Магистрант Султанова Г.Ф., к.п.н. Тургинбаева Л.В.,

Региональный социальный инновационный университет, Казахстан

Южно-Казахстанский государственный педагогический институт, Казахстан

THE USE OF BUSINESS PAPERS IN FLT AS A SOURCE OF CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION PECULIARITIES AND A MEANS TO BUILD CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS WITH SCHOOLCHILDREN

Cross-cultural communication is a combination of many other fields. These fields include anthropology, cultural studies, psychology and communication. The study of languages other than one’s own cannot only serve to help us understand what we as human beings have in common, but also assist us in understanding the diversity which underlies not only our languages, but also our ways of constructing and organizing knowledge, and the many different realities in which we all live and interact. Language socialization can be broadly defined as “an investigation of how language both presupposes and creates anew, social relations in cultural context”.

Effective communication with people of different cultures is especially challenging. Cultures provide people with ways of thinking – ways of seeing, hearing, and interpreting the world. Thus the same words can mean different things to people from different cultures, even when they talk the “same” language. When the languages are different, and translation has to be used to communicate, the potential for misunderstandings increases. The study of cross-cultural communication is fast becoming a global research area. That is why it is necessary to build and develop the skills of cross-cultural communication with school children who are going to be potential business partners in future.

Before signing a contract or any other important document, business partners begin communication which can be written or oral. If we are talking about forms of written communication, first of all, business letters should be mentioned which can be considered as the initial part of business relationships. Oral communication includes telephone calls and of course negotiations. Nowadays almost all negotiations with foreign business partners are performed in English and the signing or not signing of contract depend on it. That is why business correspondence and negotiations should be carried out in appropriate and correct language.

The cultural aspect is involved in business translation. The linguistic challenges when doing translation of business official papers are as follows: special terminology, clichéd lexis and its formal register.

The necessity to keep certain “appearances” and observe conventionalities in international business communication has been acknowledged since the times when success of a company's extension started to be judged by the number of its foreign affiliations or partners.

Intensification of international contacts yielded, besides obviously positive results, multiple failures at negotiations, absence of foreign trainees’ motivation, and even open conflicts among partners, especially between those belonging to different cultures (Asian and Western, Western and Slavic). Minute feedback analysis of the situations suggests that whereas business matters were handled perfectly, national, ethnic, psychological or cultural factors were completely neglected.

Some researches (W.G. Stephan, B. Blake) of cultural diversity in business context, communication cannot be successful unless ethno-psychological identity of its participants is recognized. They identified the cultures according to the following criteria: 1) individualism-collectivism, 2) low-high context communication, 3) uncertainty avoidance, 4) power distance. These features greatly influence linguistic and extra-linguistic manner of the translators.

In individualistic cultures people are supposed to look after themselves and their immediate family only, while in collectivistic cultures, people belong to in-groups of collectivities which are supposed to look after them on exchange for loyalty. The example of the first culture is presented by United States, whereas Japan is an illustration of the second. At linguistic level it stipulates the use of particular grammar structures - Active versus Passive, I / we pronouns, etc.

Communication that predominates in the cultures makes the second important criterion of cultural diversity. A high-context communication, inherent in most Asian cultures, is one in which the most information is implemented either in extra-linguistic situation of communication or is shared by the communicants, while very little is coded. A low-context communication takes place in terms of explicit code, like in Germany or the United States. This may cause the necessity to make certain aspects in business communication, e.g. price negotiations, more explicit for the Americans and less direct for the Japanese or the Chinese through the use / avoidance of certain direct grammar constructions and vocabulary.

Cultures with high uncertainty avoidance have a lower tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity, which expresses itself in higher levels of anxiety and energy release, greater need for formal rules and absolute truth, and less tolerance for people in groups with deviant ideas or behavior. It was empirically confirmed that in organizations, workers in high uncertainty avoidance cultures prefer a specialist career and clear instructions, avoid conflict, and disapprove of competition between employees more than workers in low uncertainty avoidance cultures, e.g. Denmark versus Japan. It does not only stipulate the pattern of behavior with businessmen representing these cultures but also the linguistic strategy in translation, e.g. presence or absence of mitigation markers.

The application of cross-cultural communicative theory to the business translation looks rather significant since it crucially changes the very concept of the translator’s role in business communication. Supplied by the cultural knowledge, translator does not simply find equivalents of the ideas in different languages. His strategy is to maintain rapport between cultures by finding the forms of mutually accepted manner of communication, which raises his role to the global level.

The development of business correspondence in Kazakhstan, need of official documents translation from English into Kazakh and vice versa give special significance to the language of business communication and especially to English as it is language of international communication. Business correspondence obeys certain rules of exposition and arranging of the information. Business letters have common and national specific characteristics. In all language cultures formation of official style was presupposed by the development of State system, government apparatus and by the need to confirm legal relationships of juridical and private persons by documents. The world practice shows that despite all the peculiarities of national systems of business correspondence the main requirements to the structure, fullness of content and arrangement are stable because they had been forming historically and were determined by the peculiarities of business communication.

National specific character in business letters is performed at communicative level because peculiarities of historical development in this sphere in every nation caused the formation of specific communicational phrases and stylistic constructions. That is why while comparing standards of official style of the Kazakh language and of business correspondence in particular with the existing standards of English business correspondence one can distinguish ethno-linguistic characteristics of Kazakh and English business correspondence which should be taken into account in translation. Kazakh business correspondence is characterized by the functionality (the so-called “telegraph style”), restraint and rationality, absence of emotional coloring, estrangement of exposition that expressed through rationality and strictness of linguistic forms and patterns. In comparison with Kazakh style, style of English business letters is characterized by more independent choice of words and syntactic constructions, by the intention of author to show his personal interest and willingness for close partnership with addressee, by hierarchy of polite addresses depending on the level of formal relationships between communicants.

So, the translation of business official papers during the process of FLT is an ideal means of cross-cultural communication skills building with schoolchildren.