Cultural Psychology and Translation.doc

cultural psychology and translationcultural psychology and translationabstract: this paper, based on the theories of cultural structure, presents first the concept of cultural psychology, then focuses on the close relationship between cultural psychology and language, and then elaborates on translation as cross-cultural communication and the significance of the context of cultural psychology in it, and at last, puts forwards the transfer of cultural psychology and some corresponding operational translation methods. a brief conclusion is drawn that translation is not only the linguistic transfer but also the transfer of cultural psychology and that translators must make sure of the psychological communication between the source text and the tl readers. the author predicts that analysis of cultural psychology will be one of the basic tasks of translation studies in the near future.key words: theories of cultural structure cultural psychology translation as cross-cultural communication psychological transfer1. introductionone of the most striking features in contemporary translation theory and practice is the orientation towards culture transfer. in the study of cultural translation, people used to pay more attention to the explicit aspects such as customs, habits, allusions, clothes, dress styles, kinetics, etc. than the implicit, in the cultural psychology of a nation. a further study, however, would reveal that behind the explicit culture always exist something deeper-the world views, values, thinking patterns, aesthetic standards, etc. of the nation. this is because the shared environment, life style and in-group activities mould a unique psychological set and peculiar psychological trait of the nation, which may be strange to, or different from, or exclusive of, other nations and result in misunderstandings or obstacles of communication between nations. translation, as a means of communication, is unavoidably involved in the factors of cultural psychology, and a majority of failures in translation seemingly result from an inadequate understanding of the differences in cultural psychology. the differences and problems of cultural psychology between nations naturally deserve of consideration and in-depth exploration. in recent years, translation theorists and translators have begun to realize the importance of cultural psychology in translation. liu biqing, a modern translation theorist, points out, “the analysis of cultural psychology in texts is an essential step in the process of translation.”(刘宓庆， 1999年: 249) nowadays “cultural concepts, which underlies the variety of language usage and language habits, come to be the key area of translation studies.” (廖七一，p 172) however, translators, to a great extent, failed to comprehend and represent texts in the context of cultural psychology. this paper, based on theories of cultural structure and translation as cross-cultural communication, aims to illustrate systematically the significance of cultural psychology in translation and, in addition, psychological transfer as a translation strategy and some operational methods are suggested. 2. the structure of culture and cultural psychologyculture is an extremely complex concept and an enormous subject. it almost embraces everything in the world, whether material or spiritual. none of us is able to comprehend fully the entirety of the complex network of what constitutes a culture. however complex it is, it can be roughly classified into three categories in structure: material culture, institutional culture and psychological culture. the western and chinese theories on structure of culture show that the first two categories are often called explicit culture and the third implicit. the latter, which occupies the core of culture, governs the former but it is incarnated in the former.1) western theories on the structure of culturealthough innumerable definitions are given to culture, that what culture is has remained a controversy. after kroeber and kluckhohn had compiled 164 definitions of culture in 1952, they contributed a lengthy one as follows: culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values. culture system may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning elements of future action. (katan, 1999: 16)the explicit and implicit features, and the core of culture have been referred to in this definition. gail robinson has grouped the various definitions into two basic levels: external (behaviorslanguage, gestures, customs/habits; products-literature, folklore, art, music, artifacts) and internal (ideas-beliefs, values, institutions). (robinson, 1998: 7-13)trompenaars in his riding the waves of culture provides a model that has three layers of culture: (trompenaars, 1993: 22-23) the outer layer (artifacts and products) is the most visible layer. trompenaars calls this “explicit”. the organization of institutions, such as the legal system and bureaucracy, is included here. the middle layer differentiates between norms and values. the norms relate to social rules of conduct. they concern, and to a large extent dictate, how one should behave in society. values, on the other hand, are aspirations, which may never actually be achieved. finally, we have the core, which, as the word suggests, is not visible. trompenaars term is “implicit”. this is the heart of culture, and the most inaccessible. it contains basic assumptions about life, which will have been handed down unconsciously from generation to generation.hofstedes chapter of defining culture is actually entitled “levels of culture”, and specifically uses the metaphor of “skins of an onion” (hofstede, 1991: 9) not because of any tears, but simply because there are superficial and deeper layers. hofstede has two main layers: practices and values. hofstede groups symbols, heroes and rituals under practices and makes it clear that the core of culture is formed by values. the important point that hofstede makes is that symbols, heroes and rituals are visible, and their cultural meaning, however, is invisible and lies precisely and only in the way these meanings are interpreted by the insiders. (hofstede 1991: 8)the iceberg theory has, in fact, been used to describe culture for many years. as hall notes, the concept was one of many being used to explain that the most important part of culture is completely hidden, and what can be seen is, as the clich has it “just the tip of the iceberg”. (hall, 1990: 16) other divisions are “explicit” and “implicit” mentioned above and “covert” and “overt” by ralph linton, one of the most influential psychologists. (katan, 1999: 29) the most recent development of the iceberg theory has been made by brake et al., who suggest a division as follows:laws, customs, rituals, gestures, ways of dressing, food and drink and methods of greeting, and saying goodbye these are all part of culture, but they are just the tips of the cultural iceberg. (brake et al, 1995:36) the most powerful elements of culture are those that lie beneath the surface of everyday interaction, including action, communication, environment, time, space, power, individualism, competitiveness, structure, and thinking. we call these value orientations.2) chinese theories on the structure of culture the theory on the structure of culture was developed by two noted chinese scholars liang shuming (梁潄溟), a noted philosopher and thinker who devoted his entire life to comparative studies of eastern and western cultures, and pang pu (庞朴), a well-known contemporary culture researcher. in his book culture and philosophy in the east and west, a classic in the comparative study of the two types of cultures, liang shuming discusses three aspects of culture: material life, such as all material things essential for human survival; social life, such as lifestyles, social organization, political and economic relations; and spiritual life, such as religion, philosophy, value systems, science and art. (梁漱溟， 1994: 10) this view was shared by zhang dainian (张岱年), a noted contemporary scholar of chinese philosophy, but neither treated it with too much emphasis. it was pang pu who gave it the name “the structure of culture” and discussed in more detail its significance for the study in the exchange and contact between cultures. in his “culture relative to nationality and ages”, pang pu explained the structure of culture. a culture, regardless of its type and stage of development, consists of three levels - at the outset is the material; at the core (the deepest level) is the psychological or ideological level; and in the middle is the combination of the two: materialized ideology, such as theory, system and behavior. (庞朴， 1988: 25) putting the ideas of the western and eastern theories on cultural structure, we may conclude that culture, as group phenomena related to human beings and their behaviors, can be approximately divided into three layers: the outer layer (material) including all the products of manufacture, the middle layer (institutional) including social system, religious system, ritual system, educational system, kinship system, etc., and the inner layer (psychological) including peoples worldviews, values, thinking patterns, aesthetic standards, etc. this kind of structure is believed to be acceptable in this paper. take the religious culture as an example. religious beliefs, as a religious ideology in a broad sense, including the ideas about deities and supernatural things, belong to the inner layer. these beliefs will be practiced in the followers religion activities such as witchcraft, taboo, sacrifice, pray, which come to be institutions. the institutions are the middle layer. the religious activities require special places (like temples, churches) and deities (like the status of god or buddha), which belong to the outer layer. of the three layers, the psychological one occupies the core of culture and is the soul of a nation. the discussion about the structure of culture is not for the purpose of the further study of culture but of the revelation of cultural psychology and hence of the provision of the theoretical basis to the psychological transfers of translation as cross-cultural communication. but what is cultural psychology?culture conditions the very psychological make-up of individuals. each nation has been living in its unique geographical and historical framework in which a unique psychological set or orientation toward reality has been established, which refers to the system of the cultural ideologies deposited in the depth of an individual soul during the long-term creation of the national culture, including all kinds of cultural concepts such as worldviews, values, thinking patterns, aesthetic standards, etc. and their several subcategories such as beliefs, ethics, time and space concept, etc. surveying the cultural structure, we categorize the implicit assumptions and premises that govern the behaviors of human beings into the deep structure of culture, i.e. psychological system including worldviews, value systems, national characteristics, aesthetic standards and thinking patterns, and their subcategories., which are the crucial cultural mechanism that produces the differences in psychological characteristics at the individual level. and it is this deep underlying structure that makes each culture unique, affects the ways the mind works, determines the way a person perceives, processes and responds to the information from the environment. and therefore, cultural psychology of a nation can be defined as a nations common mind set and mental structure, which is molded on the basis of inhabiting environment, reflects the common cultural traditions of the nation and determines the character and behavioral patterns of it.3. cultural psychology in languagelanguage is the most important symbolic system in culture and it expresses, embodies and symbolizes cultural reality. it contains all kinds of cultural deposits in the grammar, forms of address as well as texts. language culture is strongly influenced by psychological culture, because the formation of language is closely related to peoples mentalities and thought patterns, and the use of language has a great deal to do with language-users brain and mind. just as humboldt wrote, the language of any group is directly connected to the worldview of the group; the difference in language is a difference in worldviews. (dahl, 1998)some german scholars like johann herder and wilhelm von humboldt put forward the idea that different people speak differently because they think differently and that they think differently because their language offers them different ways of expressing the world around them (hence the notion of linguistic relativity). humboldt sees the function of a language and the words, which constitute it as a linguistic reflection of extralinguistic reality in a way characteristic of the speech community involved. von humboldt expressed his thoughts, which he voices many times in the observation that the difference between languages is “not one of sounds and signs but rather a difference in the view of the world itself ”. (wilss, 2001: 34-35) “the spiritual traits and the structure of language of a people are so intimately blended that given either of two, one should be able to derive the other from it to the fullest extent. language is the outward manifestation of the spirit of people: their language is their spirit and their spirit is their language, it is difficult to imagine any two things more identical”. (salzmann, 1993: 151) these statements show that von humboldt consistently upheld the view that thought is dependent on language; he attributes a special worldview to every language. this notion was picked up again in the united states by the linguist franz boas, whose essential view was that linguistic categories reflect but do not dictate thought, that is, the conceptual ideas and thinking patterns characteristic of a culture, and hence linguistic data can be used to study these ideas and thinking patterns, and subsequently by edward sapir and his pupil benjamin lee whorf in their studies of american indian language. whorfs views on the interdependence of language and thought have become known under the name of sapir-whorf hypothesis, which makes the claim that the structure of the language a people habitually use influences the manner in which the people think and behave because language filters their perception and the way they categorize experience. the hypothesis has been subject to fierce controversy since it was first formulated by whorf in 1940. the strong version of whorfs hypothesis that posits that language determines the way we think cannot be taken seriously or people would be prisoners of their native language, but the weak version, suggesting that language has a tendency to influence thought, and supported by the findings that there are cultural differences in the semantic associations evoked by seemingly common concepts, is generally accepted nowadays.the theoretical source of shen xiaolongs cultural linguistics can be traced back to the western anthropological linguistics, ethnolinguistics and cultural anthropology, which are mainly concerned with the relations between language and culture. the sapir-whorf hypothesis is one of the famous findings of this research. shen has asserted that language, with the nature of the worldview and ontology, is both the meaning system and the value system of a nation and that language is the manifestation of the worldview of a nation. (邢福义， 1999: 83) language like a colorful mirror reflects the characteristics, of a nations economy, politics, cultural psychology, etc., and is filtered with spirit of a nations culture. (申小龙，1990: 36) the cultural psychology of a nation is deeply rooted in the nations language(申小龙，1990: 19). all in all, language is an integral part of a nation and it permeates a nations thinking patterns and way of viewing the world. comparatively, western cultural anthropologists emphasize that language determines culture while shen emphasizes that culture determines language. however, both of them have disclosed the identity of a nations language and the deep structure of its culture.to illustrate the identity of language and cultural psychology conveniently, we adopt su(束) and zhuangs(庄) views on language culture: the influence of culture on language is on lexical meaning and discourse structure. and therefore, the cultural factors in language are embodied in either lexis or discourse. (束定芳，1999: 148) lexis refers to both a single word and the word group, and the latter covers idioms, set phrases, etc. the close relationship between language and culture is most readily seen in words. discourse means the conventional realization of speech act in a contextual situation. the choice of the topics such as weather, and such private matters as health, age, and income, the choice of language code such as dialects, discourse styles and the organization of discourse such as turns, cohesion, coherence, narrative method and order, all these are largely determined by the world view, pattern of thinking, and value system of a people. when the english and chinese discourses are compared, differences in respect of terms of address, conversation taboo and adjacency pairs such as greeting, thanks and response, offer and response can be found.“meaning is the most captivating aspect of language.” (stillings et al., 1989: 389) meaning is what language is all about. everybody knows th