The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

SECTION:

Translations and Transnational Processes

Chair of the section/Suggestions, Abstracts, Contributions to:
Email: Vilayat Hadjiev (Baku)

Transnationality with its manifold forms is realizable when the cultural values of different nations - in general under conditions of multilingualism - are understandable and accessible. To accomplish this goal, translation obviously plays an irreplaceable role. Thus translation should not be thought of as a simple means of communication between people with different languages, but as a comprehensive, transcultural process between different nationalities in the broadest sense of the word, because every communication for its part is always established in a socio-cultural area and is embedded in social and cultural connections (Peter A. Schmidt). In this respect every translation can therefore be considered as a transnational process, which contributes to the following:

a) to acquaintance with an unknown culture, that is, with the material and spiritual life of another nation;

b) to the attempt to compare this culture with one's own and to its evaluation in terms of general human values;

c) to the discovery of the various manifestations and identities of these general human and unique values and their social-psychological backgrounds.

d) to the understanding of a foreign way of thinking and living, to the acceptance and adoption of the elements of this culture which seem important to one, or, conversely, to rejection and negation;

e) and finally in this way to an enrichment of one's own culture and mutual understanding and drawing together of nations with different cultures in the first case, but also to misunderstandings and the deepening of conflicts in the second case. Thus in the section "Translations and Transnational Processes" the latter and the former instances can be examined by translations of the processes operating between different nations and their mutual relationships in terms of linguistic and mainly extra-linguistic aspects.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES

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