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“Culture refers to the entire ways of a people.” (Den Yanchang, 1989:3). This definition reveals that culture is the pattern consists of customs, traditions, social habits, values, beliefs and language, which is a wide system that contains language as its subsystem. As a result, language varies with culture. That is to say, as cultures are various, so languages are various. Difficulties often arise in communication between cultures, especially involving culture-specific words which contain cultural connotations and reflect cultural characteristic. It is hard to translate the culture-loaded words accurately. This paper is going to discuss the translating methods of Chinese culture-specific words in an attempt to enhance cross-cultural communication.
1.2 The relationship between culture and translation
Promoting mutual understanding among different cultures is the aim of translation that requires the reproducing of the language. However, the process of reproduction is affected by the cultural differences stemming from traditions, customs, religion, geography, history and so on. During the cross-cultural communication, the translators or interpreters are not only required to be linguistic competent, but also need to be aware of the cultural differences and grasp the two cultures well.
1.3The definition of Chinese culture-specific words
Chinese culture-specific words are the words that contain cultural connotations such as Chinese tradition, religion, history and social landscape and reflect the nation’s attitude towards life and way of thinking and overall culture. What’s more, they are rooted in China and relate to politics, economy, culture, daily life and nearly every aspect of China.
1.4 The characteristic of Chinese culture-specific words
1.4.1 Broad coverage
Chinese culture-specific words nearly cover every aspect of the nation, like politics, economy, culture and social life, which are the mirror of people’s thoughts and values over a period of time.
1.4.2 A strong feature of era
People’s spiritual life is changing with time, which reflects on the language people speak. As a result, the words are of a strong feature of era such as 粮票，解放鞋，山寨,给力，土豪，白富美 that are closely related with the social life and the epitome of the culture.
1.4.3 Typical cultural meaning
China is one of the Four Great Ancient Civilizations. The unique culture is embodied in folk-custom, religion, architecture, diet and so on.
Chinese culture-specific words are the carrier of Chinese culture, unveiling Chinese people’s values, mode of thinking and national culture that has strong traditional roots.
1.4.4 Typical political meaning
The words boost the political feature occupy a large proportion in Chinese culture-specific words such as 知青、干部下放、割资本主义的尾巴 which are quite common especially in 1950s and 1960s.
2. Cross-cultural communication perspective
Communication keeps the whole society together as a human activity, and becomes the basic tool of a culture. Communication is the basis of all human contracts, understanding human communication means knowing something about what happens when people interact, why it happens, and finally what we can do to influence or maximize the results of a particular communication event. Therefore undoubtedly it is endowed with its social functions in the current globalized international context. It is an important power as well as a decisive factor in the process of improving the social development.
Cross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people from different cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavor to communicate across cultures. Intercultural communication is a related field of study.
The intercultural communication is mainly about the exchanges of traditions, customs and beliefs. In a word, the communication of culture.