The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

SECTION:

Translation and Cultural Understanding

Lenka Kucirková (Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Agriculture)
Developing Intercultural Relations in Connection with the Specialist Translation within a European Integration Research Project

The paper deals with developing and strengthening intercultural relations in connection with specialist translation within a research project of the European integration at the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Czech University of Agriculture in Prague.

Due to the processes like globalization and European integration, cultures are increasingly coming into contact with one another. These contacts are mainly mediated through languages and translation as an eminently important communicative activity is a means of conveying messages across linguistic and cultural barriers. In the period of the preparation of our country to enter the European Union it is necessary to harmonize specialist terminology so that single notions and definitions could be comprehended in a same way in member states of the EU.

Department of Languages deals with this issue and is a co-author of the research project of Effective integration of the Czech agrarian sector within European structures - the prerequisite of sustainable development. The last stage of the project "Communicative harmonization of economic terminology within integration processes" is being processed within the research work of our department, the result of which will be the following specialist terminology dictionaries:

The members of the department of languages translate the material provided by specialist departments of the FEM into above mentioned languages with the help of PhD students and up-to-date specialist dictionaries available. The last important stage is the consultation of translated terminology with specialists at foreign partner universities with whom we have concluded bilateral agreements on teachers' and students' mobilities within Erasmus/Socrates
European Union programme. By these mobilities and cooperation among universities intercultural relations and cultural understanding are continuously being developed.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES