In China, we seldom see a couple making close contact in public. They always walk side by side in a certain distance. While in the West, the couples are free to show their intimacy. When they meet the acquaintances, they always give them a hug or kiss as greeting. While, Chinese will shake hands with their friends but seldom hug them. They don’t kiss them as they regard it as an intimate action between lovers.
The reason why the easterner and the westerner behave so differently is that people live in the East emphasize on ethic principal, morality, and they focus on direct feeling and image. The westerners focus on freedom, democracy and emphasize on inpidual.
In all, Chinese traditional way of thinking has its own characteristics. It emphasizes the morality, harmony of the society; it promotes the collectivism, responsibility and devotion and so on. The western way of thinking also has its own characteristics. It emphasizes on logic and science, inpidual achievement, and promotes human right, equality and so on.
Therefore, differences of thinking modes have been duly reflected in and have exerted great influence on the two languages. It is common for us that we are familiar with every word in a sentence while we can not get the meaning of this sentence. And sometimes we do not know how to express our feelings like foreigners. In a word, how to avoid translationese is a big task for us. Translation between the two languages is consequently far beyond linguistic rendering, but more of cultural transferring and exchange of conceptual patterns. 中西思维方式的差异对英汉翻译的影响(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_14326.html