Translation and Interpreting as Intercultural Communication

The paper summarizes various approaches to culture from the perspective of anthropology, cultural studies, as well as psycholinguistics and focuses on the parallels between cultural-anthropological and psycholinguistic conceptions of interlingual understanding. The authors state basic differences between reception in direct interlingual communication and reception in mediated interlingual communication and monitor two superordinate factors determining the choice of optimal strategy of transfer. In terms of cognitive, affective and behavioural sub-competences of intercultural competence, the authors characterize intercultural differences and tendencies of various cultural communities towards binary oppositions. All sub-competences are documented via a number of examples in both verbal and non-verbal expression, while emphasizing the interdependence of the subcomponents in a real translation or interpreting situation. The chosen examples are aimed mainly at the differences that might cause difficulties in interlingual communication or which might lead to improper interpretation of verbal or somatic expressions.