A Study On Cultural Misreading In Obama’s Political Speeches In Light Of Gadamer’s Hermeneutic

When people are interpreting the things from another culture, his interpretationwill always be affected by his own cultural tradition and thinking style as well as hisown moral ethical and aesthetic values. His own horizon determines “what he cansee” and “what he cannot see”, how he will choose and amend, above all, how he willinterpret, all of which will inevitably give rise to misreading of another culture in theprocess of cross cultural interpretation. Due to various factors, the original text werequite often being chosen, amended and even adapted, which were the clear evidencethat the cultural misreading happens in large amount in translation.Since hermeneutics mainly involves understanding, meaning and the relationshipbetween reader and the text, translation is inseparable from understanding andinterpreting texts, which are the initial steps in any kind of translation includingliterary translation. Therefore, the application of hermeneutics into understanding andtranslation is of great importance for the development of translation theory andpractice.This thesis analyzes cultural misreading in Obama’s political speeches from theperspective of the translator and the perspective of the target culture with Gadamer’shermeneutic principles, namely, prejudice, fusion of horizons and effective history.Although the cultural misreading will result in various negative effects such as thedistortion of the original information and so on, it can be extremely beneficial for thedevelopment of the target society and sometimes it is indispensable part in the processof cross cultural communication. Therefore, we should adopt a more dialectic andobjective attitude towards cultural misreading in translation.