Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

VIII Introduction
Thus, it is less frequent on the one hand, but, on the other hand, more honest and
straightforward when used.
PREMAWARDHENA confines herself to the cultural impact on dialogues in a
specific language: Modern Sinhala. The advances in technology bear an inevitable
impact on cultural values, customs and traditions and thus on language, too.
PREMAWARDHENA analyses some aspects of cultural values and norms reflected
in modern Sinhala to ascertain whether the changes in society in the hi-tech age
have in any way affected its language.
XENI, IZARD & LORDA, SZCZEPANIAK-KOZAK and PALASAKI made their
contributions within the bounds of ‘Translation as Cultural Dialogue’.
XENI discusses the translation of colloquial language or speech in general and
slang and dialect in particular in the frame of strategies and norms governing the
behavior patterns of translators observed during the translation process.
IZARD & LORDA take a look at the heterogeneous genre of television news.
They compare the different accounts of the same story by different television
channels in France and Spain. The comparison shows different modalities of
‘cultural translation’.
SZCZEPANIAK-KOZAK compares contemporary English and Polish military
texts of logistics. She displays that there exist differences as far as grammar and
vocabulary structures are concerned, e.g. frequency of impersonal constructions
and imperative mood constructions, use of metaphors, cases of pleonasms. The
contrasted styles of writing further differ in terms of the text layout.
PALASAKI'S aim is to compare German and Greek euphemisms. Euphemisms
are defined as substitutions of less offensive expression for those that may offend
or suggest something unpleasant to the listener. She deepens into religious
euphemisms. The protection of sacred names and rituals has given rise to
euphemisms in most cultures. Further examples concern animals, disease and
death.
The last two articles by DORTA and FRÖHLICH & LUX focus on chat
communication.
DORTA analyses the processes of definition and negotiation of social
relationships within politeness strategies in chat rooms. Politeness is considered
as an intersubjective phenomenon which depends on its context of occurrence and
some particularities of this form of computer-mediated communication.
FRÖHLICH & LUX examine whether there is a typical cultural chat behaviour
depending on nationality. Using a sample taken from various German and Russian
chat rooms, their main focus is the comparison of Russian and German chatters
and their chat behaviour. They believe that the Internet has its or is an
autonomous culture to which chatters contribute.
Special thanks go to Oliver Richter and Sonja Lux for helping to facilitate the
formatting process.
Mainz, February 2008 Marion Grein