英语论文网

its tradition ,habits, social customs, morals, laws and social relations .In my view, the definition of the new world Encyclopedia is more close to the truth .Then what does it mean by translation? It certainly refers to the means of using the target language to retell the cultural information of another kind of language. This shows that translating never deviates from culture. So a translator must have good command of cultural background knowledge. “A translator must be a real intellectual who accumulated a lot of cultural knowledge.”(王佐良,1989) That is the reason why people say that a translator must master two languages. Exactly, if we only understand the social culture in one language, whoever has the ability to get along well with the translation? Besides, Tan Zaixi states: “the understanding in translation to the source meaning is far本论文由英语论文网 www.51lunwen.org整理提供 from the pure understanding of the language.”(谢建国,2005:159) No wonder there is a saying in English: Learning a language is a kind of learning the culture and habit of the countries where the language is spoken. So according to these famous statements, we know that the translation cannot lose touch with the culture at all.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of understanding the cultural background of the English speaking countries in cultural tradition, cultural mentality, local conditions and customs, history and geography, and profession knowledge and explains through examples the impact of cultural background on translation.

II. Cultural background knowledge and Translation
Professor Zhang in my university had ever said that we should never ignore who could be our readers when we translate a source text .He means that we should not ignore the difference of the culture between Chinese and English people. This demands that we should have good command of rich cultural background knowledge. Or we may be difficult to take good care of our readers. Language, a kind of phenomenon in our society, is the middleman between man and culture. Therefore, translating from one language into another cannot be dealt with satisfactorily without adequate knowledge of the two cultures involved. (马会娟,2003:75) And language and culture come into being at the same time. So where there is a language, there is its related culture phenomenon. Then one language undoubtedly reflects its cultural background. At the same time, cultural background definitely impact on the action of translating. What is more, due to the difference of cultural background, we often are not able to find a proper word to match and express its real meaning .So it is inevitable that the factors of cultural background must have impacted on translation. That is the very reason why Eugene A. Nida in language culture and translation states: “the role of language within a culture and the influence of the culture on the meanings of words and idioms are so pervasive that scarcely any text can be adequately understood without careful consideration of its culture background.” This implicates the importance of cultural background within people understanding language .Besides , we may often than not, in the course of English study and English teaching translation, come across these unexpected situations as follows: Many teachers and students who have good command of the language grammar of two languages still do not know how to get along with those words or sentences which is considered to be not difficult .