On Cultural Intervention in English / Chinese Translation

In this paper, author defines translation as an act of communication in a cross-cultural context, main aim of which is to establish communication between members of different cultures in accordance with previously determined communicative target purpose. He will then discuss unavoidable cultural intervention in process of translation. Cases in Aesthetic Preference, Political Involvement and Cultural Stereotype will be studied to prove his proposition that translation is cultural transfer rather than linguistic transfer, that the more inclusive target culture is, closer translation is to source culture, more exclusive target culture is, closer translation must be to target culture. In last part of paper, he will propose strategies of translation (especially for translation between English and Chinese) with which we can tackle cultural barriers in process of translation.