1.2 Definition of Culture
The meaning of culture is very extensive and there is no uniform definition .The traditional concept of culture is defined by the British anthropologist Edward Tylor proposes in the Primitive Culture: culture is a system that contains spirits, values, customs as well as other habits and abilities learned by the members of the society. Tylor’s definition of culture which includes only spirit is not complete. Modern cultural anthropologists believe that culture have both material and spiritual aspects. Therefore, accurate and complete definition of culture is: “Culture refers to a community’s social inheritance , including the entire material artefacts(tools, weapons, housing, work, rituals, government offices and places of reproduction, art, etc.) ,also including a variety of spiritual products (symbols, ideas, beliefs, aesthetic perception, value, and other systems), but also a nation living under certain conditions, and a variety of activities in the growing generations created mode (system, team, customs and etc.).”
Culture has the following essential characteristics:
(1) culture is learned through the society rather than genetic obtained
(2) culture belongs to members of the whole society rather than a unique inpidual
(3) culture is a kind of symbol, language is the most important symbol of the cultural system
(4) culture is a unified whole system, and each elements in culture are all related
1.3 Definition of Translation
The definition of translation in British “Oxford English Dictionary” is “to turn from one language into another.” American translation theorist Eugene A.Nida thinks that the meaning of translation can be summarized into “semantics” and “style”, he said “Translating depends on language meaning and style.”(122) Wang Ning says that translation is a phenomenon of culture, especially literature translation. Translation should not just translate language meaning, but translate the cultural meaning in the specific background, which is a procedure of understanding, acceptance, absorption. (8)Zhang Jin: “Translation is the process of communication and social communication tool between the two languages, its theme is to build the best relationship in different countries, its task is to get the original image contained in the real world of logic or artistic image, which will not missing any information in the language.” (6)We can make a conclusion, generally speaking , translation is a process of making a language becomes another language, perfectly conveying every words meaning ,successfully improving the lever of the language. Translation is the process of language and culture communication and an important bridge between different ethnic cultural exchange.
1.4 The Relationships of Language, Culture and Translation
Language is a part of culture and record people’s life. Language not only reflects people’s way of thinking, but also reflects a country’s cultural lever. In a sense, language reflects traditional culture, namely language is deeply influenced by tradition culture, on the other hands , if culture escapes from the language ,it will not get further growth. Many factors in the language (such as sentence, structure, grammar) are all derived from the culture. Human work in various communicative activities and write the history of human civilization process through language. So language and culture have close relationship, and every country have their own thinking ways and the world view, which are all recur in the language. Culture conceived in the language and express, convey, storage, communication through the language.
Along with the process of globalization, translation is necessary to consider the problem of cultural differences. Mr. Guanxi Yu say: “The human culture as a whole is a product of all countries and cultures exchange.” But cultural exchange must be through translation. The spread of culture can not exist without translation. Translation is translate words meaning and cultural meaning，therefore, nowadays a translator must master the cultural differences, which involves not only the language issue, but also the important cultural issues. If you do not understand the culture that the language involved, you will not truly translate the text. If you understand the grammar of the two languages, as well as the corresponding, listening, speaking, reading and writing ability, it is no guarantee that the translator can express the relation of culture and translation in deep, flexible, efficient ways. 中西方文化差异对广告翻译影响(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_39226.html