Cross-cultural Translatability : Challenges and Prospects

In our quest of a new paradigm for cultural or cross-cultural understanding, we must first take a look at the very concept of a paradigm, as Thomas Kuhn expounded in his celebrated book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the related concepts of incommensurability and untranslatability. Kuhn's concepts have a significant influence on social sciences and the humanities, and they put an overemphasis on the difference and the impossibility of communication among different groups and cultures. Such a tendency has led to the fragmentization of the social fabric and the resurgence of a most tenacious tribalism. This essay launches a critique of such concepts and argues for the possibility and validity of cross-cultural understanding, and proposes world literature as an opportunity to embrace cross-cultural translatability as the first step towards a new paradigm in the study of different cultures in our globalized world today.