Overcoming cultural barriers resulting from religious diversity

Abstract

There is no doubt that lack of a common language is the main obstacle to communication between people from different backgrounds. However, the cultural aspect also plays a very important role, since even two people with a common language may not understand each other in certain situations, that is, when extra-linguistic factors intervene. We hypothesize that religion and religious beliefs and customs are part of one’s culture and may also pose communication barriers and lead to misinterpretation by society and more specifically by the public services that receive these people. To confirm our hypothesis, we intend to analyse the case of Germany, a society in which, statistically, Catholics and Muslims make up the two largest demographic groups, in order to find out whether the differences between the followers of these religions could lead to misunderstandings. In conclusion, we recommend intervention by properly trained linguistic-cultural mediators in order to avoid these barriers, and suggest for this purpose the implementation of Service-learning activities at the university level to foster translation and mediation competence among these future professionals.