Respect For Different Cultures

罗梦璇 2013级翻译硕士 402013300034

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a movie about a Greek girl Toula married an American boy Ian. They two were from two different backgrounds. Toula lived in a big Greek family, they moved to American in the world war Ⅱ. The family consisted of Toula’s parents, her brother, sister, and a great number of big and loud relatives .The house they lived was modeled after the Parthenon. While Ian was from an American family, he was the only child in the family which was in quiet and harmonious atmosphere.

At first, their parents had different attitudes towards their love. Toula’s parents were opposed to their love. Her parents could not accept an xeno who they didn’t know anything. On the contrary, Ian’s parents agreed. In this position, Ian decided to be baptized and join the Greek Orthodox Church. Finally they decided to get married, and they found they had a lot of different customs. The Greeks hold weddings in the Greek Church, they need 10 bridesmaids and the best man is actually part of the ceremony, parents may give their children gifts, hold a big wedding, and end it with dancing together. In contrast, the American family would like to hold a wedding in the club, quiet and small. They may eat big wedding cakes and let the newly married couple have a honeymoon trip.

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In my opinion, when meeting different cultures, we should accept it, respect it, and communicate to understand it. On this basis, we can learn from other cultures and improve our culture by the good sides of different cultures.

There are many kinds of cultures in the world, we may meet various people who are different from us, and the differences exist not only among nations but also peoples. Sometimes we may wonder, it is so surprising that they do those things. However, if we communicate with them, we will understand their culture and try to learn something good from the different culture, just like learning something from other people.

In a word, when we communicate with people from a different cultural background, we should pay attention to respect the different cultures firstly, and communicate timely to understand the wondering things; we may accept different cultures gradually and in this way learn a lot from the differences.

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第二篇：我的盛大希腊婚礼

《My big fat Greek wedding》is about a story of a young woman whose name is Toula.She lives in a big Greek family in Chicago. Her large family can use the word “Giant” to describe.She has 27 cousins in her family. Her stubborn father, Gus,was deeply proud of their Greek lineage and he even tried to analyze each English word to find its Greek roots.He always thinks of himself as the absolute authority of the family. Her Mother Maria is much more open.From time to time, she would work together with Toula to resist Gus’ authority secretly. Toula’s grandmother who was always dressed in black had a bad temper and would break out without any reason. She also thought of the Turks as her enemies and she even put a hidden knife under her sleeping pillow. In such a traditional family, Toula are taught the three major goals of life :to marry a Greek, raise a group of Greek kids and feed them until the last day of life. But Toula felt boring about such old-fashioned housewives life. She was secretly looking forward to a total different life but never act differently and only follow god’s lead.

However, her life was still dreary when she was in her thirties. No one loves this ugly duckling. She served as a normal waitress at Gus’ restaurant.

One day, a handsome high school English teacher called Ian Miller stepped into the restaurant. Suddenly, Toula realized that he was the dream lover for her. However, she was too unimpressive to get his attention. Toula decided to take action to change her life. She began to dress up carefully and prepared to learn computer in a university. Gus took a hard look at her effort, but he finally payed the tuition fee for Toula because of Maria’s support. Toula found a new job in her aunt’s travel agent. She had a brand new life then.

As if by the will of God, Ian came to the travel agent unexpectedly. Toula caught the chance this time. Ian felt in love with her at first sight. They began to date and were passionately in love smoothly.

But on the other hand, Toula was full of worry, Gus has been kept emphasizing that she was not allowed to marry the non-Greek people. Although Ian never took that to heart, but she did try to keep this relationship underground. Until their relationship had developed into marriage. In order to make the traditional Greek family accept him, Ian has suffered great challenges. He accepted the baptism in the Greek orthodox church. As a vegetarian, he even broke the taboos to eat meat and also constantly took part in various parties. And Tolua also made a lot of efforts because Ian’s parents are more conservative than Gus. Finally, with their struggle and the help of Toula’s mother and other relatives, they finally entered the church and held a "Big Fat Greek wedding”.