Pick one concept from the assigned readings that you found useful or interesting and discuss it.
The concept I found interesting is low-context cultures and high-context cultures (96). As the textbook states, English is a good example of low-context cultures, which people speak clearly and in detail. On the other hand, Japanese is a typical example of high-context cultures. Yes, we use “maybe” “about” and “I hope…” a lot. There is a famous idiom in Japanese, “Ishin-denshin.” This means that we understand each other without language. It is a virtue in Japan to guess or read what others are feeling or wants to say without hearing a lot from them. It shows a care for others, and is an evidence of intimacy for people those who are close or a couple.
These cultural differences brought me difficulties to write essays in English. Every time I ask a writing advisor to review my essays, she told me, “What is ‘that’?”, “Who are ‘they’?”, and “What do you mean by this? Be more specific!” When I explained in more detail about what I wrote, she always told me, “Very good, why didn’t you write down how you just explained to me?”
The other day, my brother asked me to translate his Japanese essay to English for his English class. It looked fine when I read in Japanese. However, when I started to translate into English, I had a lot of troubles. I asked my brother the same thing my writing advisor used to tell me; “Wait, what do you mean by this?” When I translate his essay to English, many expressions became ambiguous and unspecific all the sudden.
I like both directness of English and indirectness of Japanese. English helps me to think more critically, and it feels good to hear straight and clear language. I also like the Japanese that puts importance on harmony and care for others. We write “Ishin-denshin” as “to tell from heart to heart.” This is the idiom I like the most because we cannot express all of our feelings in words. I feel very happy when others understand my feelings that I couldn’t explain in precise words.
Final Post
15 年前
1 件のコメント:
It must be kind of difficult to translate one language to another because some words in one language may not exist in the other. Either that, or it has no literal translation. So then substitute words have to be added. When I try to explain to another person what a spanish speaking person said, it is almost never a literal translation. Its hard enough in highschool when they had us translate an entire page of spanish writing into english because it would never sound the same as it did in its original language.
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