ABSTRACT
Translational attitude towards foreign otherness varies from culture to culture, and different underlying assumptions about how translation functions merit careful attention. Contrary to the idealized perception that translation needs to be neutral, invisible, and impassive, the translator intervenes from time to time to attain desired performance. Literary translation, for instance, is largely created through intervening cultural filters as a manifestation of translational attitude. The emotional frankness and directness that are required need to be balanced by an avoidance of cross-cultural confrontation. The connection between aesthetic emotion and cultural attitude merits further investigation. In rewriting the original, the translator supplants one system of rhetoric with another, resulting in the somewhat localized rhetoric that is essential in reproducing any of the rhetorical elegance associated with the source text. Cultural vitality and authenticity can be positively associated with rhetoric, which is not merely confined to surface meaning.
