Domestication In The E-C Translation Of Historical Texts

Domestication was first proposed by Lawrence Venuti,a famous American translator,who suggested that the translator make every effort to translate in the way that the target readers are accustomed to,and to approach the target readers as much as possible.As such,the method of domestication can improve the readability and comprehensibility of the translated texts.Historical text is an informative text,which aims to transmit real information and real historical content to help people better understand history.Under the guidance of domestication,translators should flexibly select translation strategies to enhance the quality of translation and make the translated version conform to the reading habits of the target language readers.In so doing,the target language readers can obtain a good reading experience.The translation material of this report is selected from The Epic of America written by James Truslow Adams,a famous American writer and historian.The Epic of America is a historical book including 12 chapters,which depicts the developing process of the United States from colonial times to World War II,and from a divided colonial country to a superpower.Chapter 8,as the object of my translation practice and analysis,mainly describes the gold rush,economic crisis,black slavery,etc.in the United States.Also,chapter 8 introduces the development of American economy,politics,culture and other aspects during this period.Under the guidance of domestication,this report mainly analyzes the specific application of domestication in the translation of historical text from four aspects:lexical level,syntactic level,discourse level and cultural images.Translation strategies such as word transformation,voice transformation,sentence reorganization,word order adjustment,and annotation were adopted to produce a translation that is in line with the target readers’ reading habits and expectations as much as possible,thus improving the readability of the translation and realizing the ultimate goal of cross-cultural communication.It is hoped that the analysis of the specific application of domestication in my translation practice can provide some reference and inspiration for the translation of historical texts.