资源描述
精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上Translation1 The growth of intercultural communication as a field of study is based on a view of history that clearly demonstrates people and cultures have been troubled by a persistent inability to understand and get along with groups and societies removed by space, ideology, appearance, and behavior from their own. What is intriguing about many of human civilizations failure is that they appear to be personal as well as global. The story of humankind is punctuated with instances of face-to-face conflicts as well as international misunderstanding-major and minor quarrels that range from simple name-calling to isolationism tr even armed conflict. It is obvious that increases contact with other cultures and subcultures make it imperative for us to make a concerted effort to understand and get along with people whose beliefs and backgrounds may be vastly different from our own. The ability, through increased awareness and understanding, to peacefully coexist with people who do not necessarily share our lifestyles or values could benefit us not only in our own neighborhoods but could be the decisive factor in maintaining would peace. 纵观历史，我们可以清楚地看到，各民族与文化由于彼此所处地域、意识形态、容貌服饰和行为举止上存在的差异，而长久无法互相理解，无法和睦相处。在这种情况下，跨文化交际作为一个特定的研究领域得以形成和发展。值得注意的是，人类文明在发展过程中所遭受的许多挫折，既是个人的，又是全球性的；人类历史进程总是充满了个人间的直接冲突和民族间的误解从骂骂咧咧到孤立主义甚至到武装冲突，大大小小争端不绝。 很显然，文化间以及亚文化间的交往日益增多，这迫切要求我们共同努力，去理解与我们有着天壤之别信仰和文化背景的人们，并与之和睦相处。通过加深认识和理解，我们能够与生活方式、价值观念不同的人们和平共处；这不但有益于我们周遭环境的安定，也是维护世界和平的决定性因素。Translation 2 Culture is something referred to as our mental programming, our “software of the mind.” But we can take that computer analogy further and say that culture is the operating environment that enables software programs to run. Culture is like DOS or Unix or Windows:it is what enables us to process information in various specific applications. The metaphor of windows seems to be very appealing to describe culture：culture is a mental set of windows through which all of life is viewed. It varies from individual to individual within a society, but it shares important characteristics with members of a society. Culture is like the water fish swim in-a reality that is taken for granted and rarely examined. It is in the air we breathe and is as necessary to our understanding of who we are as air is to our physical life. Culture is the property of a community people, not simply a characteristic of individuals. Societies are programmed by culture, and that programming comes from similar life experiences and similar interpretations of what those experiences mean. If culture is mental programming, it is also a mental map of reality. It tells us from early childhood what matters, what o prefer, what to avoid, and what to do. Culture also tells us what ought to be . It gives us assumptions about the ideal beyond what individuals may experience. It helps us in setting priorities. It establishes codes for behavior and provides justification and legitimization for that behavior. 文化有时候被称为我们的心智程序，也即我们“头脑的软件”。但是，我们可以进一步引申这个用电脑所做的类比，把文化看作是支持软件运行的操作环境。文化就像电脑使用的DOS或者Unix或者“视窗”(Windows)等操作系统一样，使我们能在各种各样的实际应用中处理信息。用“视窗”这个比喻来描述文化似乎也很有吸引力。文化就是我们心灵的视窗，透过它我们可以审视生活的方方面面。一个社会中不同个体的视窗是大不一样的，但都有着一些重要的共同特征。 文化就好像是鱼畅游于其中的水一般，人们想当然地把文化看成是客观存在的事实，从而很少去研究它。文化存在于我们所呼吸的空气之中，文化对我们了解自我是必不可少的，就正如生命离不开空气一样。文化是特定群体的共有财产，而不单是个体的特征。社会按照文化设定的程序来运作，这种程序来自于相似的生活体验以及对这种生活体验之涵义的相似性阐释。 如果文化是一种心智程序，那么它也是现实的心灵地图。从我们很小的时候开始，文化就告诉我们应该看重什么、偏好什么、规避什么以及做些什么。文化还告诉我们事物应该是什么样的。文化为我们提供超越个体经验的理想典范，帮助我们决定应该优先考虑什么。文化为我们建立起行为准则，并解释为什么符合这些准则的行为正当、合法。Translation 3 Although each of us has a unique set of values, there also are values that tend to permeate a culture. These are called cultural values. Cultural values generally are normative in that they inform a member of a culture what is good and bad, right and false, positive and negative, and the like. Cultural values define what is worthwhile to die for, what is worth protecting, what frightens people and their social systems, what are considered proper subjects for study and for ridicule, and what types of events lead individuals to group solidarity. Cultural values also specify what behaviors are of importance and which should be avoided within a culture. Values represent a learned organization of rules for making choices and for resolving conflicts. The values held by participants in intercultural communication are important because values develop standards and guidelines that establish appropriate and inappropriate behaviors in a society. Values, in other words, help determine how people ought to behave with the result that people will exhibit and expect behaviors according to their value systems. To the extent that cultural value systems differ, we may expect that intercultural communication participants will tend to exhibit and to expect different under similar circumstance. 虽然，我们每个人都有各自一套独特的价值观，但在每一文化里，总有弥漫于整个文化之中的普遍的价值观。这些被称作文化价值观 文化价值观通常是规范性的，它使文化的成员知道什么是好的和坏的、什么是正确的和错误的、什么是真的和假的、什么是积极的和消极的，等等。文化价值规定了什么是值得为之献身的，什么是值得维护的，什么会危及人们及其社会制度，什么是学习的恰当内容，什么是可讽刺嘲笑的，什么是形成群体团结的途径。文化价值观也指明了文化中的什么行为是举足轻重的，哪些是应当尽力避免的。价值观是人们在做出抉择和解决争端时作为依据的一种习得的规则体系。 跨文化交际的参与者所具有的价值观是十分重要的，因为价值观产生出决定何为正当或不正当社会行为的标准。换言之，价值观有助于人们决定他们的行为方式，以符合他们的价值系统所期望的行为准则。由于文化价值系统之间存在差异，我们可以预见，在相似的情境中，跨文化交际的参与者会表现出并期待着不同的行为。Translation 4When we say that language is always ambiguous, what we mean is that we can never fully control the meaning of the things we say and write. The meanings we exchange by speaking and by writing are not given in the words and sentences alone but are also constructed partly out of what our listeners and our readers interpret them to mean. To put this quite another way, meaning in language is jointly constructed by the participants in communication. Language is inherently ambiguous. It means that in order to communicate we must always jump to conclusions about what other mean. There is no way around this. When someone says something, w must jump to some conclusion about what he or she means. We draw inferences based on two main sources. 1, the language they have used, and 2, our knowledge about the world. The knowledge includes expectations about what people would normally say in such circumstances. Language is ambiguous. This means that we can never be certain what the other person means-whether in speaking or writing. To put it another way, language can never fully express our meanings. But what does this mean for intercultural communication? In the first place it should be clear that communication works better the more the participants share assumptions and knowledge about the world. Where two people have very similar histories, backgrounds, and experiences, their communication works fairly easily because the inferences each makes about what the other means will be based on common experience and knowledge. Two people from the same village and the same family are likely to make fewer mistakes in drawing inferences about what the other means than two people from different cities on different sides of the earth. 我们说语言总是模糊的，指的是我们所说所写的东西总不能完全表达我们的意图。我们通过说话和写作所传达的意思不仅仅由词语和句子本身决定，听众和读者的理解也起到了一定的作用。换言之，是交际双方共同创造了语言所表达的意思。 语言的模糊性是与生俱来的。为了沟通，我们必须自己推断出对方的意思，除此之外别无他法。在理解别人说话时，我们必须推测这些话的意思。这些推测主要基于以下两个来源：（1）他们所使用的语言；（2）我们的世界知识。这种知识包括能够预知在某种特定语境下人们通常会说些什么。 语言是模糊的。这意味着无论是读或写，我们永远无法完全地领会他人的意思。换言之，语言永远无法完全地表达我们的意思。然而，这对跨文化交际意味着什么呢？ 首先必须明白，如果交际参与者拥有更多共同的预期和世界知识，交际便会有比较好的效果。共同的背景、历史和经历使得人们之间的交际较为容易，因为任何一方对另一方用意的推测都基于共同的经验和知识。来自同一个村子、同一个家庭的两个人当然要比来自地球不同半球不同城市的两个人少犯交际上的错误，至少不会在推测对方用意上闹笑话。 Translation 5 Where any two people differ in group membership because they are of different genders, different ages, different ethnic or culture groups, different educations, different parts of the same country or even city, different income or occupational groups, or with very different personal histories, each will find it more difficult to draw inferences about what the other person means. In the contemporary world of international and intercultural communication, the differences between people are considerable. People are in daily contact with members of cultures and other groups from all around the world. Successful communication is based on sharing as much as possible the assumptions we make about what others mean. When we are communicating with people who are very different from us, it is very difficult to know how ti draw inferences about what they mean, and so it is impossible to depend on shared knowledge and background for confidence in our interpretation. It has been found that men and women from the same culture, even from the sane families, often misunderstand each other because of different assumptions they make about the purposes or goals of their communication. A man may wish to make a woman happy by giving her a gift of something she really wants. He asks her what she would like to have for her birthday- she can ask for anything. Unfortunately, what she wants more than anything else is for him to know intuitively what she would like to have. Men and women, at least in North American society, tend to differ in their concern for explicitness or for indirection. A woman is likely to think it is important for someone to show how well he knows her by not having to ask explicitly what she wants. A man in that situation, however, feels beast about the situation if he is told quiet directly and explicitly how he can make her happy. 由于在性别、年龄、种族或文化群体、教育、国家或城市的地域、收入或职业群体、个人经历等各方面的差异，人们分属不同的语言群体，这些差异使我们很难完全领会另一个群体成员所表达的意思。 在当今世界的跨文化交际中，人们之间的差异是相当大的。人们每天要与来自世界各地不同文化背景、不同群体的人交往，成功交际的关键在于尽可能地共享对话语意义的推定。当我们与迥然不同的人打交道时，我们往往不知道该怎样推导出他们的语句意义。因此，在交际过程中，就很难依靠共享的知识和背景来有把握地诠释他人表达的意义。 就是来自相同文化、甚至相同家庭中的男性和女性也会经常误解对方的意思，原因是男性和女性对交际目的有不同的预期。为了让女人高兴，男人要送她一件她真正想要的礼物。他问女人想要什么礼物哪怕是上天摘星星。糟糕的是，女人最想要的却是男人可以凭直觉就知道她想要的是什么。至少在北美社会中，男性和女性对于表达的看法往往不同：前者倾向于直接明了，后者则倾向于间接委婉。女性觉得不用直接问就知道她想要什么是很重要的。男性则觉得，如果女性能爽快地告诉他怎样做才能让她高兴就再好不过了。Translation 6Non-verbal communication might be thought of as any form of communication which is not directly dependent on the use of language. Generally speaking, however, it is very difficult to know where to separate verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. Such non-verbal aspects of communication as nodding the head most often accompany speech and are part and parcel of the verbal system of language use. On the other hand such forms of communication as dance and music often have no verbal component at all. What we want to here is simply to call attention to the fact that many aspects of human interaction depend upon forms of communication which can not be easily transcribed into words and yet are crucial to our understanding to each other.Of course we have to emphasize the importance of communication in speaking and writing, and yet we should also realize that much much communication also takes place without the use of words. The way a person dresses for a meeting may suggestion to other participants how he or she is prepared to participate in it. In fact, we can use virtually any aspect of our behavior or our presentation which others can perceive as means of communication. 非言语交际被认为是不直接依靠语言使用的任何交际方式。然而，一般来说，很难知道言语交际方式与非言语交际方式的区分到底在哪儿。有些非言语交际方式，例如点头，总是伴随着言语，而且是语言使用时言语系统的一部分。另一方面，像舞蹈和音乐等交际形式常常是没有任何言语成分的。我们在这里想做的只是要引起大家对一个事实的注意，即人类交往的许多方面都依赖于那些不能轻易转换为言语、但却对我们相互理解至关重要的交际形式。 当然, 我们不能不强调口语和书面语交际的重要性，然而我们也必须意识到许多交际的发生并不使用语言。一个人出席会议时的穿着会可能是暗示其他与会者，他或她打算如何参与会议。事实上，我们能运用我们行为或表现的任何方面来和他人进行交际。Translation 7Many people today want to do many things within so little time. The sense o time might be called time urgency, it is a syndrome of behavior in which the persons continually tries to accomplish more than can be humanly accomplished. Until very recently, time urgency was thought to be a characteristics of Americans, particularly American males in the generation born in the period from the Great Depression through to the end of the World War .It should be obvious that that this sense of time urgency is no longer a cultural characteristic of just this one generation of American males. It is a characteristic of the Asian “salary man”, and is spreading throughout the world rapidly as one aspect of the internationalization of business. One of the most important effects of this sense of time is that in communication it will almost produce a negative evaluation to the slower participants by the faster participants. Those who share in this concept of time urgency will come to see anyone who moves more slowly than they do as conservative, as uncooperative, as resistant to change, and as opposing progress. Behind the concept of time urgency is the idea that what lies ahead in the future is always better than what lies behind in the past; it based solidly on the belief in progress. 今天有许多人总想在很短的时间内做很多的事，这种时间观念可以称作“时间强迫”行为综合症，就是不断地试图超越人类能力所限去完成更多的事情。直到不久以前， 时间强迫”还一直被认为是美国人、尤其是出生于从经济大萧条时期直到第二次世界大战结束这个阶段一代美国男性的重要特征。很明显, 这种“时间强迫”的观念现在已不再仅仅是这一代美国男性的文化特征，它已成为亚洲“工薪阶层”的一个特点，并作为商务国际化的一个方面而迅速传遍整个世界。 这种时间观念最重要的影响之一就是：在某个交际情境中，节奏较快的交际参与者几乎总会对较慢的参与者做某种消极的评价。那些共享“时间强迫”观念的人通常会觉得其他行动比他们慢的人是保守的、不合作的、阻止变化的、反对进步的。隐藏在“时间强迫”观念之后的是那种未来永远好于过去的理念，而这一理念是牢固地建立在对进步的信仰基础之上的。Translation 8If we accept the belief that our past influences our view of reality and the corresponding tenet that each of us may have similar but not identical personal histories, then it should follow that another persons picture of the universe will not be exactly like ours. Yet most of us act as if our way of perceiving things is the correct and only way. We often overwork perceptual differences and conclude that if the other person doesnt see that Pablo Picasso is the greatest artist that ever lived, he simply does not art. Actually, it may well be that he has a different past history and what is great art for him may not match our perception of art. In our daily activities these differences in perception appear between different groups. Various generations, minorities, occupation and cultures have conflicting values and goals that will influence their orientation and interpretation of reality. Our culture is a major of factor in perceptual discrepancies. Culture helps supply us with our perceptive of reality. It therefore plays a dominant role in intercultural communication. Our cultures tell us, in a variety of ways, how to judge others and what to use as criteria for those judgments. The danger of such evaluations is that they are often false, misleading, and arbitrary. It is truly a naive view of the world to believe and behave as if we an our culture have discovered the true and only set of norms. 如果接受这样的信念，认为以往的存在状况影响着我们对现实的看法，并且接受相应的原则，认为每个人都有着相似的但又不完全一样的个人经历，那么，随之就得到这样的结论：另一个人对宇宙的描述不一定会和我们对宇宙的描述完全一样。然而，我们大多数人似乎仍认为我们自己感知事物的方法是唯一正确的。我们常常忽略感知的差异，并且断定，如果一个人不知道巴比罗·毕加索是有史以来最伟大的艺术家，他简直就不懂艺术。实际上，他很可能有着不同的经历，对他来说，什么是伟大的艺术跟我们对于艺术的感知或许并不一致。在我们的日常活动中，感知差异常常出现在不同的群体之间。不同年代的人、不同少数民族、不同职业和不同文化有着相冲突的价值观念和目标，这些都影响着他们对于现实的感知和解释。 我们的文化是导致感知不一致的主要因素。文化影响着我们对于现实看法的形成。因此，它在跨文化交际中起着一种主导作用。我们的文化以各种方式告诉我们，怎样去判断别人，使用什么标准去做判断。这样评价的危险在于它们常常是不真实的，武断的并导致误解的。相信并在行为中表现出仿佛只有我们和我们的文化才发现了最真实而且是唯一的标准，对世界持这样的看法是极其天真幼稚的。9 Translation身处异域文化的人们总会面临着这样一个问题，即为了适应当地人的信仰、价值观、准则和社会规范，到底需要在多大程度上改变自己的行为举止呢？在交往中谁有责任把文化差异考虑在内？是应该让来访者、新来的人或旅居者调整自己的行为以适应当地文化，还是让当地人改变交流方式，从而为初来乍到的人们提供便利？人们必须多大程度地改变自己文化的信仰、价值观、准则和社会行为来以适应主导文化的模式呢？ 俗话说“入乡随俗”，很明显，这让改变的重任落在了新来者的身上。话虽很有道理，但并不能适用于所有情况。在大多数情况下，顺应当地文化期望的行为表现出对异文化和习俗的尊重。这样的顺应能够使新来者真正地与当地人进行交流和互动。尊重不同文化中语言和非语言代码的差异意味着跨文化交际者有责任合理地、尽可能多地学习这些交际代码。当然，如何才算合理的、尽可能多的，那要视具体情况而定。有的时候，新来者全面地采用当地的文化规则可能会被视为无礼的行为，使属于当地文化群体的人们感到不安。10 Translation 理想的减少交际失误的办法是同交际的其他参与者共享知识。这就是为什么同一文化群体的成员之间最容易交际的原因。这也解释了为什么在社交上人们总是同与自己很接近的人聚在一起。当你不必费力就能理解所发生的事情或者让别人明白你的意图时，交际将变得更为轻松顺畅。 遗憾的是，在大多数情况下，这样的联系在交际中时常是不可能存在的。我们甚至可以进一步说，那不仅是不可能的，而且也是不受欢迎的。今天, 交际发生的情境常常是不同文化群体成员之间在交际。 由于跨文化交际是在不同文化群体成员之间进行的，因此，既然我们之间不共享知识、假设、价值观念和话语形式，我们必须预料到相互理解时将会发生问题。我们必须注意这些问题，根据我们之间的差异预计哪儿会出现问题，接着调整我们的交际使之尽可能有效。 和其他群体共享知识并不等同于要加入那个群体并成为其成员。有些群体对吸纳新成员相当排斥。在提高跨文化交际能力时，我们应该记住, 无论我们多么地了解并欣赏另一种文化，都不太可能成为这种文化的成员。关键是要尽可能地了解其他文化，以便理解和掌握相互之间的差异和共性。专心-专注-专业
展开阅读全文