture going abroad. And through the whole study and research, the thesis mainly finds the transformation of CBTs in book two of moment in Peking written by Lin Yutang concludes the translating strategy is foreignization translation with the supplementation of domestication translation. The author analyzes the typical sentences and phrases of book two in Moment in Peking and concludes that the translation shows fully typical cultural features at the end of Qing dynasty and makes foreigners understand easily. This principle conforms to cultural empathy. Cultural empathy means the psychological process of communicators who consider the partner’s feelings and thoughts by putting themselves into the partner’s position and respect differences avoiding world views, value and ethnocentrism.Empathy makes communicators able to understand and compassionate. And developing cultural empathy is necessary and also important.Besides,successful and effective cross cultural communication is our goal for communicators. So The thesis through analyzing for the transformation of CBTs and value makes people successfully understand the concept and value of cultural empathy and helps them improve the ability of cross cultural communication to communicate with others effectively.