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Using these descriptions as a starting point, Samovar and Porter advance the following definition:
The deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies,, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through inpidual and group striving. (Samovar & Porter 36)
In China, Deng Yanchang and Liu Runqing hold the view that “culture refers to the entire way of life of a society”, that is, “the total pattern of beliefs, customs, institutions, objects, and techniques that characterize the life of human community”. (Deng & Liu 3)
According to Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, culture, in anthropology, is the patterns of behavior and thinking that people living in social groups learn, create and share. Culture distinguished one human group from others. It also distinguished human from other animals. A people’s culture includes their beliefs, rules of behavior, language, ritual, art, technology, styles of dress, ways of producing and cooking food, religion, and political and economic systems.
According to the above definitions given by famous experts and the dictionary, we can see that culture is a quite universal, multi-dimensional, complex and all-pervasive concept. Based on the features of culture mentioned above, the meaning of culture can be understood from the following aspects. Firstly, ideological culture refers to psychological structure, ways of thinking and value system. Secondly, system culture comes down from the past generation, or changes continuously, or exists by all sorts of codes and regulations. Thirdly, material culture is made by people and serves people, such as house, clothes, etc.
Ⅲ. The Features of Culture and Classifications of Culture
Cultures have widely different characteristics. It is these factors that make the bilingual transfer possible, and also bring some limits to the bilingual transfer and the impossibility of total equivalent translation. Therefore, a discussion on the general features of culture is necessary.
As Ke Ping states in his article Cultural Presupposition and Misreading, most anthropologists agree on the following features of culture; 1. Culture is learned. It is acquired rather than biologically inherited; 2. Culture is shared. It is a set of shared ideals, values and standards of behavior; it is the common denominator of the members of a community instead of being unique to an inpidual; 3. Culture is symbolic. Culture is symbolically expressed and transmitted. Symbolizing means assigning to entities and events meanings which are external to them and not be able to be grasped by themselves alone. Language is the most typical symbolic system within culture; 4. Culture is integrated. Each aspect of culture is tied in with the other aspects. People who examine one aspect of a culture invariably find it necessary to examine others as well.
It is obvious that culture is a multidimensional and complex system and normally culture is treated as including, with some slight variations, the following four subsystems:
(1)Techno-economic system: ecology (flora, fauna, climate, etc.); ways of production, exchange, and distribution of goods; crafts, technology, and science; artifact.
(2)Social System: social classes and groups; kinship (system typology, sex and marriage procreation and paternity); education; sports and entertainment; customs; general history.
(3)Ideational System: cosmology; religion; magic and witchcraft; folklore; artistic creations as images; value (moral, aesthetic, etc) cognitive focus and thinking patterns; ideology.
(4)Linguistic System: phonology and graphemics; grammar (morphology and syntax); semantics and pragmatics.
All the ingredients in these four subsystems may be responsible for some presuppositions that are fundamentally different from those bred by other cultures and hence possibly lead to some mistranslation when translation or other forms of communication are conducted across two cultures. Whatever the classification of culture is, there is one thing for sure, that is, culture is pervasive and complex. It exerts great influence on translation and should be considered with great care.