• Korean Journal of Comparative Education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.265-289
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• 2018

The word culture itself is very difficult to define. Therefore, in order to confine its meaning, many scholars prefer to attach different prefixes such as inter-, bi-, multi-, cross-, pluri-, trans-, in front of the adjective cultural instead of defining the word culture itself. These prefixes have been used along with about thirty various nouns, ranging from adaptability to training. In this paper, we focused on the adjective intercultural. In fact, this adjective has been widely used, not only in education but also in the communication and philosophy sectors among the world academia discourse. Intercultural Education appeared in America in the 1930s and also in the 1970s in Europe, in order to improve relations between immigrants and the people who received them. Intercultural communication arose in America as a cultural education program for American diplomats and professionals, while interculturalism appeared in the 1970s in Canada as a policy in opposition to multiculturalism. Intercultural philosophy started in 1990s Germany as philosophical speculation against Eurocentrism. As such, the adjective intercultural has been used with a combination of diverse nouns. In regards to this, one can ask the following questions: did the scholars have any kind of agreement during their discussions? Did they communicate and make a positive impact on each other? If not, how can we interpret their common use of the word intercultural? To answer these questions, we tried to compare fives types of intercultural waves of the 20th century, paying particular attention to their time periods, places and backgrounds of appearance, their emphases and shortcomings. Following our research, we found that intercultural waves in the 20th Century have developed independently despite their common use of the word intercultural. Therefore, we concluded that the use of same word intercultural was the result of humankind's effort to approach cultural differences in a positive way in the global village created by internationalization and globalization of the 20th century.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.46
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• pp.411-434
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• 2017

With emphasis on various local cultures to confront the Western central culture, Ngugi wa Thiong'o proposes them 'to move horizontally' so as not to repeat the oppressive culture of the West. We need not only dialogues between dominant languages and peripheral languages, but also between marginal languages. With respect to this point, Ngugi thinks that translation itself could be very effective. Ngugi wants to stimulate writing and speaking in marginalized languages and promote translation as a means of making these languages visible. He regards translation as a conversational tool among languages and cultures in the multicultural global community. As is already well known, his determination to write his later works only in his native Gikuyu language has a great meaning in his anti-colonial as well as anti-neocolonial movement. Its proof is his recent effort to cooperate with Jalada Africa. Simon Gikandi criticized the English translation of Matigari as a denial of cultural hegemony of Gikuyu language and its subordination to the global cultural market. However, the concept of 'thick translation', helps us move from Gikandi's doubt of the 'epistemology of translation' to a meaningful strategy of postcolonial translation. Facing some of the scholars' doubts related to his over-stressing language problem, Ngugi points out that the world has managed to function well through translation: the possibility of translation between cultures and translation as a mediating tool for communication nationally as well as internationally. Based on this two-sided solution of translation, he believes that we can overcome the opposition between relativity and universality, center and periphery, and the dominant and the subordinate.