—文化中介者与文化中介艾略特，波卡，洪塔斯普拉特,伊斯特曼文化中介个案研究.docVIP

Chapter I Introduction Cultural Brokering – A Universal Phenomenon Ever since ancient times, there have been situations where people of different cultures need to communicate with each other for varied purposes, in which cultural brokering inevitably presents itself. The inception of globalization since the late 20th century has almost rendered cultural encounter or contact an everyday phenomenon. Travelling overseas unavoidably brings people of different cultures together, thus creating the possibility of cultural contact and conflict, but the sweet sound of a tour guide could easily dispel one’s complex feelings of being an alien in a foreign country and clear up possible misunderstandings between tourists and local inhabitants. Merchants from multi-national companies have to work with people of different countries everyday, but the fact that people of different countries speak different languages could be a huge hindrance to potential business opportunities. Fortunately, and perhaps misfortunately as well, the participation of what we would call in this paper “cultural brokers” such as interpreters, or tourist guides never fails to ensure the smooth operation of business transactions or tourist journeys. Either being a tour guide or being an interpreter is fundamentally the same, because both function as a medium or an agent whose responsibility is to facilitate the communication among people of different cultures and beliefs. Facilitation of communication among different people from different cultures and different languages is termed “culture brokering”. Different definitions of cultural brokering have been put forward by scholars over time. One definition states that cultural brokering is the act of bridging, linking, or mediating between groups or persons of different cultural backgrounds for the purpose of reducing conflict or producing change (Jezewski, 1990). Since cultural borders are a universal phenomenon (Szasz, 2001), cultural contact and cultural co