Search

A lot of work has been done on the major turns that have taken place within Translation Studies. The moves from the prescriptive to the descriptive method of analyzing and conducting translation allow for appropriating the whole process of translation to the service of individual and institutional interests. These changes have been triggered by the juggernaut of globalization and have touched upon the ethics of intercultural communication and representation. As such, responding to the present international scene, dominated with cultural paranoia and reluctance to get immersed into the historically inevitable stage of cultural co-existence, the present paper suggests the transcultural approach to translation as a working alternative to the separatist and nationalist discourses that are fraught with essentialist ideologies. Within the transcultural dynamics of translation, the collision between the ethnocentric authority and peripheral minority is replaced with collaborative intersection of belonging senses and political voices to circumvent the devastating effects of the dichotomizing rhetoric. The American writer Paul Bowles’ project of translating Moroccan culture in the context of his collaboration with the Moroccan preliterate storyteller Mohamed Mrabet can be, therefore, read through the transcultural prism, which is in this case subtly sustained by the contact zone of Tangier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with results from an ongoing research project about how patients and health professionals talk about and enact culture in a specific Danish hospital ward, whether this may have implications for staff–patient relationships and how knowledge of cultural complexities may add value to patient care. The project and this paper are based on a discourse analytic and social constructivist approach and, contrary to some earlier studies focusing on health professionals’ perceptions of culture in relation to the care of minority ethnic patients, this project and paper deal with culture seen from a patient perspective. Data have been collected from interviews with minority ethnic patients and with nurses about the intercultural encounter in an infectious diseases ward, and the analysis focuses on evaluating statements present in the discourses. The analysis aims at studying how such discourses may display the patients’ roles and self positioning, to discuss whether such positions and roles are attributable to culture, language proficiency or social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]