Training translators as mediators in intercultural communication

Intercultural communication often presupposes misunderstanding between people from different linguocultures. If the difference between cultural traditions is significant, messages can be misinterpreted. The term “translation” has no unified definition, but the general idea is that not only the denotation is to be translated from one language into another but also connotations including stylistic and expressive components of meaning. Translation is viewed both as a linguistic and cultural act for language and culture are inseparable. Thus, the translator as a mediator should have linguistic awareness and cultural thesaurus of both languages. Translator's professional training ought to include: norms of communicative behaviour, strategies and tactics of conducting a dialogue, speech stereotypes, linguistic and country-specific connotations related to household, history, folklore, literature, social, political, religious, ethical, and other peculiarities. Intercultural mediator is a person who studied the peculiar character of two different cultures via learning the two relevant languages. His communicative competence is to include linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, interpersonal, and intercultural types of competence. Intercultural mediators perform the following three functions: translation, commenting, i.e. descriptive rendering of foreign text senses, and censure, i.e. ethical issues to be considered in a particular culture. In the course of teaching translators-to-be, instructors should stress that in intercultural communication communicative failures often occur on graphical, phonetical, morphological, and lexical levels. The author specifies the knowledge and skills a translator-mediator must have to conduct efficient intercultural communication: openness to perception of the foreign culture, communicative intention, both linguistic and background historical, geographical, national, social knowledge. The methods of teaching English to translators-to-be ought to include active introduction into intercultural situations, like imitation and business games, translation practice in communicative situations that enable students to render cultural senses in concrete intercultural situations.