The Surprise Report. A tool for the development of interpreters' cultural awareness and intercultural competence

1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.0 Introductory remarks Various scholars (Linton 1945, Lederach 1995, Sockalingam 2004, Lotrecchiano 2005) have given several definitions of “culture” which illustrates how complex the concept is. People usually associate a culture with a specific race or country. Indeed, the terms “country” and “culture” are often used interchangeably (Taras et al. 2016). However, in our globalised world, national cultures have themselves become diverse, inhabited by plurality (Robinson 2003). Firstly, it is important to clarify that culture is not the same as race. Race is a social construct used to identify groups of people by physiological characteristics such as skin colour, hair texture, facial features, bone structure, etc. (Blakemore 2019). Furthermore, most races are included in many ethnic groups, “a large group of people with a shared culture, language, history, set of traditions” (Cambridge dictionary 2023). Many societies are multicultural, and many people and organizations collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries that is why nowadays it is so important to understand cultural differences (Iivonen et al. 1998). The National Centre for Cultural Competence or NCCC’s (2006) definition of culture is: “Culture is the learned and shared knowledge that specific groups use to generate their behaviour and interpret their experience of the world. It comprises beliefs about reality, how people should interact with each other, what they “know” about the world, and how they should respond to the social and material environments in which they find themselves. It is reflected in their religions, morals, customs, technologies, and survival strategies. It affects how they work, parent, love, marry, and understand health, mental health, wellness, illness, disability, and death.” Much of culture resides only in a person’s head; thus, it is invisible and sometimes hard to detect. This can easily be understood with the image used by the Peace Corps volunteering organisation in its training. The image is the “Iceberg Concept of Culture” inspired by Sigmund Freud’s Iceberg Theory: