The human factor – a prerequisite for a good cross-cultural communication in translation

Orality – literacy continuum

• Orality in fairy tales
• SL (Eng) – TL (mother tongue) – not that easy

Concepts stored in our minds

• humans are used to thinking in terms of categories, prototypes, stereotypes, codes, frames and schemes

PROTOTYPE THEORY

• categorization in terms of prototypes conditioned by sociocultural factors and on the basis of perceived similarities between representative and non-representative members (e.g. bird & chicken; kiwi – can’t fly; *the Pope – not married, but still not considered bachelor )

GESTALT THEORY

• matters having to do with human interaction with and functioning in the world rather than with objective properties of the world;
• the whole is more than the sum total of its parts;
• analysis of the parts cannot provide understanding of the whole

Categories

• Categories
• mental representations of objects from the real world in a box-like manner
• Prototypes
• system, norm and text interact in a constant dynamic tension. Norms apply in language and at all levels of social life
• Boundaries often fuzzy

Frames

• Frames
• global-knowledge patterns helping people form a mental picture of what they read or hear in no logical order;
• wedding frame – different for different cultures;
• game – play
• game – wild animals

• Stereotypes
• fixed idea that people have about what s.o./s.th. is like
• Schemes
• logical order of presenting events and processes

CULTURE

• categories of human activity
• the personal (we as individuals think and function as such);
• the collective (we function in a social context);
• the expressive (each society expresses itself in a different way through its language)