Lost In Translation Hoffman Summary

Lost in translation is an autobiography written by Eva Hoffman, who immigrated to Canada from post-war Poland with her family in 1959 and then to the United States. This novel is composed of three parts: “Paradise”, cheerful and happy early years in Portland; “Exile”, struggling and disoriented life in Canada and “The New World” which tells of how she received a scholarship and went through college in America. In this novel, Eva Hoffman imparts us with her most intimate experience about how to successfully survive and, moreover, blend into a new and unfamiliar country under the circumstance of transcultural difference as well as inner panic. She asserts in order to get adapt to a new environment, it is important and useful to find some motivations that promote us to acquire the second language firstly and secondly cultivate a vision of culture co-existence and harmony that strengthen the cultural connection. This view is supported by Julie Traves in “The Church of Please and Thank You”, who presents some potential motivations to learn another language and Kwame Anthony Appiah in “The Shattered Mirror”, who also favors culture co-existence and harmony.
Eva Hoffman emphasizes the …show more content…
He agrees “the recognition that human beings are different and that we can learn from each other’s differences” (13) and also suggests us not resist the different cultures, instead, we should tolerate the differences and try to find a balance that bond us together. In this way, we can find there are no singular truth, there are “lots of moral truths” (19), which helps understand a different culture and live in harmony with it. According to Hoffman and Appiah, we understand how beneficial for us to live with a cultural co-existence attitude in a new