Foreignization: Still A Caution Line For Interpreters

The call for"cultural diversity", a result of the economic globalization, brings along the trend of"for alienation, against adaptation"in the translation circle. Often neglected by Chinese translation researchers though, should interpretation also embrace this trend with heart and soul? This is the question disturbing the author's mind for long and is the major issue this thesis is going to explore.Based on the definition that translation/interpretation is an"intercultural communication"which leads to the fundamental conflict between communication facilitation and cultural preservation, the author first of all examines the studies done by Nida and Venuti, representatives of domestication and foreignization respectively. Focusing on the relationship between translation and culture, with a view to their respective responses in China's translation studies circle, the author explores the merits and flaws of both approaches objectively.Then, the author introduces the foreignization concept into the interpretation practice. First of all, with an examination of the nature of interpretation, she finds that the priority of interpretation lies in the side of communication facilitation. And a close look of its features, like time pressure, audience's preference, dynamic nature of the speech, more"unsaid"information decoding and a special environment with straightforward delivery, etc, uncovers that foreignization is not as practical as domestication in the interpretation process. Besides, the existing well-acknowledged criteria of quality assessments, like Li's (李越然) and Bao's (鲍刚), all indirectly induce interpreters to the domestication approach. Therefore, the author concludes that faced with the overwhelming applause towards the foreignization, interpreters should keep a rather cautious attitude. In the view of the author, domestication and foreignization should serve as the tools for an interpreter to fulfill his or her task: to facilitate the multilingual communication, rather than be considered as the final goals. Therefore, these two strategies should, instead of contending with each other, complement each other in different interpreting occasions.The author further points out that the key for the knotty cultural issue in interpretation lies in the cross-cultural awareness, which, with its four-level meanings (see Hanvey...